TERMS STARTING WITH
Forces - Forces exerted from outside a system.
Extrinsic
Forces—in the view of John of Damascus,
Forces
FORCES. ::: Behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unkno^vn to the outward minds of men, and by yoga (by going inward and establishing a cons- cious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces), one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.
forces constitute an angelic order sometimes
forces under Lucifer, now serving in the nether
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. The active opposition or mutual hostility of two opposing forces, physical or mental. 2. An opposing force, principle, or tendency.
"1. ‘The Golden Embryo" in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative"; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State"; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
“1. ‘The Golden Embryo’ in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative’; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State’; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
1. To put or bring together so as to make continuous or form a unit. 2. To bring together in a particular relation or for a specific purpose, action, etc.; unite. 3. To become united, associated, or combined; associate or ally oneself (with). 4. Be or become joined or united or linked. 5. To take part with others. 6. To enlist in one of the armed forces. joins, joined, joining.
ABHIMĀN ::: Anyone who indulges in abhimān puts himself under the influence of the hostile forces. Abhimān has nothing to do with true love; it is, like jealousy, a part of the vital egoism.
active brahman ::: same as sagun.a brahman, the dynamic aspect of brahman which is expressed in the cosmic movement, "a universal Divine, one in being, multiple in personality and power, who conveys to us, when we enter into the consciousness of his universal forces, a sense of infinite quality and will and act and world-wide knowledge and a one yet innumerable delight"; realised by the mind separately from the santaṁ brahma or silent brahman, it is an aspect of universal being which "though wonderfully freed, uplifted and illumined, supports only the present self-expression of the Cosmic Spirit and does not transform, as would a transcendental Descent, the ambiguous symbols and veiled mysteries of a world of Ignorance". active samat samata
Active silence is that in which there is a great force that goes out on things and forces without disturbing the silence.
adverse forces ::: see hostile forces
"Ah! Since India is the cradle of religion and since so many gods preside over her destiny, who among them will accomplish the miracle of resuscitating the city?" A. Choumel (in an article on Pondicherry in 1928) Follows response by the Mother: "Blinded by false appearances, deceived by calumnies, held back by fear and prejudice, he has passed by the side of the god whose intervention he implores and saw him not; he has walked near to the forces which will accomplish the miracle he demands and had no will to recognise them. Thus has he lost the greatest opportunity of his life—a unique opportunity of entering into contact with the mysteries and marvelswhose existence his brain has divined and to which his heart obscurely aspires. In all times the aspirant, before receiving initiation, had to pass through tests. In the schools of antiquity these tests were artificial and by that they lost the greater part of their value. But it is no longer so now. The test hides behind some very ordinary every-day circumstance and wears an innocent air of coincidence and chance which makes it still more difficult and dangerous.It is only to those who can conquer the mind’s
references and prejudices of race and education that India reveals the mystery of her treasures. Others depart disappointed, failing to find what they seek; for they have sought it in the wrong way and would not agree to pay the price of the Divine Discovery."
Ref: CWM Vol. 13, Page: 372-373
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: telepathic trikaladr.s.t.i combined with decisive trikaladr.s.t.i, seeing the forces at work and the result that is to emerge. decisive trik trikaladrsti
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: the higher form of trikaladr.s.t.i, which is not dependent on the perception of tendencies, forces and intentions by telepathy and can "perceive what is the unalterable eventuality actually destined".
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: the lower form of trikaladr.s.t.i .. which, by means of the faculties of prakamya and vyapti, "gives the fact and tendency [of] actual and potential forces in action".
aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i in which viveka is used for "deciding the correct event among the various tendencies, applied forces & possibilities".
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
“All energies put into activity—thought, speech, feeling, act—go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga
All forces that want to cover the consciousness rise up to do it by environing and acting on the mind centres if they can — environing because otherwise the covering is not complete.
All lights are indications of a Force or Power. It is the work of the Lights and Forces they represent to act in their descent on the lower nature and change it. Light clatifics the conscious- ness and works as a force and makes knowledge possible.
All Rajayoga depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be sepa- rated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and re- solved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes.
Al-Qabid ::: The One who exercises His verdict by retaining the essence of an individual’s Name reality. The One who restrains and enforces withdrawnness.
Amal: “I believe the reference is to the intrusion into human affairs by forces that now and again cause sudden changes in human history—changes to which the secret key is often missing.”
Amal: “Many obstructing agencies have to be met when one tries to break free from outwardness and plunge into the depths of one’s being. The very first of these obstructions is a poisonous serpent like a cobra—a terrifying front with a long supporting background of fearful forces.”
Amal: “The phrase refers to the hostile forces, the powerful vital beings whose work is to block the Divine influx and deceive human beings. They are called ‘iron lords’ not only because they are powerful but also because they are unchangeable. As far as I understand Sri Aurobindo, the hostile forces cannot be converted: they have to be destroyed in relation to the earth. They cannot be mended; they are to be ended.”
an.an atarah. ::: you have passed beyond the vital forces.
And it must be a surrender and an opening to the Divine alone and to no other. For it is possible for an obscure mind or an impure life-force in us to surrender to undivme and hostile forces and even to mistake them for the Divine There can be no more calamitous error. Therefore our surrender must be no blind and inert passivity to all influences or any influencei but sincere, conscious, vigilant, pointed to the One and the Highest alone.
and the power that perseveres and conquers. It is really a habit that one has to get of opening to these helpful forces and either passively receiving them or actively drawing upon them — for one can do either. It is easier if you have the conception of them above and around you and the faith and the will to receive them ; for that brings the experience and concrete sense of them and the capacity to receive at need or at will. It is a question of habituating your consciousness to get into touch and keep in touch with these helpful forces ; and for that you must accustom yourself to reject the impressions forced on you by the others, depression, self-distrust, repining and all similar disturbances.
::: "An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed.” The Synthesis of Yoga —**cosmic forces.**
Āṅgirasas ::: an ancient clan of r.s.is in the Veda, the "human fathers" who discovered the Light, also portrayed as heavenly seers or as powers of Agni2, "forces of the symbolic Light and Flame"; along with the Bhr.gus, identified in the Record of Yoga with the Judeo-Christian "seraphim", the highest order of angels.
antagonistical ::: a. --> Opposing in combat, combating; contending or acting against; as, antagonistic forces.
.any integral yoga, if we do not go back from the outer self and become aware of all this inner being and inner nature. For then alone can we break the limitations of the ignorant external self which receives consciously only the outer touches and knows things indirectly through the outer mind and senses, and become directly aware of the universal consciousness and the universal forces that play through us and around us. And then only too
apocalypse ::: 1. Any revelation or prophecy. 2. A prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.
arch ::: 1. An upwardly curved construction, for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedgelike stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening, either capable of bearing weight or merely ornamental; 2. Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part: the arch of the foot. 3. An arched roof, door; gateway; vault; fig. the heavens. arches.
armament ::: n. --> A body of forces equipped for war; -- used of a land or naval force.
All the cannon and small arms collectively, with their equipments, belonging to a ship or a fortification.
Any equipment for resistance.
ARRESTS IN SADHANA. ::: A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. Such arrests are inevitably frequent enough; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished, - for that cannot be at this stage, - but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive ::: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here, too, the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.
On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence.
::: "As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not, — they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not — or if the lines of power change, one"s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces, — spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces — and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
“As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not,—they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not—or if the lines of power change, one’s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces,—spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces—and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.” Letters on Yoga
“Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.” Letters on Yoga
ASPIRATION. ::: The call in the being for the Divine or for the higher things that belong to the Divine Consciousness.
A call to the Divine; aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever.
An aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing- the mind’s will, the heart’s seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature.
There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.
Aspiration need not be in the form of thought; it can be a feeling within that remains even when the mind is attending to the work.
Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.
In aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession ; the more intense the call, the greater the self-giving.
Aspiration keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.
The intensity of aspiration brings the intensity of the experience and by repeated intensity of the experience, the change. It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration; if the vital is purified and subjected to the psychic, then the vital gives intensity.
Aspiration in the physical consciousness ::: the physical consciousness is always in everybody in its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But first there must be the opening, a purification, a fixed quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into over-eagerness and impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn.
As-Sabur ::: The One who waits for each individual to execute his creation program before rendering effective the consequences of their actions. Allowing the tyranny of the tyrant to take place, i.e. activating the Name as-Sabur, is so that both the oppressor and the oppressed can duly carry out their functions before facing the consequences in full effect. Greater calamity forces the creation of increased cruelty.
astheny ::: n. --> Want or loss of strength; debility; diminution of the vital forces.
“As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man;—this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other,—invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
"As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
“As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
ASTROLOGY. ::: Many astrological predictions come true, quite a mass of them, if one takes all together. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, - or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indications. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and puruṣakāra, fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover, the stars often indicate several fatepossibilities; for example, that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be overcome, one can live to a predictable old age. Finally, cases are seen in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time ; but there is no longer the sure inevitability.
Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors ; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura. For this reason most spiritual disciplines insist on a complete self-control, detachment and renunciation of all bondage to wealth and of all personal and egoistic desire for its possession. Some even put a ban on money and riches and proclaim poverty and bareness of life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error ; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs 'and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the sadhaka.
asuras. ::: a group of power-seeking deities or demons, sometimes considered naturalists or nature-beings, which are the forces of chaos that are in constant battle with the devas
At a certain stage attacks fall heavily on the body because the opposing forces find it more difficult than before to upset the mind and vital directly, so they fall on the physical in the hope that that will do the trick, the physical bemg most vulnerable.
::: ". . . a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies, — all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, — for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine
“… a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine
A true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 678
Attacks of illnesses ::: These forces, when thronm out, retreat into the environmental consciousness and remain there concealed and at any opportunity make an attack on the centres accustomed to receive them (external mind and the external emotional) and get in. This happens with most sadbakas. Two things are neces- sary — (1) to open fully the physical to the higher forces, (2) to reach the stage when even if the forces attack they cannot come fully in, the inner being remaining calm and free. Then even if there is still a surface dIfiBcuIty, there will not be these overpowerings.
aura ::: “Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” Letters on Yoga
AUSTERITY. ::: A premature and excessive physical austerity, tapasyā, may endanger the process of the sadhana by establishing a disturbance and abnormality of the forces in the different parts of the system. A great energy may pour into the mental and vital parts, but the nerves and the body may be overstrained and lose the strength to support the play of these higher energies.
Automatic writings and spiritualistic seances arc a very mix- ed affair. Part comes from the subconscious mind of the medium and part from that of the stUeis. Usually these seances etc. put one into rapport with a very low world of vital beings and forces.
“Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” Letters on Yoga
balancement ::: n. --> The act or result of balancing or adjusting; equipoise; even adjustment of forces.
battle ::: n. 1. An encounter between opposing forces; armed fighting; combat. v. 3. To fight against. Also fig. 4. To contend, struggle against. 5. To work very hard or struggle; strive. battled.
::: ". . . behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces,) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.” Letters on Yoga
“… behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces,) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.” Letters on Yoga
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
BEING AND BECOMING. ::: What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine Is the -Being, what is developed in conscious- ness, conditions, forces, forms etc., by the Divine Power is the
besiege ::: 1. To surround with hostile forces. 2. To crowd around; hem in; crowd in upon; surround. besieged.
besiege ::: v. t. --> To beset or surround with armed forces, for the purpose of compelling to surrender; to lay siege to; to beleaguer; to beset.
Forces
Binomic forces: Extra-biological forces, which influence the direction and development of life. I.e. all physical, chemical and other environmental forces which affect living organisms in any way. The second law of thermo-dynamics seems to vitalists to be an exception to their view that the creative life-force evolves upwards. Nonetheless natural selection is influenced by binomic forces. -- C.K.D.
biodynamics ::: n. --> The doctrine of vital forces or energy.
BIRTHDAY. ::: There is a rhythm (among many) In the play of the world-forces which is connected with the sun and the planets. That makes the birthday a day of possible renewal when the being is likely to be mote plastic.
BitlJaloes ::: Rash and obscure vital forces, obscure violenes in the nature.
Body consciousness ::: The body has its own consciousness and acts from it, even without any mental will of our own or even against that will, and our surface mind knows very little about this body consciousness, feels it only in an imperfect way, sees only its results and has the greatest dihiculty in finding out their causes. It is part of the yoga to become aware of this separate consciousness of the body, to sec and feel its movements and the forces that act upon it from inside or outside and to learn how to control and direct it even in its most hidden and (to us) subconscient processes.
"Both [purple and crimson] are vital lights, but when seen above they represent the original forces of which the vital are the derivations.” Letters on Yoga
“Both [purple and crimson] are vital lights, but when seen above they represent the original forces of which the vital are the derivations.” Letters on Yoga
b) Power. Heaven, Earth, and Man are the three Powers or Forces of Nature. -- H.H.
brahman ::: (in the Veda) "the soul or soul-consciousness emerging from the secret heart of things" or "the thought, inspired, creative, full of the secret truth, which emerges from that consciousness and becomes thought of the mind"; (in Vedanta) the divine Reality, "the One [eka1] besides whom there is nothing else existent", the Absolute who is "at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements". Its nature is saccidananda, infinite existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda), whose second element can also be described as consciousness-force (cit-tapas), making four fundamental principles of the integral Reality; brahman seen in all things in terms of these principles is called in the Record of Yoga the fourfold brahman, whose aspects form the brahma catus.t.aya. The complete realisation of brahman included for Sri Aurobindo not only the unification of the experiences of the nirgun.a brahman (brahman without qualities) and sagun.a brahman (brahman with qualities), but the harmonisation of the impersonal brahman which is "the spiritual material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe" with the personal isvara in the consciousness of parabrahman, the brahman in its supreme status as "a transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation", which "is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things" (purus.ottama) and the supreme Lord (paramesvara) and supreme Self (paramatman), "and in all these equal aspects the same single and eternal Godhead". Brahman is represented in sound by the mystic syllable OM.
brahman ::: [Ved.]: the sacred or inspired word, expression of the heart or soul; heart; the Vedic word or mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being; the Soul that emerges out of the subconscient in Man and rises towards the superconscient and also word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul. [Vedanta]: the Reality; the Eternal; the Absolute; the Spirit; the Supreme Being; the One besides whom there is nothing else existent; in relation to the universe [cf. atman] the Supreme is brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual, material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. ::: brahma [nominative] ::: brahmana [instrumental], by the hymn. ::: brahmani [locative], into the brahman. [cf. Brahma]
B. The Probability-Relation. Considering the general grounds of probability, it is pertinent to analyze the proper characteristics of this concept and the valid conditions of its use in inferential processes. Probability presents itself as a special relation between the premisses and the conclusion of an argument, namely when the premisses are true but not completely sufficient to condition the truth of the conclusion. A probable inference must however be logical, even though its result is not certain, for its premisses must be a true sign of its conclusion. The probability-relation may take three aspects: it is inductive, probable or presumptive. In strict induction, there is an essential connection between the facts expressed in the premisses and in the conclusion, which almost forces a factual result from the circumstances of the predication. This type of probability-relation is prominent in induction proper and in statistics. In strict probability, there is a logical connection between the premisses and the conclusion which does not entail a definite factual value for the latter. This type of probability-relation is prominent in mathematical probability and circumstantial evidence. In strict presumption, there is a similarity of characteristics between the fact expressed in the conclusion and the real event if it does or did exist. This type of probability-relation is prominent in analogy and testimony. A presumptive conclusion should be accepted provisionally, and it should have definite consequences capable of being tested. The results of an inductive inference and of a probable inference may often be brought closer together when covering the same field, as the relations involved are fundamental enough for the purpose. This may be done by a qualitative analysis of their implications, or by a quantitative comparison of their elements, as it is done for example in the methods of correlation. But a presumptive inference cannot be reduced to either of the other two forms without losing its identity, because the connection between its elements is of an indefinite character. It may be said that inductive and probable inferences have an intrinsic reasonableness, while presumptive inferences have an extrinsic reasonableness. The former involve determinism within certain limits, while the latter display indeterminacy more prominently. That is why very poor, misleading or wrong conclusions are obtained when mathematical methods are applied to moral acts, judiciary decisions or indirect testimony The activity of the human will has an intricate complexity and variability not easily subjected to calculation. Hence the degree of probability of a presumptive inference can be estimated only by the character and circumstances of its suggested explanation. In moral cases, the discussion and application of the probability-relation leads to the consideration of the doctrines of Probabilism and Probabiliorism which are qualitative. The probability-relation as such has the following general implications which are compatible with its three different aspects, and which may serve as general inferential principle: Any generalization must be probable upon propositions entailing its exemplification in particular cases; Any generalization or system of generalizations forming a theory, must be probable upon propositions following from it by implication; The probability of a given proposition on the basis of other propositions constituting its evidence, is the degree of logical conclusiveness of this evidence with respect to the given proposition; The empirical probability (p = S/E) of a statement S increases as verifications accrue to the evidence E, provided the evidence is taken as a whole; and Numerical probabilities may be assigned to facts or statements only when the evidence includes statistical data or other numerical information which can be treated by the methods of mathematical probability. C. Mathematical Probability. The mathematical theory of probability, which is also called the theory of chances or the theory of relative possibilities, is concerned with the application of mathematical methods to the determination of the likelihood of any event, when there are not sufficient data to determine with certainty its occurrence or failure. As Laplace remarked, it is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. But its range goes far beyond that of common sense for it has not only conditioned the growth of various branches of mathematics, such as the theory of errors, the calculus of variations and mathematical statistics, but it has also made possible the establishment of a number of theories in the natural and social sciences, by its actual applications to concrete problems. A distinction is usually made between direct and inverse probability. The determination of a direct or a priori probability involves an inference from given situations or sets of possibilities numerically characterized, to future events related with them. By definition, the direct probability of the occurrence of any particular form of an event, is the ratio of the number of ways in which that form might occur, to the whole number of ways in which the event may occur, all these forms being equiprobable or equally likely. The basic principles referring to a priori probabilities are derived from the analysis of the various logical alternatives involved in any hypothetical questions such as the following: (a) To determine whether a cause, whose exact nature is or is not known, will prove operative or not in certain circumstances; (b) To determine how often an event happens or fails. The comparison of the number of occurrences with that of the failures of an event, considered in simple or complex circumstances, affords a baisis for several cases of probable inference. Thus, theorems may be established to deal with the probability of success and the probability of failure of an event, with the probability of the joint occurrence of several events, with the probability of the alternative occurrence of several events, with the different conditions of frequency of occurrence of an event; with mathematical expectation, and with similar questions. The determination of an a posteriori or inverse probability involves an inference from given situations or events, to past conditions or causes which rnay have contributed to their occurrence. By definition, an inverse probability is the numerical value assigned to each one of a number of possible causes of an actual event that has already occurred; or more generally, it is the numerical value assigned to hypotheses which attempt to explain actual events or circumstances. If an event has occurred as a result of any one of n several causes, the probability that C was the actual cause is Pp/E (Pnpn), when P is the probability that the event could be produced by C if present, and p the probability that C was present before the occurrence of that event. Inverse probability is based on general and special assumptions which cannot always be properly stated, and as there are many different sets of such assumptions, there cannot be a coercive reason for making a definite choice. In particular, the condition of the equiprobability of causes is seldom if ever fulfilled. The distinction between the two kinds of probability, which has led to some confusion in interpreting their grounds and their relations, can be technically ignored now as a result of the adoption of a statistical basis for measuring probabilities. In particular, it is the statistical treatment of correlation which led to the study of probabilities of concurrent phenomena irrespective of their direction in time. This distinction may be retained, howe\er, for the purpose of a general exposition of the subject. Thus, a number of probability theorems are obtained by using various cases of direct and inverse probability involving permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, the theory of series, and the methods of integration. In turn, these theurems can be applied to concrete cases of the various sciences.
BURNING SENSATION. ::: If one brings down more Force or Light than some part of the being is ready for and that part resists or if there is a struggle between descending and adverse forces in the body, then these things can take place.
but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal Adhar — a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive. But the psychic poise is necessary ::: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately
"But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
“But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal—as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
“By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above—as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements—it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter—if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
By its numerous asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to ft an
caturvarn.ya (chaturvarnya) ::: the ancient Indian system of the four caturvarnya orders (brahman.a, ks.atriya, vaisya, sūdra), representing four psychological types whose combination is necessary for the complete personality; these four types are symbolic of "four cosmic principles, the Wisdom that conceives the order and principle of things, the Power that sanctions, upholds and enforces it, the Harmony that creates the arrangement of its parts, the Work that carries out what the rest direct".
'centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal
chance ::: n. --> A supposed material or psychical agent or mode of activity other than a force, law, or purpose; fortune; fate; -- in this sense often personified.
The operation or activity of such agent.
The supposed effect of such an agent; something that befalls, as the result of unknown or unconsidered forces; the issue of uncertain conditions; an event not calculated upon; an unexpected occurrence; a happening; accident; fortuity; casualty.
chemical ::: a. --> Pertaining to chemistry; characterized or produced by the forces and operations of chemistry; employed in the processes of chemistry; as, chemical changes; chemical combinations. ::: n. --> A substance used for producing a chemical effect; a reagent.
cit (chit) ::: consciousness; the infinite self-awareness that is "the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience", the second term of saccidananda; "an inherent self-consciousness" in brahman,"inseparable from its being [sat] and throwing itself out as a force [tapas] of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds"; the "universal conscious-stuff of existence", the "original Consciousness" which "modifies itself so as to become on the Truthplane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself".
clash ::: n. 1. A loud, harsh noise, such as that made by two metal objects in collision. 2. An encounter between hostile forces; a battle or skirmish. 3. A conflict, as between opposing or irreconcilable ideas. v. 4. To engage in a physical conflict or contest, as in a game or a battle (often followed by with). 5. To come into conflict; be in opposition. clashes, clashed, clashing.
Class struggle: Fundamental in Marxian social thought, this term signifies the conflict between classes (q.v.) which, according to the theory of historical materialism (see the entry, Dialectical materialism) may and usually does take place in all aspects of social life, and which has existed ever since the passing of primitive communism (q.v.). The class struggle is considered basic to the dynamics of history in the sense that a widespread change in technics, or a fuller utilization of them, which necessitates changes in economic relations and, in turn, in the social superstructure, is championed and carried through by classes which stand to gain from the change. The economic aspects of the class struggle under capitalism manifest themselves most directly, Marx held, in disputes over amount of wages, rate of profits, rate of interest, amount of rent, length of working day, conditions of work and like matters. The Marxist position is that the class struggle enters into philosophy, politics, law, morals, art, religion and other cultural institutions and fields in various ways, either directly or indirectly, and, in respect to the people involved, consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly. In any case the specific content of any such field or institution at a given time it held to have a certain effect upon a given class in its conflicts with other classes, weakening or aiding it. Marxists believe that certain kinds of literature or art may inspire people with a lively sense of the need and possibility of a radical change in social relations, or, on the contrary, with a sense of lethargy or complacency, and that various moral, religious or philosophical doctrines may operate to persuade a given class that it should accept its lot without complaint or its privileges without qualms, or may operate to persuade it of the contrary. The Marxist view is that every field or institution has a history, an evolution, and that this evolution is the result of the play of conflicting forces entering into the field, which forces are connected, in one way or another, with class conflicts. While it is thus held that the class struggle involves all cultural fields, it is not held that any cultural production or phenomenon, selected or delimited at random, can be correlated in a one-to-one fashion with an equally delimited class interest. -- J.M.S.
Colour indicates the pby of forces mental, physical and vital, but forces making for ealigbteiunent of these parts of the being.
COLOURS. ::: When the colours begin to lake definite shapes in the visions, it is a sign of some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness. The waves of colour mean a dynamic rush of forces.
conductor ::: n. --> One who, or that which, conducts; a leader; a commander; a guide; a manager; a director.
One in charge of a public conveyance, as of a railroad train or a street car.
The leader or director of an orchestra or chorus.
A substance or body capable of being a medium for the transmission of certain forces, esp. heat or electricity; specifically, a lightning rod.
Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our God- ward endeavour. The working of the DIvme Force in m under the conditions of the transition and the tight of the psychic being turning us alw’aj'S towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instiga- tions of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner Jaw of our action which continues rilJ the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature.
::: "Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
“Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions ; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is cit but also cit sakti.
Consciousness — two elements ::: Consciousness is made up of two elements, awareness of self and things and forces and conscious-power. Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth ; but awareness by itself is not enough.
ConsciousTorcc which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, giinas, etc. Behind it b the living Consciousness and Force of the
Consequently, the dialectical method means basically that all things must be investigated in terms of their histories; the important consideration is not the state in which the object appears at the moment, but the rate, direction and probable outcome of the changes which are taking place as a result of the conflict of forces, internal and external. The necessity of observation and prediction in every field is thus ontologically grounded, according to dialectical materialism, which not only rejects a priorism, holding that "nature is the test of dialectics" (Engels: Anti-Dühring), but claims to express with much more fidelity than formal logic, with its emphasis on unmoving form rather than changing content, the basis of the method modern science actually uses. There is an equal rejection of theory without practice and practice without theory.
cooperant ::: a. --> Operating together; as, cooperant forces.
correlation ::: n. --> Reciprocal relation; corresponding similarity or parallelism of relation or law; capacity of being converted into, or of giving place to, one another, under certain conditions; as, the correlation of forces, or of zymotic diseases.
cosmic consciousness ::: the consciousness of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature, with all the beings and forces within it. In the cosmic consciousness the limits of the ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or is filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces.
COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS. ::: The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic Spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though In a different
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one"s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one"s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
"Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; . . . .” *The Life Divine
"An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.” The Life Divine
"But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe — although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
Cosmogony: (Gr. cosmos a. gonia, producing or creating the world) Is a pictorial treatment of the way in which the world or the universe came into being. In contrast to the most primitive civilizations, the great ethnic stocks of mankind have originated cosmogonies. The basal principles common to all mythological cosmogonies are: They deduce the creation of the world either from the fewest possible elements or from a single material principle such as water, ocean, earth, air, mud of river, slime, two halves of an egg, body of a giant, or from a spiritual or abstract principle such as an anthropomorphic god, deities, chaos, time, night, That. The genesis being a slow development characterized by an orderly sequence of periods, the creation process is variously divided into definite periods of specified units of years. The process of creation being self-originating, in its final stages the genealogy and origin of deities is a large admixture. There is no apparent ethical import attached to the cosmogonies. Few of them assume the idea of design as underlying the creation. They hold that the world had a beginning in time. The process of creation from less perfect to more perfect, from an original chaos to the final creation of man, the predominance of water in the original condition of the earth, the evolution of a spiritual or luminous principle reacting on the primeval water and the emphasis upon the godlike origin of man or his immediate relation to the deity, are all permeating threads of cosmogonic myths. In dualistic religions the world originates as a result of a hostile conflict of two opposing principles, or as a result of the parallel development of two opposing forces. The conception of creation ex nihilo was almost universally unknown in antiquity. -- H.H.
danegelt ::: n. --> An annual tax formerly laid on the English nation to buy off the ravages of Danish invaders, or to maintain forces to oppose them. It afterward became a permanent tax, raised by an assessment, at first of one shilling, afterward of two shillings, upon every hide of land throughout the realm.
DARK PATH. ::: The dark path is there and there are many who make a Gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at the beginning. or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. Borne that way, the attacks of the dark forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difficulties in ourselves which we have to overcome. But all the same it is a too dark and difficult way which nobody need follow on whom the necessity does not lie.
Dats ::: Forces of the night, i.c. ignorant movements finding a lodging in the obscurity of the unenlightened nature.
Defenses (Defense Mechanisms) ::: Psychological forces which prevent undesirable or inappropriate impulses from entering consciousness (e.g., forgetting responsibilities that we really didn&
Depression opens the way to the attack of the wrong forces.
Desire nothing but the purity, force, fight, wideness, calm, Ananda of the divine consciousness and Us insistence to transform and perfect your mind, life and body. Ask for notfifng 6ut the divine, spiritual and supramenfal Truth, its realisation on earth and in you and in all who arc called and chosen and the condi- tions needed for its creation and its Wcfoiy over all opposing forces.
destruction ::: “Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” Letters on Yoga
disciplinarian ::: a. --> Pertaining to discipline. ::: n. --> One who disciplines; one who excels in training, especially with training, especially with regard to order and obedience; one who enforces rigid discipline; a stickler for the observance of rules and methods of training; as, he is a better
DIVINE AND FORM. ::: The personal realisation of the Divine may be sometimes with Form, sometimes without Form. Without Form, it is the Presence of the living Divine Person, felt in everything. With Form, it comes with the image of the One to whom worship is offered. The Divine can always manifest himself in a form to the Bhakta or seeker. One sees him in the form in which one worships or seeks him or in a form suitable to the Divine Personality who is the object of the adoration. How it manifests depends upon many things and it is too various to be reduced to a single rule. Sometimes it is in the heart that the Presence with the form is seen, sometimes in any of the other centres, sometimes above and guiding from there, sometimes it is seen outside and in front as if an embodied person. Its advantages are an intimate relation and constant guidance or if felt or seen within, a very strong and concrete realisation of the constant Presence. But one must be very sure of the purity of one’s adoration and seekings for the disadvantage of this kind of embodied relation is that other Forces can imitate the Form or counterfeit the voice and the guidance and this gets more force if it is associated with a constructed image which is not the true thing. Several have been misled in this way because pride, vanity or desire was strong in them and robbed them of the fine psychic perception that is not mental.
Divine Forces ::: In our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 253
Divine Love ::: Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 167
".. . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; . . . . ” The Synthesis of Yoga
“.. . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; …” The Synthesis of Yoga
“ . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
Dreams of the mental and higher vital planes ::: Things hap- pen with another rhjihm than here and freer forces, but some of them are formative of things and events here — not that they arc falSUtd exactly iite propfreefcs but they cceste forces for fulfilment.
Dreams on the vital plane ::: It is the vital being that goes out in the vital worlds and has the sense of floating in the air ?a its own (vital) body.
These are formations of the vital plane, sometimes things that try to happen but not necessarily effective. One can observe and understand, but not allow them to influence the mind ; for often adverse forces try to influence the mind by suggestion through these dream experiences.
DREAMS. ::: Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital ; sometimes they are the formations of other minds wth an exact or modified transcription in yours ; sometimes for- mations come that are made by the non-human forces or beings of these other planes. These things are not true and need not become true in the physical world, but they may still have effects on the physical if they are framed wlh that purpose or that tendency and, if they are allowed, they may realise their events or their meaning — for they are most often symbolic or sche- ‘ matic — in the inner or the outer life.
There are other dreams that have not the same character but are a representation or transcription of things that actually hap- pen on other planes, in other worlds under other conditions than ours. There are, again, some dreams that are purely symbolic and some that indicate existing movements and propensities in us.
Symbolic dreams may symbolize anything, forces at play, the underlying structure and tissue of things done or experienced, actual or potential happenings, real or suggested movements or changes in the inner or outer nature. The exact meaning varies with the mind and the condition of the one who sees them.
dynamic ::: 1. Pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action; vigorously active; forceful; energetic. 2. Of or concerned with energy or forces that produce motion, as opposed to static.
dynamical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to dynamics; belonging to energy or power; characterized by energy or production of force.
Relating to physical forces, effects, or laws; as, dynamical geology.
dynamically ::: adv. --> In accordance with the principles of dynamics or moving forces.
dynamic mind ::: that part of the mind proper which is concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of ideas; it thinks, plans and acts in order to achieve things.
dynamic realisation. In order to get the dynamic realisation it is not enough to rescue the Purusha from subjection to Prakriti ; one must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti with its play of ignorant Forces to the Supreme
dynamics ::: n. --> That branch of mechanics which treats of the motion of bodies (kinematics) and the action of forces in producing or changing their motion (kinetics). Dynamics is held by some recent writers to include statics and not kinematics.
The moving moral, as well as physical, forces of any kind, or the laws which relate to them.
That department of musical science which relates to, or treats of, the power of tones.
dynamometry ::: n. --> The art or process of measuring forces doing work.
"Each inner experience is perfectly real in its own way, although the values of different experiences differ greatly, but it is real with the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life.” Letters on Yoga
Einfühlung: (and Einsfühlung, in Max Scheler) The emotional and dynamic understanding of nature as the operational field of living forces. See Empathy. -- P.A.S.
elemental ::: 1. Starkly simple, primitive, or basic. 2. Motivated by or symbolic of primitive and powerful natural forces or passions.
Elements ::: The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 87-88
elevatory ::: a. --> Tending to raise, or having power to elevate; as, elevatory forces. ::: n. --> See Elevator, n. (e).
energetics ::: n. --> That branch of science which treats of the laws governing the physical or mechanical, in distinction from the vital, forces, and which comprehends the consideration and general investigation of the whole range of the forces concerned in physical phenomena.
ENERGIES. ::: All energies put info activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or Another, and the nature and Us actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward ::: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their elTccts. It Is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act ::: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed w-ill arc also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reac- tions.
enforcement ::: n. --> The act of enforcing; compulsion.
A giving force to; a putting in execution.
That which enforces, constraints, gives force, authority, or effect to; constraint; force applied.
enforcer ::: n. --> One who enforces.
Environmental consciousness ::: Each man has his own personal consciousness entrenched in his body and gets into touch with his surroundings only through his body and senses and the mind using the senses. Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but
refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 313-4
environmental consciousness ::: something that each person carries around him, outside his body, by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces.
Environmental consciousness ::: The extension of ourselves into the general or universal Nature ; surrounding atmosphere which we carry about with us and by which we communicate with the universal forces.
environment ::: n. --> Act of environing; state of being environed.
That which environs or surrounds; surrounding conditions, influences, or forces, by which living forms are influenced and modified in their growth and development.
Equality means another thing — to have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them ; it helps one to see tlte truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one’s seeing and judgment and even all the mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men’s actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there.
equilibrium ::: n. --> Equality of weight or force; an equipoise or a state of rest produced by the mutual counteraction of two or more forces.
A level position; a just poise or balance in respect to an object, so that it remains firm; equipoise; as, to preserve the equilibrium of the body.
A balancing of the mind between motives or reasons, with consequent indecision and doubt.
equipoise ::: equality in distribution, as of weight, relationship, or emotional forces; equilibrium.
equipoise ::: n. --> Equality of weight or force; hence, equilibrium; a state in which the two ends or sides of a thing are balanced, and hence equal; state of being equally balanced; -- said of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
Counterpoise.
Eternal recurrence: The view that as the dynamic energies of nature are finite, whereas time is infinite, only a limited number of combinations is possible, which results in the cyclical recurrence of every situation in infinitely numerous times. The view which assumes that the initial combination of the forces of existence will recur again and again. (Nietzsche.) -- H.H.
eudaemonism ::: n. --> That system of ethics which defines and enforces moral obligation by its relation to happiness or personal well-being.
FA1.5EH00D. An extreme result of Avidyd. It is created by an Asuric power which inicrv'cnes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in know- ledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or ROLwl Mdyd puts forward its o\vn perverted consciousness as a true knowledge and its wilful dis- tortions or reversals of the Truth as the verily of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. When- ever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of
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
falsehood ::: “It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, …” Letters on Yoga
Fate is God's foreknowledge outside Space and Time of ail that in Space and Time shall yet happen ::: what He has fore- seen, Power and Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.
::: "Fate is God"s foreknowledge outside Space & Time of all that in Space & Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power & Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.” *Essays Divine and Human
“Fate is God’s foreknowledge outside Space & Time of all that in Space & Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power & Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.” Essays Divine and Human
F. C. S. Schiller, the Oxford pragmatist or humanist, is, if anything, more hostile to rationalism, intellectualism, absolute metaphysics and even systematic and rigorous thinking than James himself. In his Humanism (1903) and his most important book Studies in Humanism (1907), he attempts to resolve or deflate metaphysical issues and controversies by practical distinctions of terms and appeal to personal, human factors, supposedly forgotten by other philosophers. Schiller wrote about many of the topics which James treated: absolute metaphysics, religion, truth, freedom, psychic research, etc., and the outcome is similar. His spirited defense of Protagoras, "the humanist", against Socrates and his tireless bantering critique of all phases of formal logic are elements of novelty. So also is his extreme activism. He goes so far as to say that "In validating our claims to 'truth' . . . we really transform them [realities] by our cognitive efforts, thereby proving our desires and ideas to be real forces in the shaping of the world". (Studies tn Humanism, 1906, p. 425.) Schiller's apparent view that desires and ideas can transform both truth and reality, even without manipulation or experiment, could also be found in James, but is absent in Dewey and later pragmatists.
fear ::: “Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.” Letters on Yoga
Feeling: (Kant. Ger. Gefühl) A conscious, subjective impression which does not involve cognition or representation of an object. Feelings are of two kinds: pleasures and pains. These represent nothing actual in objects, but reveal the state or condition of the subject. Kant saw in pleasure and pain, respectively, life-promoting and life-destroying forces; pleasure results from the harmony of an object with the subjective conditions of life and consciousness, while pain is the awareness of disharmony. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
First, each plane, in spite of Its connection with others aboie and below it, is yet a world in itself, with its own movements, forces, beings, types, forms existing as if for its and their own sake, under its ovs-n laws, for its own manifestation nithouf appa-
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
forcer ::: n. --> One who, or that which, forces or drives.
The solid piston of a force pump; the instrument by which water is forced in a pump.
A small hand pump for sinking pits, draining cellars, etc.
FORCES. ::: Behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unkno^vn to the outward minds of men, and by yoga (by going inward and establishing a cons- cious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces), one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.
For it often happens that the forces of the lower nature are stimulated and excited by the descent and want to mix with it and turn it to their profit. It often happens too that some Power or Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the
fortify ::: v. t. --> To add strength to; to strengthen; to confirm; to furnish with power to resist attack.
To strengthen and secure by forts or batteries, or by surrounding with a wall or ditch or other military works; to render defensible against an attack by hostile forces. ::: v. i.
FOUNDATION IN YOGA. ::: The things that have to be established are . brahmacarya, complete sex-purity ; samah, quiet and harmony in the being, its forces maintained but con- trolled, harmonised, disciplined ; satyam, truth and sincerity in the whole nature ; prasanfUj, a general state of peace and calm ; atmasanyaina, the power and habit to control whatever needs control in the movements of the nature. When these are fairly established, one has laid the foundation on which one can deve- lop the yoga consciousness and with the yoga consciousness there comes an easy opening to realisation and experience.
from any general prohibitory rule. What is forbidden to anyone with a strong spiritual sense is to be a miracle-monger, perform- ing extraordinary ^things for show, for gain, for fame, out ot vanity or pride. It is forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or turn them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weaknesses to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked yogins so often fall into these traps* of the hostile forces that the use of yogic powers is sometimes discou- raged as harmful to the user.
Fury ::: Jhumur: “These are the Greek forces of retribution. Fury is a kind of collective noun.”
gravic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or causing, gravitation; as, gravic forces; gravic attraction.
Hatha Yoga ::: Depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 7
HATHA YOGA. ::: Depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indis- pensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or sus- pended with results that would otherwise be impossible.
He is in his essential nature a mental being encased in body and enmeshed in the life activities, manu, manomaya purusa. He is more than a thinking, willing and feeling result of the mechanism of the physical or an understanding nexus of the vital forces.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 398
“Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.” Letters on Yoga
HELL AND HEAVEN. ::: They arc often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about It after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with Joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affimties, but the Idea of reward or retri- bution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.
hell ::: “What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit.” Letters on Yoga
HELPFUL FORCES. ::: If there are always forces around which are concerned to depress and discourage, there are always forces above and around us which we can draw upon, — draw into our- selves to restore, to fill up again with strength and faith and joy
Hobbes, Thomas: (1588-1679) Considering knowledge empirical in origin and results, and philosophy inference of causes from effects and vice versa, regarded matter and motion as the least common denominators of all our percepts, and bodies and their movements as the only subject matter of philosophy. Consciousness in its sensitive and cognitive aspects is a jarring of the nervous system; in its affectional and volitional, motor aspects, a kick-back to the jar. Four subdivisions of philosophy cover all physical and psychological events: geometry describing the spatial movements of bodies; physics, the effects of moving bodies upon one another; ethics, the movements of nervous systems; politics, the effects of nervous systems upon one another. The first law of motion appears in every organic body in its tendency, which in man becomes a natural right, to self-preservation and self-assertion. Hence the primary condition of all organic as of all inorganic bodies is one of collision, conflict, and war. The second law of motion, in its organic application, impels men to relinquish a portion of their natural right to self-assertion in return for a similar relinquishment on the part of their fellows. Thus a component of the antagonistic forces of clashing individual rights and wills is established, embodied in a social contract, or treaty of peace, which is the basis of the state. To enforce this social covenant entered into, pursuant to the second law of motion, by individuals naturally at war in obedience to the first, sovereignty must be set up and exercised through government. Government is most efficient when sovereignty, which has in any case to be delegated in a community of any size, is delegated to one man -- an absolute monarch -- rather than to a group of men, or a parliament.
hodograph ::: n. --> A curve described by the moving extremity of a line the other end of which is fixed, this line being constantly parallel to the direction of motion of, and having its length constantly proportional to the velocity of, a point moving in any path; -used in investigations respecting central forces.
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.
Hostile Forces ::: The hostile forces are there in the world to maintain the Ignorance—they were there in the sadhana because they had the right to test the sincerity of the sadhaks and their power and will to cleave to the Divine and overcome all difficulties.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 640
"Hostile Forces. The purpose they serve in the world is to give a full chance to the possibilities of the Inconscience and Ignorance — for this world was meant to be a working out of these possibilities with the supramental harmonisation as its eventual outcome.” *Letters on Yoga
“Hostile Forces. The purpose they serve in the world is to give a full chance to the possibilities of the Inconscience and Ignorance—for this world was meant to be a working out of these possibilities with the supramental harmonisation as its eventual outcome.” Letters on Yoga
hostile forces ::: anti-divine, not merely undivine forces that are in revolt against the Divine, against the Truth and Light, and opposed to the yoga.
hostile forces
Hsing (erh) shang: What is above corporeality, such as The Moral Law (tao), Reason (li), etc., the general principle of which is the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi), as contrasted with what is within the realm of corporeality, such as the vital force (ch'i), a material thing (ch'i), etc., the general principles of which are the active (yang) and passive (yin) cosmic forces. (Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism.) -- W.T.C.
hydrokinetic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the motions of fluids, or the forces which produce or affect such motions; -- opposed to hydrostatic.
hysteresis ::: n. --> A lagging or retardation of the effect, when the forces acting upon a body are changed, as if from velocity or internal friction; a temporary resistance to change from a condition previously induced, observed in magnetism, thermoelectricity, etc., on reversal of polarity.
I: Change (often spelled yi), a fundamental principle of the universe, arising out of the interaction of the two cosmic forces of yin and yang, or passive and active principles, and manifested in natural phenomena, human affairs, and ideas. According to Confucian and Nco-Confucian cosmology, "In the system of Change, there is the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi) which engenders the Two Modes (i). The Two Modes engender the Four Secondary Modes (hsiang), which in turn give rise to the Eight Trigirams (pa kua). These Eight Trigrams (or Elements) determine all good and evil and the great complexity of life." Thus it involves in the first place, the meaning of i, or simplicity from which complexity is evolved, in the second place, the meaning of hsiang, that is, phenomenon, image, form, and in the third place, the idea of "production and reproduction." -- W.T.C.
Idealists regard such an equalization of physical laws and psychological, historical laws as untenable. The "tvpical case" with which physics or chemistry analyzes is a result of logical abstraction; the object of history, however, is not a unit with universal traits but something individual, in a singular space and at a particular time, never repeatable under the same circumstances. Therefore no physical laws can be formed about it. What makes it a fact worthy of historical interest, is iust the fullness of live activity in it; it is a "value", not a "thing". Granted that historical events are exposed to influences from biological, geological, racial and traditional sources, they aie always carried by a human being whose singularity of character has assimilated the forces of his environment and surmounted them There is a reciprocal action between man and society, but it is always personal initiative and free productivity of the individual which account for history. Denying, therefore, the logical primacy of physical laws in history, does not mean lawlessness, and that is the standpoint of the logic of history in more recent times. Windelband and H. Rickert established another kind of historical order of laws. On their view, to understand history one must see the facts in their relation to a universally applicable and transcendental system of values. Values "are" not, they "hold"; they are not facts but realities of our reason, they are not developed but discovered. According to Max Weber historical facts form an ideally typical, transcendental whole which, although seen, can never be fully explained. G, Simmel went further into metaphysics: "life" is declared an historical category, it is the indefinable, last reality ascending to central values which shaped cultural epochs, such as the medieval idea of God, or the Renaissance-idea of Nature, only to be tragically disappointed, whereupon other values rise up, as humanity, liberty, technique, evolution and others.
If there is the predisposition one may have all kinds of attacks from vital or other forces or from one’s own movements of the lower nature, as violent as possible, but there will be no madness.
If wc Jive only in the outward physical consciousness, we do not usually know that we are going to be ill until the symptoms of the malady declare themselves in the body. But if we develop the inward physical consciousness, we become aware of a subtle environmental physical atmosphere and can feel the forces of illness coming towards us through it, feel them even at a distance, and, if we have learnt how to do it, we can stop them by the will or otherwise. We sense too around us a vital physical or nervous envelope which radiates from the body and protects it, and we can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope.
If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and many-sided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable…
If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.
\’ihat is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces.
II ADIT. ::: The physical is the slave of certain forces which create a habit and drive it ilirouch the mechanical power of the habit. So long ns the mind gives consent, you do not notice the slavery ; but if the mind withdraws its consent, then you feel the servitude, you feci a force pushing you in spite of the mind's will. It is very obstinate and repeats itself till the habit, the inner habit revealing itself in the outward act, is broken. If is like a machine which once set in motion repeats the same move* ment. A quiet persistent aspiration will bring you to the point where the habit breaks and you arc free.
II. Metaphysics of History: The metaphysical interpretations of the meaning of history are either supra-mundane or intra-mundane (secular). The oldest extra-mundane, or theological, interpretation has been given by St. Augustine (Civitas Dei), Dante (Divma Commedia) and J. Milton (Paradise Lost and Regained). All historic events are seen as having a bearing upon the redemption of mankind through Christ which will find its completion at the end of this world. Owing to the secularistic tendencies of modern times the Enlightenment Period considered the final end of human history as the achievement of public welfare through the power of reason. Even the ideal of "humanity" of the classic humanists, advocated by Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Rousseau, Lord Byron, is only a variety of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and in the same line of thought we find A. Comte, H. Spencer ("human moral"), Engels and K. Marx. The German Idealism of Kant and Hegel saw in history the materialization of the "moral reign of freedom" which achieves its perfection in the "objective spirit of the State". As in the earlier systems of historical logic man lost his individuality before the forces of natural laws, so, according to Hegel, he is nothing but an instrument of the "idea" which develops itself through the three dialectic stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. (Example. Absolutism, Democracy, Constitutional Monarchy.) Even the great historian L. v. Ranke could not break the captivating power of the Hegelian mechanism. Ranke places every historical epoch into a relation to God and attributes to it a purpose and end for itself. Lotze and Troeltsch followed in his footsteps. Lately, the evolutionistic interpretation of H. Bergson is much discussed and disputed. His "vital impetus" accounts for the progressiveness of life, but fails to interpret the obvious setbacks and decadent civilizations. According to Kierkegaard and Spranger, merely human ideals prove to be too narrow a basis for the tendencies, accomplishments, norms, and defeats of historic life. It all points to a supra-mundane intelligence which unfolds itself in history. That does not make superfluous a natural interpretation, both views can be combined to understand history as an endless struggle between God's will and human will, or non-willing, for that matter. -- S.V.F.
I. Logic of History The historical objects under observation (man, life, society, biological and geological conditions) are so diverse that even slight mistakes in evaluation of items and of the historical whole may lead to false results. This can be seen from the modern logic of history. In the 18th century, G. B. Vico contended, under the deep impression of the lawfulness prevailing in natural sciences, that historical events also follow each other according to unswerving natural laws. He assumed three stages of development, that of fantasy, of will, and of science. The encyclopedists and Saint-Simon shared his view. The individual is immersed, and driven on, by the current of social tendencies, so that Comte used to speak of an "histoire sans noms". His three stages of development were the theological, metaphysical, and scientific stage. H. Spencer and A. Fouillee regard social life as an organism unfolding itself according to immanent laws, either of racial individuality (Gobineau, Vocher de Lapauge) or of a combination of social, physical, and personal forces (Taine). The spirit of a people and of an age outweigh completely the power of an individual personality which can work only along socially conditioned tendencies. The development of a nation always follows the same laws, it may vary as to time and whereabouts but never as to the form (Burkhardt, Lamprecht). To this group of historians belong also O. Spengler and K. Marx; "Fate" rules the civilization of peoples and pushes them on to their final destination.
impulsive ::: a. --> Having the power of driving or impelling; giving an impulse; moving; impellent.
Actuated by impulse or by transient feelings.
Acting momentarily, or by impulse; not continuous; -- said of forces. ::: n.
Ind’Allah ::: From Allah; the forces that are revealed through dimensional emergence to consciousness from the Names of Allah that comprise one’s essence.
Inner consciousness ::: means the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical and behind them the psychic which is their inmost being. But the inner mind is not the higher mind ; ft is more in touch with the universal forces and more open to the higher consciousness and capable of an immensely deeper and larger range of action than the outer or surface mind — but it is of the same essential nature.
Inner Life (Spiritual) ::: In all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the spiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that
refuses to change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his inner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the Ignorance: he is out of the world even when he is within it; if he acts upon it, it is from the fortress of his inner spiritual being where in the inmost sanctuary he is one with the Supreme Existence or the soul and God are alone togetherSri Aurobindo
inner mind ::: that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality); this inner or subliminal mind senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act up on the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience.
In relation to the universe the Supreme is Brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. All the last terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is, either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, the universe too is the play and form and cosmic soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by idea and name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of Purusha and Prakriti. Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one Spirit, one self and one existence. The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 296
INSTRUMENT. ::: To be able to receive the Divine Power and let it 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. (2) 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. (3) 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 clement, — the eventual result is sure.
Conditions to become an instrument of the Divine ::: A receptive silence of the mind, an effacemenl of the mental ego and the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness, a close find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity ; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasya needed too constant and intense.
interatomic ::: a. --> Between atoms; situated, or acting, between the atoms of bodies; as, interatomic forces.
INTERCHANGE. ::: When one is with another for sometime talking etc., there is always some vital interchange, unless one rejects what comes from others instinctively or deliberately. If one is impressionable, there may be a strong impression or influence from the others. Then when one goes to another per- son it is possible to pass it on to the other. That is a thing which is constantly happening. But this happens without the knowledge of the transmitter. When one is conscious, one can prevent it happening.
Every letter means an interchange with the person who writes It ; for something is there behind the words, something of hfs person or of the forces he has put out or had around him while w’riting. Our thougiifs and feeJinp arc also forces and can hav« effects upon others. One has to grow conscious of the movement of these forces and then one can control one's own mental and vital formations and cease to be affected by those of others.
“In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
"In the social relations which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensible and independent of their will. These relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. . . . At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is but a legal expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." (Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 12.) -- J.M.S.
In this simultaneous development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentials there is yet—or there is as yet—no chaos, no conflict, no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods: what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth of being or the others as inferior truths: each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all other forces and their truth and consequences; no delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies or condemns the delight of other existence or other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind,—although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature….
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
intuition ::: “Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the
i: The Great Unit. See t'ai i. T'ai Chi: The Great Ultimate or Terminus, which, in the beginning of time, "engenders the Two Primary Modes (i), which in turn engender the Four Secondary Modes or Forms (hsiang), which in their turn give rise to the Eight Elements (pa kua) and the Eight Elements determine all good and evil and the great complexity of life." (Ancient Chinese philosophy). The Great Ultimate which comes from, but is originally one with, the Non-Ultimate (wu chi). Its movement and tranquillity engender the active principle, yang, and the passive principle, yin, respectively (the Two Primary Modes), the transformation and the union of which give rise to the Five Agents (wu hsing) of Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, and Earth, and thereby the determinate things (Chou Lien-hsi, 1017-1073). The Great Ultimate which is One and unmoved, and which, when moved, becomes the Omnipotent Creative Principle (shen) which engenders Number, then Form, and finally corporeality. Being such, the Great Ultimate is identical with the Mind, it is identical with the Moral Law (tao). (Shao K'ang-chieh, 1011-1077) The Great Ultimate which is identical with the One (1), or the Grand Harmony (T'ai Ho). (Chang Heng-ch'u, 1020-1077). The Great Ultimate which is identical with the Reason (li) of the universe, of the two (yin and yang) vital forces (ch'i), and of the Five Elements (wu hsing). It is the Reason of ultimate goodness. ''Collectively there is only one Great Ultimate, but there is a Great Ultimate in each thing" (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200).
"It is not possible for the individual mind, so long as it remains shut up in its personality, to understand the workings of the Cosmic Will, for the standards made by the personal consciousness are not applicable to them. A cell in the body, if conscious, might also think that the human being and its actions are only the resultant of the relations and workings of a number of cells like itself and not the action of a unified self. It is only if one enters into the Cosmic Consciousness that one begins to see the forces at work and the lines on which they work and get a glimpse of the Cosmic Self and the Cosmic Mind and Will.” Letters on Yoga
“It is not possible for the individual mind, so long as it remains shut up in its personality, to understand the workings of the Cosmic Will, for the standards made by the personal consciousness are not applicable to them. A cell in the body, if conscious, might also think that the human being and its actions are only the resultant of the relations and workings of a number of cells like itself and not the action of a unified self. It is only if one enters into the Cosmic Consciousness that one begins to see the forces at work and the lines on which they work and get a glimpse of the Cosmic Self and the Cosmic Mind and Will.” Letters on Yoga
It is (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) by the power of the Overmind releasing the mind from its close partitions that the cosmic consciousness opens in the seeker and he becomes aware of the cosmic spirit and the play of the cosmic forces.
Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 152
jadavat paramahamsa ::: a paramahamsa who is outwardly inert and inactive, moved by circumstance or forces but not self-mobile, even though the consciousness is enlightened within.
Jhumur: “All the planes of the different Gods, the Forces.”
Jhumur: “Anarchs is a strange word here because to me it symbolises rulers, forces that dominate, and yet anarchy is a state where there is no rule. So, the rulers of chaos and disorder. But there is always this core of anarchy which is a form of absolute inconscience, the original inconscience. At a very early level all form of order is a sign of consciousness, organisation, and this is the opposite, the first expression of the Inconscience, the descent into Night which is ruled by all these forces of darkness, the forces that refuse harmony.”
Jhumur: “Awe inspiring fear. It is through fear that these forces rule, not through love, not through grace, not through compassion but through terror. There is a very strong tendency in man to regard these dark forces as superior beings. There has long been a vital attraction for them, devil worship, etc. because they give you power, they seem to give you power, power to the ego and Mother says that power will be one of the last things to accept the change. Man’s lust for power is not easily relinquished– he doesn’t feel like giving that up.”
Jhumur: “Mother speaks of the four great asuras who seem to have taken over the world. The earth becomes the fulcrum or territory of these forces. The Kaliyuga is exactly the world that has been taken over by the dark forces. And iron is that which doesn’t like to change or to reflect light. It is not transparent so there is a sense of resistance, of hardness, of darkness. The Indian word Kala, which is ‘time’ is also one of the names of death. From that you have also Kali. It is darkness, associated with blackness and yet it is also time, mortality.”
Jhumur: “Mother spoke of these straight lines, the forces that came out from the divine creatrix, and then something went across the ray or the ray was perverted.”
Jhumur: “These are not just images and not just there for effect. They represent certain movements in the being, certain forces that are universal, independent. It is not one man who suffers. At a certain level of existence these experiences are universal. There are forces that are at work on these levels, forces that really prey on man, really hound him in that sense. You can’t seem to escape them. When one is semi-conscious or lives as we do in an in-between state, not knowing exactly which is your direction, you have this force really at your heels, pushing you sometimes into suffering, into death. You feel that you have been deserted. Sometimes there is a notion of karma, at other times you feel that it is some force that is pushing you. These are universal forces in the field of life, in the field of the subconscient, in the unconsciousness. On these levels they are not images they are powers which Sri Aurobindo has given a certain shape, form, image.”
Jhumur: “These are the forces of the underworld. They are in comparison to the divine really very small and represent the lower powers.”
Jhumur: “These are the forces that shield, that protect, sun-eyed always representing the supreme, the highest. These forces, these emanations, like the immutable lords, because each of these beings, the Lords, the guardians, the Angels of the Way, all of these are typal beings. They have been put there by the Divine in his plan in order to lead the evolving soul on its way. Here the guardians are protecting, shielding this spirit of the earth. At different stages of the journey you come across different powers.”
Kalki ::: the final avatara of Vis.n.u according to the Hindu tradition, expected to come mounted symbolically on a white horse "bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces".
kamananda ::: a form of sarirananda or physical ananda associkamananda ated with (suddha) kama or purified desire, also referred to as maithunananda (though that term is usually reserved for a high intensity of kamananda); a general term for ananda as experienced on the physical plane: "the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy", realised as part of "the total perfection of the spiritualised body". Kamananda manifests both in the sūks.ma deha (subtle body) and the sthūla deha (gross body), and there is a subjective kamananda besides the physical kamananda that is more often meant by the word. The perfection of kamananda, as the "most central" form of physical ananda, depends on a "transformation of the sex-centre and its energy" so that this energy which "is the support in the body of all the mental, vital and physical forces of the nature" is "changed into a mass and a movement of intimate Light, creative Power, pure divine Ananda".
Kartikeya and Peacock ::: The peacock is the bird of Victojy and Kartikeya the leader of the divine forces.
Karttikeya ::: leader of the divine forces, represents victory over the hostile Powers.
kingdom ::: 1. A territory, state, people, or community ruled or reigned over by a king or queen. 2. Fig. The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God; the realm of this sovereignty. 3. A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant or supreme. 4. Anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control. 5. A realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 6. Rarely, in reference to the realm and rule of evil forces. kingdom"s, kingdoms.
Kr.s.n.akali (Krishnakali; KrishnaKali; Krishna-Kali; Krishna Kali) —Krsnakali (also called Kalikr.s.n.a) the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, forming the "subjective base" of karma; Kali as prakr.ti surrendering herself in a relation of (madhura) dasya to Kr.s.n.a, the purus.a; "a complete union of the two sides of the Duality" of isvara-sakti which, when it rules one"s consciousness, can draw it "altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance"; the same union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali seen everywhere in the vision (darsana) of the external world, a perception which because of its "vivid personality" is regarded as superior to that of purus.a-prakr.ti; short for Kr.s.n.akali bhava or Kr.s.n.akali darsana.Kr Krsnakali bhava (Krishnakali bhava; Krishna-Kali -; Krishna Kali -). s.n.akali bhava
"Life [is] not only a play of forces or a mental experience, but a field for the evolution of the concealed spirit.” Letters on Yoga
“Life [is] not only a play of forces or a mental experience, but a field for the evolution of the concealed spirit.” Letters on Yoga
lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane. To seek their aid for such powers is a great error.
lutely necessary. Otherwise* although the body may go on for a very long time, yet in the end there can be a danger of a collapse. The body can be sustained for a long time when there is the full influence and there is a single-minded faith and call in the mind and the vital ; but if the mind or the vital is dis- turbed by other influences or opens itself to forces which are not the Mother’s, then there will be a mixed condition and there will be sometimes strength, sometimes fatigue, exhaustion or illness or a mixture of the two at the same time. Finally, If not only the mind and the vital, but the body also is open and can absorb the Force, it can do extraordinary things in the way of work without breaking down. Still even then rest is necessary.
magic ::: a. --> A comprehensive name for all of the pretended arts which claim to produce effects by the assistance of supernatural beings, or departed spirits, or by a mastery of secret forces in nature attained by a study of occult science, including enchantment, conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, incantation, etc.
Alt. of Magical
magic ::: n. 1. The art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature. 2. Any extraordinary or mystical influence, charm, power, etc. magic"s. adj. 3. Of, pertaining to, or due to magic. magical, magically.
magnetometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the intensity of magnetic forces; also, less frequently, an instrument for determining any of the terrestrial magnetic elements, as the dip and declination.
magnetometric ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or employed in, the measurement of magnetic forces; obtained by means of a magnetometer; as, magnetometric instruments; magnetometric measurements.
Mahashakti she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces.
Main works: Tonpsychologie, 2 vols., 1883-90; Die Anfange der Musik, 1911; Empfindung u. Vorstellung, 1918; Gefühl u. Gefühlsempfindung, 1928; Erkenntnislehre, I, 1939. Sturm und Drang: (German, "Storm and Stress"), a period sweeping the German countries about 1770-1785, in which men like Hamann, Herder, the young Goethe, Schiller, Wagner, Christian Schubart, and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (from whose play the movement got its name) advocated, in a flush of creative enthusiasm, the forces of native talent, the value of emotion, and the power of genius as a conscious reaction against the enlightenment which had spread from France. -- K.F.L.
manasa-dr.s.t.i (manas-drishti) ::: mental vision; perception by the manasa-drsti manas, "an inner or subliminal mental consciousness and sense capable of perceiving and experiencing directly, not only the life forces and their play and results and phenomena, but the mental and psychical worlds and all they contain and the mental activities, vibrations, phenomena, forms, images of this world also". manasa m
Maruts ::: the Thought-Forces; the Life-Powers that support by their nervous and vital energies the action of the thought in the attempt of the mortal consciousness to grow or expand itself into the immortality of the Truth and Bliss; (to the uninstructed Aryan worshipper): powers of storm, wind and rain.
Material consciousness ::: It is mostly subconscienl, but part of it that is conscious is mechanical, inertly moved by habits or by the forces of the lower nature- Always repeating the same unintelligent and unenlightened movements, it is attached to the routine and established rule of what already exists, unwilling to change, unwilling to receive the Light or obey the higher Force.
material world ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
MECHANICAL REPETITION. ::: The principle of mechani- cal repetition is very strong in the material nature, so strong that it makes one easily think that it is incurable. That, however, is only a trick of the forces of (his material inconscicnce ; it is fay creating this impression that they try to endure. If on the contrary, you remain firm, refuse to be depressed or discouraged and, even in the moment of attack, a^irm the certainty of cventuar victory, the victory itself will come much more easily and sooner.
mechanics ::: n. --> That science, or branch of applied mathematics, which treats of the action of forces on bodies.
Mechanics: The science of motion, affording theoretical description by means of specification of position of particles bound by relations to other particles, usually having no extension but possessing mass. This involves space and time and frames of reference (in a relative fashion). Particles are assumed to traverse continuous paths. Auxiliary kinematical concepts are displacement, velocity, acceleration. The dynamical concept of forces (F's) acting independently of one another is coupled with mass (M) in a defining law, as F = Ma, where a = acceleration. Explicit reference to causation is avoided and is held to be unnecessary. Classical mechanics is restricted to the use of central forces (along the lines joining particles and a function of the length of those lines). This with a knowledge of boundary conditions leads to complete mechanistic determinism. The entire system of mechanics may also be developed by starting with other cortcepts such as energy and a stationary principle (usually that of "least action") in either an integral or differential form. -- W.M.M.
mechanist ::: n. --> A maker of machines; one skilled in mechanics.
One who regards the phenomena of nature as the effects of forces merely mechanical.
Mental Being ::: The soul when it dwells in the principle of mind, not yet subject to but user of life and body, knows itself as a mental being working out its mental life and forces and images, bodies of the subtle mental substance, according to its individual knowledge, will and dynamis modified by its relation to other similar beings and powers in the universal mind.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 630
mental tapas ::: mental will-power, whose working takes the form of "perceptions realising themselves if vijnanamaya, acting as forces, if pranamaya"; same as intellectual tapas.
mind, inner ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience:” *The Life Divine
mind, spiritual ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The spiritual mind is a mind which, in its fullness, is aware of the Self, reflecting the Divine, seeing and understanding the nature of the Self and its relations with the manifestation, living in that or in contact with it, calm, wide and awake to higher knowledge, not perturbed by the play of the forces. When it gets its full liberated movement, its central station is very usually felt above the head, though its influence can extend downward through all the being and outward through space.” Letters on Yoga
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
molecular ::: a. --> Pertaining to, connected with, produced by, or consisting of, molecules; as, molecular forces; molecular groups of atoms, etc.
mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother
: "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother
"When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga ::: **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**
Mother, The ::: ...the Mother is One but she comes before us with differing aspects, many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The whom who we adore as the Mother is the Divine Consciousness Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freeest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the Conciousness and Force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the godess forms in who she consents to be manifest to her creatures. ::: There are three ways of being of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of Oneness with the Consciousness Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original Supreme shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the Divine Nature....
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 111
“Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” The Synthesis of Yoga
myth ::: n. --> A story of great but unknown age which originally embodied a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; an ancient legend of a god, a hero, the origin of a race, etc.; a wonder story of prehistoric origin; a popular fable which is, or has been, received as historical.
A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.
naturalism ::: n. --> A state of nature; conformity to nature.
The doctrine of those who deny a supernatural agency in the miracles and revelations recorded in the Bible, and in spiritual influences; also, any system of philosophy which refers the phenomena of nature to a blind force or forces acting necessarily or according to fixed laws, excluding origination or direction by one intelligent will.
nature ::: 1. The universe, with all its phenomena. 2. The forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world. 3. The material world, esp. as surrounding human kind and existing independently of human activities. 4. The essential characteristics and qualities of a human being. 5. A particular combination of qualities belonging to a person, animal, thing, of class by birth, origin, or constitution; native or inherent character. 6. Characteristic disposition; temperament. nature"s, Nature"s, natures, earth-nature ("s), Earth-Nature"s, Heaven-nature"s, life-nature"s, soul-nature, World-Nature"s, twi-natured.
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal ope- rations. Id the ancient tradition of Hatha Yoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hatha Yogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the ner- vous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called prana- yama, the control of the breath or vital power ; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Prdnayaina, for the Hatha Yogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature ; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity arc attained.
nature ::: n. --> The existing system of things; the world of matter, or of matter and mind; the creation; the universe.
The personified sum and order of causes and effects; the powers which produce existing phenomena, whether in the total or in detail; the agencies which carry on the processes of creation or of being; -- often conceived of as a single and separate entity, embodying the total of all finite agencies and forces as disconnected from a creating or ordering intelligence.
naval ::: a. --> Having to do with shipping; of or pertaining to ships or a navy; consisting of ships; as, naval forces, successes, stores, etc.
NAVEL CENTRE. ::: The Nabbipadma commanding the larger life-forces and passions and larger desire-movements is the main seat of the centralised «tal consciousness (dynamic centre) which ranges from the heart level (emotional) to the centre below the navel (lower vital, sensational desire centre).
nervous tapas ::: vital power, whose action is characterised by "the play of forces, action & reaction, resistance etc"; same as pran.amaya tapas.
Next, as a consequence, it follows that only a limited part of the action of the vital or other higher plane is concerned with the earth-existence. But even this creates a mass of possibilities which is far greater than the earth can at one time mainfest or contain in its own less plastic formulas. All these possibilities do not realise themselves ; some fail altogether and leave at the most an idea that comes to nothing ; some try seriously and are repelled and defeated and, even if in action for a time, come to nothing. Others effectuate a half manifestation, and this is the most usual result, the more so as these vital or other supraphysical forces come Into conflict and have not only to overcome the resistance of the physical consciousness and of matter, but their own internecine resistance to each other. A certain number succeed in precipitating their results in a more complete and successful creation, so that if you compare this creation with its original in the higher plane, there is something
Nolini: “Usually the first spiritual experience comes as wonder. The birds symbolise the forces at play in this level of Wonder, beings in that consciousness of Wonder.”
OBSTRUCTION. ::: The obstruction of the lower Nature or the pressure of the adverse forces can often act successfully for a time, even for a long time, against the necessary change. One has then to persist, to put always the will on the side of the
Occultism is in its essence man’s effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and potentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical limits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour to establish communication with worlds and entities belonging to the supraphysical heights, depths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise this communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his will to make himself sovereign over Nature’s powers and forces.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 906-07
Occultism is the knowledge and right use of the hidden forces of Nature. True occultism means a search into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and
occultism ::: the knowledge and right use of the hidden forces of nature; true occultism means a search into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface.
OCCULT. ::: Occult forces are the forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena, especially the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes.
Occult powers ::: True occult spiritual forces and mysteries can be called do\vn or can come down without calling, but this must be made secondary to the one true thing, the seeking for the Divine, and if it is part of the Divine plan in you.
of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements—it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter—if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.
OLD NATURE. ::: The lower forces seldom yield the ground without a protracted and often repeated struggle. What is gained can be covered over, but it is never lost.
“Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
Our notion of free will is apt to be tainted with the excessive individualism of the human ego and to assume the figure of an independent will acting on its own isolated account, in a complete liberty without any determination other than its own choice and single unrelated movement. This idea ignores the fact that our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. Our total being can rise out of subjection to fact of present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence. There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line. On one line the being could feel and behave as an independent self-existence uniting itself with its own impersonal Reality; it could, so self-conceived, act with a great force, but either this action would be still within an enlarged frame of its past and present self-formation of power of Nature or else it would be the cosmic or supreme Force that acted in it and there would be no personal initiation of action, no sense therefore of individual free will but only of an impersonal cosmic or supreme Will or Energy at its work. On the other line the being would feel itself a spiritual instrument and so act as a power of the Supreme Being, limited in its workings only by the potencies of the Supernature, which are without bounds or any restriction except its own Truth and self-law, and by the Will in her. But in either case there would be, as the condition of a freedom from the control of a mechanical action of Nature-forces, a submission to a greater conscious Power or an acquiescent unity of the individual being with its intention and movement in his own and in the world’s existence.” The Life Divine
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
Passive silence is that in which the inner consciousness remains void and at rest, makes no reaction to outer things and forces.
physical and its energies, — all that Nature has not put into visi- ble operation on the surface ; It pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplift- ing, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiri- tual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in Its own way an occultism ; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, — for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supra- physical knowledge Is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.
Physical consciousness ::: There is the universal physical cons- ciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct dealing with all these external objects and movements and forces. This physical consciousness-plane receives from the other planes their powers and influences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper ; we have a vital-physical part in us
Physical fatigue in sSdhana ::: It may come from ( 1 ) receiv- ing more than the physical is ready to assimilate. The cure is then quiet rest in conscious immobility receiving the forces but not for any other purpose than tbe recuperation of the strength and energy. (2) It may be due to the passivity taking the form of inertia ; inertia brings the consciousness dotvn towards the ordinary physical level which is soon fatigued and prone to tamas. The cure here is to get back into the true consciousness and to rest there, not in inertia. (3) It may be due to mere overstrain of the body — not giving enough sleep or repose. The body is the support of the yoga, but its energy is not inexhaustible and needs to be husbanded ; it can be kept up by drawing on the universal vital Force but that reinforcement too has its limits.
physics ::: n. --> The science of nature, or of natural objects; that branch of science which treats of the laws and properties of matter, and the forces acting upon it; especially, that department of natural science which treats of the causes (as gravitation, heat, light, magnetism, electricity, etc.) that modify the general properties of bodies; natural philosophy.
PLANES. ::: If we regard the gmdatton of worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex move- ment ; the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lotver react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedica^ to a pressure from the supra- mental plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the s’eil in direct connection with suprapbysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it pie-existeni movements and forms in the occult vital planes ; what takes place in mind presupposes prc-cxistcnt movements and forms in the occult mental planes. That is an aspect of things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic yoga.
platonism ::: n. --> The doctrines or philosophy by Plato or of his followers.
An elevated rational and ethical conception of the laws and forces of the universe; sometimes, imaginative or fantastic philosophical notions.
Positivism: First associated with the doctrine of Auguste Comte that the highest form of knowledge is simple description presumably of sensory phenomena. The doctrine was based on an evolutionary "law of three stages", believed by Comte to have been discovered by him in 1822 but anticipated by Turgot in 1750. The three stages were the theological, in which anthropomorphic wills were resorted to to explain natural events, the metaphysical, in which these wills were depersonalized and became forces and essences, and finally the positive. It should be noted that positivistic description was supposed to result in mathematical formulas, not in introspective psychology. See Scientific Empiricism I. -- G.B.
possession (by hostile forces) ::: an intervention from the non-human worlds in which the hostile forces act on humans.
potentiometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring or comparing electrial potentials or electro-motive forces.
POWERS AND APPEARANCES. ::: There are forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of Ignorance and in putting them for\vard as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed
powers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
powers ::: “These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Sup- reme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s service and surrender. 1C these (hiags are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sSdhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic force or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the ilfusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are e.ttraordinariIy skilful ; the reason is an insulBdent guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is ahvays with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpana — rather inade- quately rendered by the Engikh word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all fe Safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who arc exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself
pragmatic intuitivity ::: the second form of intuitivity, corresponding on the level of the intuitive mind to the pragmatic reason on the intellectual plane; it is related to inspirational mentality and gives the perception of the "powers and forces which attempt to create a future not bound by the probabilities of the present".
Prakriti ::: What is meant by Prakriti or Nature is the outer or executive side of the Shakti or Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, Gunas, etc. Behind it is the living Consciousness and Force of the Divine, the divine Shakti. The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher,—the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and Matter separated in consciousness from the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it. He can ascend into it and it can descend into him—such an ascent and descent can transform the lower nature of mind, life and Matter.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 287
Prana ::: The existence of a vital force or life-energy has been doubted by western Science, because that Science concerns itself onlywith the most external operations of Nature and has as yet no true knowledge of anything except the physical and outward. This Prana, this life-force is not physical in itself; it is not material energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and involved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it no physical form could have come into being or could remain in being. It acts in all material forces such as electricity and is nearest to self-manifestation in those that are nearest to pure force; material forces could not exist or act without it, for from it they derive their energy and movement and they are its vehicles. But all material aspects are only field and form of the Prana which is in itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result. It cannot th
refore be detected by any physical analysis; physical analysis can only resolve for us the combinations of those material happenings which are its results and the external signs and symbols of its presence and operation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 18, Page: 63-64
PRaNAYAMA. ::: Regulated direction and arrestation by exer- cises of breathing of the vital currents of energy in the body ; control of the breath or vital force ; Yogic exercise of the con- trol of the vital forces.
PRAYER. ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and therefore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudi- ties there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which ima- gines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flat- tered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little te^td to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essen- tial movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth.
The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that, being omniscient, his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least, human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes, -and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used, -- or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way, again, may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded, yogaksemam vahamyaham. ~ TSOY, SYN
Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is (here 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 givinc of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man’s 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.
Prayer for others ::: The fact of praying and the attitude it brings, especially unselfish prayer for others, itself opens you to the higher Power, even if there is no corresponding result in the person prayed for. 'Nothing can be positively said about that, for the result must necessarily depend on the persons, whe- ther they arc open or receptive or something in them can res- pond to any Force the prayer brings down.
Prayer must well up from the heart on a crest of emotion or aspiration.
Prayer {Ideal)'. Not prayer insisting on immediate fulfilment, but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and heart with the Divine*and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulfilment by the Divine in his own time.
Prayer ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and th
refore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudities there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which imagines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flattered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little regard to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essential movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth. The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes,—and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used,—or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way again may either look upon thatWill as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded. 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 man’s 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.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 566-67-68
preferences, fancies, phantasies, strong insistences and to elimi- nate the mental and vital ego’s pressure which sets the conscious- ness to work in the service of its o^vn claims and desires. Other- wise these things will come io with force and claim to be intui- tions, inspirations and the rest of it or if any intuitions come, they can be twisted and spoiled by the mixture of these forces of the Ignorance.
quest ::: “The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Rama ::: the seventh avatara of Vis.n.u, "the divinely-natured man",Rama destroyer of Ravan.a; his work was "to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being . . . in a world still occupied by anarchic forces".
Realisation ::: Realisations are the reception in the consciousness and the establishment there of the fundamental truths of the Divine, of the Higher or Divine Nature, of the world-consciousness and the play of its forces, of one's own self and real nature and the inner nature of things, the power of these things growing in one till they are a part of one's inner life and existence, as for instance, the realisation of the Divine Presence, the descent and settling of the higher Peace, Light, Force, Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of one's own psychic being, the discovery of one's own true mental being, true vital being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature and their action on it to change that lower nature. The list, of course, might be infinitely longer. These things also are often called experiences when they only come in flashes, snatches or rare visitations; they are spoken of as full realisations only when they become very positive or frequent or continuous or normal.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 884-85 Settled experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 120
red ::: Jhumur: “In general it is the play of the vital forces. Mother always uses red as a symbol of the physical, the colour of blood, the early stage of the developing
reenforcement ::: n. --> The act of reenforcing, or the state of being reenforced.
That which reenforces; additional force; especially, additional troops or force to augment the strength of any army, or ships to strengthen a navy or fleet.
reenforce ::: v. t. --> To strengthen with new force, assistance, material, or support; as, to reenforce an argument; to reenforce a garment; especially, to strengthen with additional troops, as an army or a fort, or with additional ships, as a fleet. ::: v. --> Something which reenforces or strengthens.
rent regard for the other members of the great series. Thus, if we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, we see great ranges of it, (most of it), existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifes- tation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of manifestation in the physical world. But something more is needed to turn that static or latent possibility into a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That something may be a call from the material plane, e.g., some force or some one on the physical existence entering into touch with a supraphysical power or world or part of it and moved to bring it down into the earth-life. Or it may be an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g., a vital being moved to extend his action towards the earth and establish there a kingdom for himself or the play of the forces for which he stands in his own domain.
RESTLESSNESS. ::: Any attachment or restlessness comes in the way of a spiritual working. Train yourself to loot calmly without disturbance and simply see what has to be done and quietly will it ; it is so that the ordinary consent of the Nature- forces can be overtopped and overcome.
REVERSAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS. ::: Instead of allowing always the external mind to interfere and assert its o^vn ordinary customary point of view, it should turn itself round, admit that things may work from in outwards, and keep itself sufficiently quiet to see that developing and being done. For then an inner mind shows itself which is capable of following and being the instrument of the invisible Forces.
Reversal of Consciousness ::: Instead of allowing always the external mind to interfere and assert its own ordinary customary point of view, it should turn itself round, admit that things may work from in outwards, and keep itself sufficiently quiet to see that developing and being done. For then an inner mind shows itself which is capable of following and being the instrument of the invisible Forces.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 480-81
SAMANA. ::: Life-current which regulates interchange of prdtia and apana, equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their func- tions.
samana ::: [one of the five pranas]; it is situated centrally in the body, and regulates the interchange of the prana and apana at their meeting place, equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their functions; it is the agent for the assimilation of food.
samana ::: one of the five workings of the life-force (pañcapran.a) in the body, that which regulates the interchange of pran.a and apana where they meet near the navel; it "equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their functions".
sarira (prana sharira) ::: the "vital body" which belongs to the vital soul (pran.amaya purus.a), a body "composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter . . . a substance surcharged with conscious energy"; it "penetrates and envelops the physical and is sensitive to impacts of another kind, to the play of the vital forces around us and coming in on us from the universe . . . or else from the vital planes and worlds which are behind the material universe".
Schopenhauer, Arthur: (1738-1860) Brilliant, manysided philosopher, at times caustic, who attained posthumously even popular acclaim. His principal work, The World as Will and Idea starts with the thesis that the world is my idea, a primary fact of consciousness implying the inseparableness of subject and object (refutation of materialism and subjectivism). The object underlies the principle of sufficient reason whose fourfold root Schopenhauer had investigated previously in his doctoral dissertation as that of becoming (causality), knowing, being, and acting (motivation). But the world is also obstinate, blind, impetuous will (the word taken in a larger than the dictionary meaning) which objectifies itself in progressive stages in the world of ideas beginning with the forces of nature (gravity, etc.) and terminating in the will to live and the products of its urges. As thing-in-itself, the will is one, though many in its phenomenal forms, space and time serving as principia individuationis. The closer to archetypal forms the ideas (Platonic influence) and the less revealing the will, the greater the possibility of pure contemplation in art in which Schopenhauer found greatest personal satisfaction. Propounding a determinism and a consequential pessimism (q.v.), Schopenhauer concurs with Kant in the intelligible character of freedom, makes compassion (Mitleid; see Pity) the foundation of ethics, and upholds the Buddhist ideal of desirelessness as a means for allaying the will. Having produced intelligence, the will has created the possibility of its own negation in a calm, ascetic, abstinent life.
Science ::: When the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in themselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought, proceeded at once to a process which resembles exactly enough the process adopted by modern science in its study of physical phenomena. For their object was to study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical Sciences study, arrange and utilize the forms, forces and working movements of objective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle, flexible and versatile than the most impalpable forces of which the physical Sciences have become aware; its motions were more elusive, its processes harder to fix; but once grasped and ascertained, the movements of consciousness were found by Vedic psychologists to be in their process and activity as regular, manageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The powers of the soul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly directed to practical life-purposes of joy, power and light as the modern power of electricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and physical illumination; but the results to which they give room and effect are more wonderful and momentous than the results of motorpower and electric luminosity. For there is no difference of essential law in the physical and the psychical, but only a difference and undoubtedly a great difference of energy, instrumentation and exact process.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 314
Seeking for occulf powers is looked on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India, because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact mth the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often bosiQc to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their owm pur- pose. Often, representing themselves as Divine powers they mis- lead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, bave ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes ineritably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of consriousness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces or allow oneself to be led by their sug- gestions and impulsions. This is one of the chief dangers of the spiritual life and to be on one’s guard against it is a necessity for the seeTer if he wishes to arrive at his goal. It is true that many supraphysical or supernonnal powers come with the expansion of the consciousness in the yoga ; to rise out of the body consciousness, to act by subtle means on the supraphysical planes, etc. are natural activities for the yogi- But these powers are not sought after, they come naturally, and they have not the astral character. Also, Aey have to be used on purely spiritual
SELF-MASTERY. ::: To be aware of one's central conscious- ness and to know the action of the forces is the first definite step towards self-mastery.
Self, reflecting the Divine, seeing and understanding the nature of the Self and its relations with the manifestation, living in that or in contact with it, calm, wide and awake to higher knowledge, noi'perturbcd by the play of the forces. When it gcu its full
seraskier ::: n. --> A general or commander of land forces in the Turkish empire; especially, the commander-in-chief of minister of war.
Sex-tendency will be more easily overcome if instead of being upset by its presence you detach the inner being, rise up above it and view it as a weakness of the lower nature. If you can detach yourself from it with a complete indifference in the inner being, it will seem more and more something alien to yourself, put upon you by the outer forces of Nature. Then It will be easier to remove.
SHAKING OF THE HEAD. ::: -When the pressure ol the Force works upon the consciousness, then in the plane on which it happens to be working, a great activity of different forces is set in play, e.g. if it is the mind, various mental forces, if it is the vital, various vital forces. It is not safe to take all these for true things, to be accepted without question. If the head shook for a long time, it is a sign that the mind or at best the mental physical was not able yet to receive all the force and assimilate it.
shana; Krishnadarshan) ::: the vision of Kr.s.n.a, the para purus.a or purus.ottama, seen in relation to the world as the transcendent and universal anandamaya purus.a and isvara who is "not only the origin and spiritual container, but the spiritual inhabitant in all forces, in all things and in all beings, and not only the inhabitant but . . . himself all energies and forces, all things and all beings", a form of darsana regarded as the highest bhava of brahmadarsana or as . a distinct darsana related to isvaradarsana. The three intensities of Kr.s.n.adarsana in human beings (applicable with modifications to all things and beings) are described in the entry of 30 May 1915 as (1) "Krishna seen behind the human mask" (distinguished from the preliminary stage, "Krishna sensed behind the disguise"), (2)"Krishna seen in the human being", and (3) "The human being seen in Krishna" (with three degrees of the third intensity, the vision of sarvamaya, anantagun.amaya and anandamaya Kr.s.n.a), leading to the consummation: "The human being = Krishna".
Shao vin: The Minor Mode of Passivity. See T'ai Chi. Shao yang: The Minor Mode of Activity. See T'ai Chi. Shen: (a) In religion: Spirits, heavenly spirits as against earthly spirits (kuei), spiritual power which is unfathomable in the movement of yin and yang or passive and active cosmic forces; the active or yang aspect of the soul (hun) is against the passive aspect (p'o).
&
SORROW. ::: Sorrow is not a way to sM/i / ; it confuses and weakens and distracts the mind, depresses the vital forces, darkens the spirit. A relapse from joy and vital elasticity and Ananda to sorrow, self-distrust, despondency and weakness is a recoil from a greater to a lesser consciousness.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Specifically, naturalism usually refers to the doctrines and practices of the 19th century school of realism which arose as the literary analogue of positivism, and whose great masters were Flaubert, Zola, and de Maupassant. The fundamental dogma of the movement, as expressed by Zola in "Le Roman experimental" and "Les Romanciers naturalistes", states that naturalism is "the scientific mdhod applied to literature". Zola maintains that the task of the artist is to report and explain what happens in nature, art must aim at a literal transcript of reality, and the artist attains this by making an analytic study of character, motives, and behavior. Naturalism argues that all judgments of good and bad are conventional, with no real basis in nature, so art should seek to understand, not to approve or condemn. Human behavior is regarded as largely a function of environment and circumstances, and the novelist should exhibit these in detail, with no false idealizing of character, no glossing over of the ugly, and no appeal to supposed hidden forces. -- I.J.
Spirituality can only come by opening of the mind, vital and physical to the inmost soul, to the higher Self, to the Divine, and their subordination to the spiritual forces and instrumentation as channels of the inner Light, the higher Knowledge and Power.
..[Spiritual planes above the normal range of Mind, the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind] of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a
reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind’s transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrateswith the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 981-982
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The hostile forces are those whose very raison d"être is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: . . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
standing, function and work in the universe. They are not imper- sonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces. But while in the Overmlnd and the triple world they appear as inde- pendent beings, they return in the Supermind into the One and stand there united in a single harmonious action as multiple personalities of the one Person, the Divine Purushottama.
statics ::: n. --> That branch of mechanics which treats of the equilibrium of forces, or relates to bodies as held at rest by the forces acting on them; -- distinguished from dynamics.
Strain in work ; If you overstrain yourself by too much pro- longed work or a restless working, that disturbs or weakens the nervous system, the vital-physical, and lays one open to the action of the \vrong forces.
stress ::: n. --> Distress.
Pressure, strain; -- used chiefly of immaterial things; except in mechanics; hence, urgency; importance; weight; significance.
The force, or combination of forces, which produces a strain; force exerted in any direction or manner between contiguous bodies, or parts of bodies, and taking specific names according to its direction, or mode of action, as thrust or pressure, pull or tension, shear or tangential stress.
SUBTLE FORCES. ::: There is such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or siral — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there arc waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there arc mind-waves, ihought*currcnts. waves of emotion, ~ for example, anger, sorrow, etc. — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invad> ing him. Influences good or bad can propagate themsefves in that way ::: chat can happen without Intention and naturally, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a power- ful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective.
subtle Matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human*
supernatural ::: attributed to a power that is beyond natural forces; unexplainable by natural law or phenomenon.
Supreme Lord, as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s ser- vice and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego arc innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasl,
Surrender ::: There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychics should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be inno part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or
refuses.If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you.If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to install there the living Presence.If each time the Power intervenes and brings in the Truth, you turn your back on it and call in again the falsehood that has been expelled, it is not the divine Grace that you must blame for failing you, but the falsity of your own will and the imperfection of your own surrender.If you call for the Truth and yet something in you chooses what is false, ignorant and undivine or even simply is unwilling to reject it altogether, then always you will be open to attack and the Grace will recede from you. Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral th
refore the rejection of all that withstands it.The Mother
tactics ::: n. --> The science and art of disposing military and naval forces in order for battle, and performing military and naval evolutions. It is divided into grand tactics, or the tactics of battles, and elementary tactics, or the tactics of instruction.
Hence, any system or method of procedure.
tamoguna. :::action which is limiting, localising, encircling, internalising and confining; absorbed by the quality of ignorance; gross, inert and visible; basis of all mental and physical forms and forces; originating from ignorance, it leads to extremes or slothfulness
Tehmi: “The four asuras, the hostile forces that come from the subconscient.”
Tehmi: “The symbol of the evil forces.”
Telesio, Bernardino: (1508-1588) was one of the fathers of the scientific movement of the Renaissance. He was born at Cosenza, near Naples, studied philosophy and mathematics at Padua, and natural science at Rome. The Academia Telesiana, which he founded it Naples, stressed empirical methods and Telesio tried to explain all physical phenomena in terms of heat and cold, as expanding and contracting forces in matter. He wrote De Natuta rerum juxta propria principia (1570), ed. V Spampanato, 2 vol. (Modena-Genoa, 1911-13). -- V.J.B.
Tests come sometimes from the hostile forces, sometimes in the course of Nature.
TESTS. ::: The idea of tests is not a healthy idea and ou^t not to be pushed too far. Tests are applied not by the Divine but by the forces of the lower planes — mental, vital, physical
“That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother’s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” The Mother
The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the matcriaJ creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportuni^ and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those vital forces and beings whose ' whole business is to prevent the descent of the suprarnentaJ Light.
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
(The authors also gave the example of Centaur). When such words are capitalised it refers to a divinity representing the species. Also with the word ‘Circean’ Nolini said: “Not merely a mythological story but a being representing universal forces.
The change that is effected by the transition from mind to supermind is not only a revolution in knowledge or in our power for knowledge. If it is to be complete and stable, it must be a divine transmutation of our will too, our entotions, our sensa- tions, all our power of life and its forces, in the end even of the very substance and functioning of our body. Then only can it be said that the supermind is there ujwn earth, roofed in its very earth-substance and embodied in a new race of divinised crea- tures.
"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
“The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top:—(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
“The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one’s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one’s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one’s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces—for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness—and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in—the nature.” Letters on Yoga
“The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” Letters on Yoga
"The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results — it is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces." Letters on Yoga
“The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results—it is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces.” Letters on Yoga
The differences begin when the questions of the mode of creation and mediators between God and the world are dealt with. In these matters there are to be noted three variations. Saadia rejected entirely the theory of the emanation of separate intelligences, and teaches God's creation from nothing of all beings in the sublunar and upper worlds. He posits that God created first a substratum or the first air which was composed of the hyle and form and out of this element all beings were created, not only the four elements, the components of bodies in the lower world, but also the angels, stars, and the spheres. Bahya's conception is similar to that of Saadia. The Aristotelians, Ibn Daud, Maimonides, and Gersonides accepted the theory of the separate intelligences which was current in Arabic philosophy. This theory teaches that out of the First Cause there emanated an intelligence, and out of this intelligence another one up to nine, corresponding to the number of spheres. Each of these intelligences acts as the object of the mind of a sphere and is the cause of its movement. The tenth intelligence is the universal intellect, an emanation of all intelligences which has in its care the sublunar world. This theory is a combination of Aristotelian and neo-PIatonic teachings; Ibn Daud posits, however, in addition to the intelligences also the existence of angels, created spiritual beings, while Maimonides seems to identify the angels with the intelligences, and also says that natural forces are also called angels in the Bible. As for creation, Ibn Daud asserts that God created the hyle or primal matter and endowed it with general form from which the specific forms later developed. Maimonides seems to believe that God first created a substance consisting of primal matter and primal form, and that He determined by His will that parts of it should form the matter of the spheres which is imperishable, while other parts should form the matter of the four elements. These views, however, are subject to various interpretations by historians. Gabirol and Gersonides posit the eternal existence of the hyle and limit creation to endowing it with form and organization -- a view close to the Platonic.
::: "The ear is the passage of communion between the inner mind centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
“The ear is the passage of communion between the inner mind centre and the thought-forces or thought-waves of the universal Nature.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual"s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important.
“The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. The Synthesis of Yoga
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
“The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine
"The evil forces are perversions of the Truth by the Ignorance — in any complete transformation they must disappear and the Truth behind them be delivered.” Letters on Yoga
“The evil forces are perversions of the Truth by the Ignorance—in any complete transformation they must disappear and the Truth behind them be delivered.” Letters on Yoga
"The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
The gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 346
::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
“The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
The gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by Tamas, tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is possessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience or enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the principle of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance and action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the lifepower and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, th
refore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; th
refore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not so much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant effort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards equilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction it gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings with it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than the troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 684-685
The hostile forces are there in the world to maintain the
"The hostile forces are those which try to pervert everything and are in revolt against the Divine and opposed to the yoga.” *Letters on Yoga
“The hostile forces are those which try to pervert everything and are in revolt against the Divine and opposed to the yoga.” Letters on Yoga
“The hostile forces are those whose very raison d’être is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work.” Letters on Yoga
The human body has always been in the habit of answering to whatever forces choose to lay hands on it and illness is the price it pays for its inertia and ignorance. It has to leam to answer to the one Force alone, but that is not easy for it to leam.
The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Th
refore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or
refusal the combinations of his own nature. These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, gunas, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the result of the interaction of these qualitative powers.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 232-233
The inner vision can sec the vibration of the forces which act through the object.
"The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the forces which act through the object.” Letters on Yoga
“The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the forces which act through the object.” Letters on Yoga
The Lights one secs in concentration are the lights of various powers or forces and often lights that come down from the higher consciousness.
::: "The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” *Letters on Yoga
“The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” Letters on Yoga
The mind proper ::: is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life.
“The mind proper is divided into three parts—thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind—the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
The more intense the experiences that come, the higher the forces that descend, the greater become the possibilities of deviation and error. For the very intensity and the very height of the force excites and aggrandises the movements of the lower nature and raises up in it all opposing elements in their full force, but often in the dbguisc of truth, wearing a mask of plausible justification. There is needed a great patience, calm, sobriety, balance, an impersonal dciachmcnx and sincerity free from all taint of ego or personal human desire. There must be no attachment to any idea of one’s owm, to any experience, to any kind of imagination, mental building or vital demand ::: the light of discrimination must alx^i'ays play to detect those
::: "The most usual form of power is control over things, person, events, forces.” The Mother
“The most usual form of power is control over things, person, events, forces.” The Mother
The Mother: "The snake is not the symbol of power but of energy, and just as there are obscure and perverted energies, so too the snake can be the symbol of unregenerate and anti-divine forces.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The snake is not the symbol of power but of energy, and just as there are obscure and perverted energies, so too the snake can be the symbol of unregenerate and anti-divine forces.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW *Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother—Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16—Some Answers from the Mother
::: The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother - Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16 - Some Answers from the Mother*
The navel centre, nabhlpadma or manipura, commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements, governs the larger vital. (Colour ::: violet ; petals ::: ten.)
::: "Then too we can see that even in the play of the forces and in spite of their distortions the Cosmic Will is working towards the eventual realisation of the Will of the Transcendent Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
“Then too we can see that even in the play of the forces and in spite of their distortions the Cosmic Will is working towards the eventual realisation of the Will of the Transcendent Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"The only free will in the world is the one divine Will of which Nature is the executrix; for she is the master and creator of all other wills. Human free-will can be real in a sense, but, like all things that belong to the modes of Nature, it is only relatively real. The mind rides on a swirl of natural forces, balances on a poise between several possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles and has the sense of choosing: but it does not see, it is not even dimly aware of the Force behind that has determined its choice.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The only free will in the world is the one divine Will of which Nature is the executrix; for she is the master and creator of all other wills. Human free-will can be real in a sense, but, like all things that belong to the modes of Nature, it is only relatively real. The mind rides on a swirl of natural forces, balances on a poise between several possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles and has the sense of choosing: but it does not see, it is not even dimly aware of the Force behind that has determined its choice.” The Synthesis of Yoga
The physical consciousness is full of inertia ; it wants not to move but to be moved by whatever forces and that is its habit.
The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it Is skeptical of the existence of supra-physical things of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no due ; even when it has spiritual experi- ences, it forgets them easily, loses (he impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and Supramental planes is one object of this yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.
::: "The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” *Letters on Yoga
“The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” Letters on Yoga
The physical nature is a thing of habits ; it is out of habit that it responds to the forces of illness ; one has to get into it the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only. This, of course, so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness Is impossible.
The position taken is that investigation reveals basic, recurrent patterns of change, expressible as laws of materialist dialectics, which are seen as relevant to every level of existence, and, because validated by past evidence, as indispensable hypotheses in guiding further investigation. These are Law of interpenetration, unity and strife of opposites. (All existences, being complexes of opposing elements and forces, have the character of a changing unity. The unity is considered temporary, relative, while the process of change, expressed by interpenetration and strife, is continuous, absolute.) Law of transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. (The changes which take place in nature are not merely quantitative; their accumulation eventually precipitates new qualities in a transition which appears as a sudden leap in comparison to the gradualness of the quantitative changes up to that point. The new quality is considered as real as the original quality. It is not mechanically reducible to it it is not merely a larger amount of the former quality, but something into which that has developed.) Law of negation of negation. (The series of quantitative changes and emerging qualities is unending. Each state or phase of development is considered a synthesis which resolves the contradictions contained in the preceding synthesis and which generates its own contradictions on a different qualitative level.) These laws, connecting ontology with logic, are contrasted to the formalistic laws of identity, difference and excluded middle of which they are considered qualitatively enriched reconstructions. Against the ontology of the separateness and self-identity of each thing, the dialectical laws emphasize the interconnectedness of all things and self-development of each thing. An A all parts of which are always becoming non-A may thus be called non-A as well as A. The formula, A is A and cannot be non-A, becomes, A is A and also non-A, that is, at or during the same instant: there is no instant, it is held, during which nothing happens. The view taken is that these considerations apply as much to thought and concepts, as to things, that thought is a process, that ideas gain their logical content through interconnectedness with other ideas, out of and into which they develop.
There are special forces of the Light and there is a play of them according to needs. It can pour into the body, make every cell luminous, fix itself and surround on all sides in one luminous mass of Light.
There are two classes of thmgs that happen in yoga, realisa- tions and experiences. Realisations are the reception in the cons- ciousness and the establishment there of the fundamental truths of the Divine, of the Higher or Divine Nature, of the world- consciousness and the play of its forces, of one’s own self and real nature and the inner nature of things, the power of these things growing in one till they arc part of one’s inner life and existence, — as for instance, the realisation of the Divine Pre- sence, the Descent and settling of the higher Peace, Light, Force,
Therefore, while our effort is personal. Time appears as a resist- ance, for It presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the per- sonal are combined in our consciousness, It appears as a medium and condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
..the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functioning of the body must be among the ultimate results of a supramental change.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 330 ::: .Supraphysical Worlds ::: This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world’s life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these beings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul’s self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we think of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful: there are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences, instigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of actions that overpass the normal human measure. There may also be an awareness of influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds beyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial nature. As contact with the supraphysical is possible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective—or at least objectivised— between our own consciousness and the consciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysical status in these other regions of existence. It is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a subtle-sense perception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter actually into other worlds and know something of their secrets. It is the more objective order of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind in the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement which unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with which we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn everything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22 Page: 806-07
“[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one’s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one’s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
The social theory, termed historical materialism, represents the application of the general principles of materialist dialectics to human society, by which they were first suggested. The fundamental changes and stages which society has passed through in the course of its complex evolution are traced primarily to the influence of changes taking place in its economic base. This base has two aspects: material forces of production (technics, instrumentalities) and economic relations (prevailing system of ownership, exchange, distribution). Growing out of this base is a social superstructure of laws, governments, arts, sciences, religions, philosophies and the like. The view taken is that society evolved as it did primarily because fundamental changes in the economic base resulting from conflicts of of interest in respect to productive forces, and involving radical changes in economic relations, have compelled accommodating changes in the social superstructure. Causal action is traced both ways between base and superstructure, but when any "higher" institution threatens the position of those who hold controlling economic power at the base, the test of their power is victory in the ensuing contest. The role of the individual in history is acknowledged, but is seen in relation to the movement of underlying forces. Cf. Plekhanov, Role of the Individual m History.
“The spiritual mind is a mind which, in its fullness, is aware of the Self, reflecting the Divine, seeing and understanding the nature of the Self and its relations with the manifestation, living in that or in contact with it, calm, wide and awake to higher knowledge, not perturbed by the play of the forces. When it gets its full liberated movement, its central station is very usually felt above the head, though its influence can extend downward through all the being and outward through space.” Letters on Yoga
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 to 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.
The surrender of the vital is always difficult because of the unwillingness of the forces of the universal vital Ignorance.
The term dialectical expresses the dynamic interconnectedness of things, the universality of change and its radical character everything possessing any sort of reality is in process of self-transformation, owing to the fact that its content is made up of opposing factors or forces the internal movement of which interconnects everything, changes each thing into something else. Mechanism in the sense of non-dialectical materialism as well as metaphysics in the sense of idealistic ontology are thus rejected.
The throat centre, \iiuddha, commanding expression and all cxtemalisation of the mind movements and mental forces, governs the expressive and externalising mind, (Colour ::: grey ; petals ::: sixteen.)
"The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
“The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying certain equations of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 201
The waves of colour mean a dynamic rush of forces and the star in such a context indicates the promise of the new thing that is to be formed.
"The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden.” Essays on the Gita
“The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden.” Essays on the Gita
They [the subconscient and the environmental consciousness] are two quite different things. What is stored in the subconscient—impressions, memories, rise up from there into the conscious parts. In the environmental things are not stored up and fixed, although they move about there. It is full of mobility, a field of vibration or passage of forces.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 313-4
.. this being we are is or can be whatever it has the faith and will to be – for faith is only will aiming at a higher truth – and cease to set limits to our possibility… - Sri Aurobindo ::: .Falsehood ::: Falsehood, on the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and th
refore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the Yogic sense, mithya, moha.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 103
"This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, âtmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhût sarvâni bhûtâni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vâsudevah sarvam iti.” Essays on the Gita ::: *godhead, godheads, godhead"s.
“This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, âtmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhût sarvâni bhûtâni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vâsudevah sarvam iti.” Essays on the Gita
This inertia has to be cured by putting it into contact %vith the right forces from above.
This is indeed one of the three forces — power, wealth, sex — that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the
“This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: “ The Life Divine
“This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: …” The Life Divine
This tenn inner is used in l«o different senses. Sometimes it denotes the consciousness behind the veil of the outer being, the mental or vital or physical within, which is in direct touch with the universal mind, the universal life-forces, universal phy- sical forces. Sometimes, on the other hand, we mean an inmost mental, vital, phyucal, more specifically called the true mind, the true vital, the true physical consciousness which is nearer to the soul and can most easily and directly respond to the
This yoga is a spiritual battle ; hs sery attempt raises all sorts of adverse forces and one must be ready to face difficulties, suflerinss, reverses of aU sorts in a calm unflinching spirit The difficulties that come are orders and tests and if one meets them in the right spirit one comes out stronar and spirituaUj* pmrer and greater. No misfortui^ can come, the adverse forces cannot touch or be victorioas nnless there is some defect in oneself.
"Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga
“Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga
THROAT CENTRE. ::: The centre in the throat commanding expression and all cxtcrnalisation of the mind movements and mental forces is the centre of the physical mind. It is the centre
Through conscientious mediums one may get sound results (in the matter of the dead) but even these are very ignorant of the nature of fhe forces they are handling and have no discrimina- tion which can guard them against trickery from the other side of the veil. Very little genuine knowledge of the nature of the after-life can be gathered from these seances ; a true knowledge is more often gained by the experience of individuals who make serious contact or are able in one way or another to cross the border.
T'ien li: Heaven-endowed nature. The Reason of Heaven; the Divine Law; the moral principle of Heaven which is embodied in benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (ssu tuan) (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200) the Law of Nature, which is the Reason (li) m all things and is impartial. (Tai Tung-yuan, 1723-1777). --W.T.C. T'ien ti: Heaven and Earth: as the universe; as the origin of life; as the consolation of the pure and impure vital forces (ch'i) respectively; as the active or male (yang) and the passive or female (yin) phases of the universe, respectively. --W.T.C. Timarchy: (Gr.) A type of government characterized by voluntary or acclamatory rule of worthv and competent men, not aristocrats. -- K.F.L.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and work- ing out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego It is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument.
"Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Time ::: Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul. Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Th
refore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument. The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 68
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
torque ::: n. --> A collar or neck chain, usually twisted, especially as worn by ancient barbaric nations, as the Gauls, Germans, and Britons.
That which tends to produce torsion; a couple of forces.
A turning or twisting; tendency to turn, or cause to turn, about an axis.
truce ::: n. --> A suspension of arms by agreement of the commanders of opposing forces; a temporary cessation of hostilities, for negotiation or other purpose; an armistice.
Hence, intermission of action, pain, or contest; temporary cessation; short quiet.
Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the divine Shakti, and yet to go on claiming this sO'CalJed freedom, which is no more than a subjection to certain ignorant cosmic forces, is to indulge in a blind contradiction and to claim the right to lead a double life.
TUBERCULOSIS. ::: T.B. Is the result of a strong psychic-vitaf depression. Sex cannot directly cause T.B. though it may be a factor in bringing about a fall of the vital forces and withdrawal of the psychic supporting forces leading to T.B. The lact of vitality which easily comes as a result of modem civilisation is therefore a very strong contributing force. Modems have not the solid nervous system and the natural (as opp>osed to the artificial and morbid) zest of life that their ancestors had.
Types of illnesses ::: An illness which comes in the ordinary course as the result of physical causes — even though adverse universal forces are the first cause — is an ordinary illness. One brought by the forces hostile to yoga to upset the system and prevent or disturb progress — without any adequate physical reason — is a hostile attack. It may have the appearance of a cold or other illness, but to the eye which sees the action of the forces and not only the outward symptoms or results, the diHerence is clear.
udasinata ::: the state of being udasina; the indifference to the udasinata dvandvas or dualities that comes from "being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches", the second stage of passive / negative samata: "the soul"s impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces", regarding the "passions of the mind as things born of the illusion of the outward mentality or inferior movements unworthy of the calm truth of the single and equal spirit or a vital and emotional disturbance to be rejected by the tranquil observing will and dispassionate intelligence of the sage"; indifference of various other . kinds, due to "either the inattention of the surface desire-soul in its mind, sensations, emotions and cravings to the rasa of things, or its incapacity to receive and respond to it, or its refusal to give any surface response or, again, its driving and crushing down of the pleasure or the pain by the will"; see rajasic udasinata, sattwic udasinata, tamasic udasinata, trigun.atita udasinata.
undivine ::: “The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” Letters on Yoga
UNIVEf^ALISAT/ON. ::: To see all things in the seif and the self in all things — to be aware of one being everywhere, aware directly of the different planes, their forces, their beings.
::: "Universal forces means all forces good or bad, favourable or hostile, of light and darkness that move in the cosmos.” *Letters on Yoga
“Universal forces means all forces good or bad, favourable or hostile, of light and darkness that move in the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
UNIVERSAL NATURE. ::: There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical Nature and it is out of a selection of their forces and mo\*cmcnts that the individual mind, vital and physical are made.
utthapana ::: (literally) raising, elevating; "the state of not being subutthapana ject to the pressure of physical forces", the second member of the sarira catus.t.aya, called utthapana or levitation because of its third and final stage (tertiary utthapana) in which "gravitation is conquered", but usually referring to either of two earlier stages (primary utthapana and secondary utthapana) in which "the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity" is rectified, resulting in a great increase in "the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument"; exercise for the development of utthapana (such as walking for primary utthapana). utth utthapana-sakti
vayu. ::: the air element; air current related to the "airy" vital forces of the body; vedic God of the wind; the vayus or air currents exist both in the physical and subtle bodies, functioning through the body, mind and senses &
veldts ::: Jhumur: “Veldts are huge endless grasslands in South Africa, vast empty spaces. Perhaps in the early centuries there was no direction, no path, no clear-cut line…if I follow this path I am going to come out. You get lost. Because destiny is a force that pushes man as long as he doesn’t push destiny. When he becomes supremely conscious he can control his destiny. Otherwise he is at the mercy of all these forces and it is this that creates the whole chain of causality.”
ventricle ::: n. --> A cavity, or one of the cavities, of an organ, as of the larynx or the brain; specifically, the posterior chamber, or one of the two posterior chambers, of the heart, which receives the blood from the auricle and forces it out from the heart. See Heart.
The stomach.
Fig.: Any cavity, or hollow place, in which any function may be conceived of as operating.
\Vhile this transformation is being done it is more than ever necessary to keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying doNvn of condi- tions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vani^’ or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being ; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will pro- gressively fall away from your nature.
virial ::: n. --> A certain function relating to a system of forces and their points of application, -- first used by Clausius in the investigation of problems in molecular physics.
Vital Energy, Vital Force ::: The existence of a vital force or life-energy has been doubted by western Science, because that Science concerns itself only with the most external operations of Nature and has as yet no true knowledge of anything except the physical and outward. This Prana, this life-force is not physical in itself; it is not material energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and involved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it no physical form could have come into being or could remain in being. It acts in all material forces such as electricity and is nearest to self-manifestation in those that are nearest to pure force; material forces could not exist or act without it, for from it they derive their energy and movement and they are its vehicles. But all material aspects are only field and form of the Prana which is in itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result. It cannot th
refore be detected by any physical analysis; physical analysis can only resolve for us the combinations of those material happenings which are its results and the external signs and symbols of its presence and operation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 18, Page: 63-64
vitalism ::: n. --> The doctrine that all the functions of a living organism are due to an unknown vital principle distinct from all chemical and physical forces.
WEEPING. ::: Weeping brings in the forces that should be kept outside ; for weeping is a giving way of the inner control and an expression of vital reaction and ego. Tt is only the psychic weeping that does not open the door to these forces ; but that weeping is without affliction, tears of Bhakti, spiritual emotion, or Ananda.
Whatever point the adverse forces choose for attack, however small it may seem to the external human mind, becomes a crucial point and to yield it up may be to yield to them one of the keys of the fortress.
“What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
When it enters the psychic world, it begins to assimilate the essence of its experience and by that assimilation is formed the future psychic personality in accordance with the fixation already made. When this assimilation is over, it is ready for a new birth ; but' the less developed beings do not work out the whole thing for themselves, there are beings and forces of the higher world who have that svork.
“When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one’s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one’s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we arc so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in uniwrsal Nature. The self-abnega- tion of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment ; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 59-60
When there is an attack from the human instruments of adverse forces, one should try to overcome it not in a spirit of personal hatred or anger or wounded egoism, but with a calm spirit of strength and equality and a call to the Divine Force to act.
whipperin ::: n. --> A huntsman who keeps the hounds from wandering, and whips them in, if necessary, to the of chase.
Hence, one who enforces the discipline of a party, and urges the attendance and support of the members on all necessary occasions.
White light IS the Mother s lighL Wherever Jt descends or enters, it brings peace, puniy, silence and the openness to the higher forces It is her own characteristic power, that of the
will, free ::: Sri Aurobindo: Our notion of free will is apt to be tainted with the excessive individualism of the human ego and to assume the figure of an independent will acting on its own isolated account, in a complete liberty without any determination other than its own choice and single unrelated movement. This idea ignores the fact that our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. Our total being can rise out of subjection to fact of present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence. There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line. On one line the being could feel and behave as an independent self-existence uniting itself with its own impersonal Reality; it could, so self-conceived, act with a great force, but either this action would be still within an enlarged frame of its past and present self-formation of power of Nature or else it would be the cosmic or supreme Force that acted in it and there would be no personal initiation of action, no sense therefore of individual free will but only of an impersonal cosmic or supreme Will or Energy at its work. On the other line the being would feel itself a spiritual instrument and so act as a power of the Supreme Being, limited in its workings only by the potencies of the Supernature, which are without bounds or any restriction except its own Truth and self-law, and by the Will in her. But in either case there would be, as the condition of a freedom from the control of a mechanical action of Nature-forces, a submission to a greater conscious Power or an acquiescent unity of the individual being with its intention and movement in his own and in the world"s existence.” *The Life Divine
with the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we lire physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life.
Working of the Force ::: When the pressure of the Force works upon the consciousness, then in the plane on which it happens to be working, a great activity of different forces is set in play, e.g. if it is the mind, various mental forces, if it is the vital, various vital forces. It Is not safe to take all these for true things, to be accepted without question.
world ::: 1. Everything that exists; the universe; the macrocosm. 2. The earth with its inhabitants. 3. Any sphere, realm, or domain, with all pertaining to it. 4. Any period, state, or sphere of existence. world"s, worlds, wonder-world, wonder-worlds, world-adventure, world-adventure"s, world-being"s, World-Bliss, world-cloak, world-conjecture"s, world-creating, world-creators, world-delight, World-Delight, world-destiny, world-destroying, world-disillusion"s, world-dream, world-drowse, world-egos, world-energies, world-energy, World-Energy, world-force, world-experience, world-fact, world-failure"s, world-fate, World-Force, world-forces, World-free, World-Geometer"s, world-heart, world-idea, world-ignorance, World-Ignorance, World-maker"s, world-indifference, world-interpreting, world-kindergarten, world-knowledge, world-law, world-laws, world-libido"s, world-making"s, World-Matter"s, World-naked, world-need, world-ocean"s, world-outline, world-pain, world-passion, World-personality, world-pile, world-plan, world-power, World-Power, World-Power"s, World-Puissance, world-rapture, world-redeemer"s, world-rhyme, world-rhythms, world-scene, world-scheme, world-sea, World-Self, world-shape, world-shapes, world-space, world-stuff, world-symbol, World-symbols, World-task, world-time, World-Time‘s, world-tree, world-ways, world-whim, dream-world, heaven-world, mid-world.
Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring info him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc. that rise to the surface and the^ he takes for his own.
You must always try to keep the quietude, never allow dep- ressing or dbturbing thoughts or feelings to enter you or take hold of your mind or your speech. And if the mind keeps its quietude and receptivity to higher forces only, it can then easily pass on that quietude and receptivity to the body consciousness and even to the material cells of the body.
KEYS (10k)
134 Sri Aurobindo
31 The Mother
4 Carl Jung
3 Sri Aurobindo
3 Manly P Hall
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2 Peter J Carroll
2 M Alan Kazlev
2 Rudolf Steiner
2 Aleister Crowley
1 Vivekananda
1 Tolstoy
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1 Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi
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1 Angelus Silesius
1 Alice A. Bailey
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1 Albert Einstein
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NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
62 Sri Aurobindo
23 Anonymous
11 Frederick Lenz
10 Sun Tzu
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8 Mahatma Gandhi
7 Carl Jung
7 Barack Obama
6 Mehmet Murat ildan
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1:The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended." ~ George MacDonald, #KEYS
2:All action is surrounded by a complexity of forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
3:Use all your forces for endeavour and leave no room for carelessness. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
4:The Yogi knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces.~ The Mother, #KEYS
5:Vital forces want neither liberation nor transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #KEYS
6:Most people do not really choose—they undergo the play of the forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
7:Stop thinking of the adverse forces and they will have no power over you. My force is always there to protect you.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
8:The free spirit can stand fearless before even the biggest forces of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #KEYS
9:Each is a mass of forces thrown in shape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Discoveries of Science - III, #KEYS
10:It is forces that effect great political changes, not moral sentiments or vague generosities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Elections, #KEYS
11:But the blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long is Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
12:The present is the most precious moment. Use all the forces of thy spirit not to let that momentescape thee. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:... if one is exclusively occupied with oneself, one gets shut up in a sort of carapace and is not open to the universal forces. ~ The Mother, mcw, 6, #KEYS
14:A man who has comm and over his senses and the forces of his being, has a just title to the name of king. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
15:Evil forces can always attack in moments of unconsciousness or half-consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #KEYS
16:The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism, #KEYS
17:The Truth-Consciousness that can only manifest when ego and desire are overcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: The Universal or Cosmic Forces #KEYS
18:The end of tamas is disintegration, dispersal of forces, failure of material. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Care of Material Things, #KEYS
19:New words are needed to express new ideas, new forms are necessary to manifest new forces. With My blessings.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 01 Augest,#KEYS
20:Dread shows a weakness—the free spirit can stand fearless before even the biggest forces of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #KEYS
21:All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
22:Each in himself is sole by Nature's law. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #KEYS
23:One must be careful that no force comes through one except the right forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #KEYS
24:Nothing has to be rejected, all has to be raised to the pure levels of the divine consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Indra and the Thought-Forces, #KEYS
25:The hostile forces do not need a cause for attacking—they attack whenever and whoever they can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #KEYS
26:Our smallness saves us from the Infinite
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
27:Tests come sometimes from the hostile forces, sometimes in the course of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #KEYS
28:The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself" ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, #KEYS
29:When all has been explained nothing is known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #KEYS
30:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #KEYS
31:Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse;
We make of our own enemies our guests. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
32:Earth's eyes half-see, her forces half-create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven's art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
33:I carry the fire that never can be quenched.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
34:A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if one of the team cannot handle the forces, everybody is going to suffer. A ritual lodge is no place for the well-meaning ineffectual.
~ Dion Fortune,#KEYS
35:His hunger for the eternal thou must nurse
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, [T5],#KEYS
36:I want to be able to feel her constantly with me.
The Mother is always there with you. You have only to throw away the forces of Ignorance to feel her with you always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, TMWLOTM,#KEYS
37:The Divine's will is that we should be like channels always open, always more wide, so that His forces may pour their abundance into the mould.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
38:Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, [T5],#KEYS
39:A progress made often stirs the adverse forces to activity, they want to diminish its effect as much as possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #KEYS
40:The earth is full of adverse forces and of men who respond to these adverse forces; usually, the more one realises the Divine, the more enemies does he have around himself. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
41:When the adverse forces are dealt with in the right way, all that is ugly and false disappears to leave place only for what is true and beautiful.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
42:Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
43:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
44:Man's soul crosses through thee to Paradise,
Heaven's sun forces its way through death and night. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
45:Heaven's sun forces its way through death and night;
Its light is seen upon our being's verge...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
46:Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces as things are in this world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #KEYS
47:Our life is affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
48:The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
49:The great social ideal for religion is that it should be the common basis for the unity of civilization. In that way it justifies its insight beyond the transient clash of brute forces ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures In Ideas, #KEYS
50:The hostile beings, they are always in battle with each other; but they make common cause against the Truth and Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #KEYS
51:I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
I trample the corpses of the demon hordes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
52:When one comes out of the world, the forces that govern the world do all they can to pull you back into their own unquiet movement. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Departure from the Ashram, #KEYS
53:His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore
Of the huge ocean of his ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
54:His pains are her means to grow, to see and feel;
His death assists her immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
55:I guide man to the path of the Divine
And guard him from the red Wolf and the Snake. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
56:Do not stop! Move onward! Light! More light! Go deeper and deeper. You must see Him face to face, and talk to him. Enough of study and argument! Now gather the forces of your mind and direct them toward God and God only. ~ Swami Brahmananda, #KEYS
57:They [the candles] are placed outside the Circle to attract the hostile forces, to give them the first inkling of the Great Work, which they too must some day perform.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, The Circle,#KEYS
58:I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
59:I make even sin and error stepping-stones
And all experience a long march towards Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
60:Life develops in obedience to its own law and the pressure of forces and not according to the law and the logic of the self-conscious mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Drive towards Economic Centralisation, #KEYS
61:My ear is leaned to the cry of the oppressed,
I topple down the thrones of tyrant kings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
62:Occultism is the ancient science which deals with the hidden forces of nature, the laws governing them, and the means by which such forces can be brought under the control of the enlightened human mind. ~ Manly P Hall, Spiritual Centers in Man, #KEYS
63:A thinking animal, Nature's struggling lord,
Has made of her his nurse and tool and slave ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
64:Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
65:The unseizable forces of the cosmic whirl
Bear in their bacchant limbs the fixity
Of an original foresight that is Fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
66:Suffering is due only to our weakness and imperfection. When external forces affect us, if we have acquired sufficient strength to assimilate them, we derive joy from them, otherwise they produce pain.
~ Anilbaran Roy, Interviews and Conversations,#KEYS
67:It is not true that physical work is of an inferior value to mental culture, it is the arrogance of the intellect that makes the claim. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #KEYS
68:I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gates
When God comes out to meet the soul of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
69:If one hears an ill word from one's neighbor, and, though he could reply in kind, yet fights in his heart to endure the toil and forces himself not to reply ill so as to sadden the other, such a man lays down his life for his friend. ~ Paschasius of Dumium, #KEYS
70:There are a thousand things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep. ~ GG, #KEYS
71:The blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long is Time.
Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase:
The day shall come when men feel close and one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
72:They leap out like stars in their brightness,
Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters,
Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
73:With the littlest ones, I am attaining each day my victory over Satan and his powerful army of evil, over the satanic and masonic forces organized against God, because I am leading my children along the road of heroic faith, of sure hope and of perfect love." ~ Our Lady , #KEYS
74:The malignancy of hostile Powers
Puts craftily back the clock of destiny
And mightier seems than the eternal Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
75:Nature's Process
A nearness thrilled of the spirit to its source
And deepest things seemed obvious, close and true. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
76:I am the giver of the bowl of rice,
I am the worshipped Angel of the House.
I am in all that suffers and that cries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
77:And all was centred in a single view
As when by distance separate scenes grow one
And a harmony is made of hues at war. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
78:A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
Her feet upon a couchant lion's back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
79:There has also entered into the Church disunity, division, strife and antagonism. The forces of atheism and Masonry, having infiltrated within it, are on the point of breaking up its interior unity and of darkening the splendor of its sanctity." ~ Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi, #KEYS
80:A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
~ Joseph Campbell,#KEYS
81:Behind her an ineffable Presence stood:
Her reign received their mystic influences,
Their lion-forces crouched beneath her feet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
82:Man only sees the cosmic surfaces.
Then wondering what may lie hid from the sense
A little way he delves to depths below: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
83:The great hammer-beats of a pent-up world-heart
Burst open the narrow dams that keep us safe
Against the forces of the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
84:His kindness an investment for return,
His altruism is ego's other face:
He serves the world that him the world may serve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
85:The hierarchy of the ordered Powers,
The high changeless values, the peaked eminences,
The privileged aristocracy of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
86:I am Prometheus under the vulture's beak,
Man the discoverer of the undying fire,
In the flame he kindled burning like a moth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
87:In the totality of the change we have to achieve, human means and forces too have to be taken up, not dropped but used and magnified to their utmost possibility as part of the new life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
88:I have been pity, leaning over pain
And the tender smile that heals the wounded heart
And sympathy making life less hard to bear. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
89:I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
90:His spirit by spiritual ego sink,
Or his soul dream shut in sainthood's brilliant cell
Where only a bright shadow of God can come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
91:Without wisdom power is like a wind,
It can breathe upon the heights and kiss the sky,
It cannot build the extreme eternal things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
92:A divine pity on the peaks of the world,
A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives,
She looked out far and saw from inner mind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
93:Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
94:Heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes;
Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
95:Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility-these three forces are the very nerve of education. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #KEYS
96:The war of thoughts that fathers the universe,
The clash of forces struggling to prevail
In the tremendous shock that lights a star
As in the building of a grain of dust, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
97:Perhaps the world is an error of our sight,
A trick repeated in each flash of sense,
An unreal mind hallucinates the soul
With a stress-vision of false reality,
Or a dance of Maya veils the void Unborn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces#KEYS
98:I fear not for the angry frown of Heaven,
I flinch not from the red assault of Hell;
I crush the opposition of the gods,
Tread down a million goblin obstacles. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
99:Yet his advance,
Attempt of a divinity within,
A consciousness in the inconscient Night,
To realise its own supernal Light,
Confronts the ruthless forces of the Unseen. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,#KEYS
100:It is (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) by the power of the Overmind releasing the mind from its close partitions that the cosmic consciousness opens in the seeker and he becomes aware of the cosmic spirit and the play of the cosmic forces.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,#KEYS
101:We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness. ~ Michio Kaku, #KEYS
102:I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
To enjoy my agony God built the earth,
My passion he has made his drama's theme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
103:The possession of Knowledge, unless accompanied by a manifestation and expression in Action, is like the hoarding of precious metals - a vain and foolish thing. Knowledge, like Wealth, is intended for Use. The Law of Use is Universal, and he who violates it suffers by reason of his conflict with natural forces. ~ The Kybalion, #KEYS
104:Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ~ Albert Einstein, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, #KEYS
105:Men hail in my coming the Almighty's force
Or praise with thankful tears his saviour Grace.
I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
106:I make even sin and error stepping-stones
And all experience a long march towards Light.
Out of the Inconscient I build consciousness,
And lead through death to reach immortal Life.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
107:Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world. Spiritualism in the hands of an adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the art of blending together the laws of the Universe, without breaking any of them and thereby violating Nature. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
108:Lion-Forces
In a mist of secrecy wrapping the world-scene
The little deities of Time's nether act
Who work remote from Heaven's controlling eye,
Plotted, unknown to the creatures whom they move. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
109:The essential spiritual being is so noble that even the damned cannot wish to cease from being. But sins form a partition and provoke so great a darkness and dissimilarity between the forces and the being in whom God lives that the spirit cannot unite itself to its own essence. ~ Ruysbroeck, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
110:Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,
Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,
Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
To live again and feel the hands of calm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
111:Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ephesians, 6:11-12,#KEYS
112:Is stronger than Reason, profounder than the Pit,
And the malignancy of hostile Powers
Puts craftily back the clock of destiny
And mightier seems than the eternal Will.
The cosmic evil is too deep to un ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
113:To share the suffering of the world I came,
I draw my children's pangs into my breast.
I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;
I am the soul of all who wailing writhe
Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
114:I have found the atoms from which he built the worlds:
The first tremendous cosmic energy
Missioned shall leap to slay my enemy kin,
Expunge a nation or abolish a race,
Death's silence leave where there was laughter and joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
115:I stand upon earth's paths of danger and grief
And help the unfortunate and save the doomed.
To the strong I bring the guerdon of their strength,
To the weak I bring the armour of my force;
To men who long I carry their coveted joy: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
116:What desolates my heart, is this sort of continual destruction throughout Nature; she has created nothing which does not destroy its neighbour or destroy itself. Thus, staggering and bewildered in the midst of these oscillating forces of earth and heaven, I move forward seeing nothing but a world in which all devours and ruminates eternally. ~ Goethe, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
117:I am peace that steals into man's war-worn breast,
Amid the reign of Hell his acts create
A hostel where Heaven's messengers can lodge;
I am charity with the kindly hands that bless,
I am silence mid the noisy tramp of life;
I am Knowledge porin ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
118:Accepting the universe as her body of woe,
The Mother of the seven sorrows bore
The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:
The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,
Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.
Her heart was riven wi ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
119:The force of attention properly guided and directed towards the inner life allows us to analyse our soul and will shed light on many things. The forces of the mind resemble scattered rays; concentrate them and they illumine everything. That is the sole source of knowledge we possess. To conquer this knowledge there is only one method, concentration. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
120:Everyone wants a happy life without difficulties or suffering. We create many of the problems we face. No one intentionally creates problems, but we tend to be slaves to powerful emotions like anger, hatred and attachment that are based on misconceived projections about people and things. We need to find ways of reducing these emotions by eliminating the ignorance that underlies them and applying opposing forces. ~ Dalai Lama, #KEYS
121:Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
122:Brahman: the Reality; the Eternal; the Absolute; the Spirit; the Supreme Being; the One besides whom there is nothing else existent; in relation to the universe [cf. atman] the Supreme is brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual, material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. God.
~ Sri Aurobindo?,#KEYS
123:Never allow this idea I am not able, I am not doing enough to come and vex you; it is a tamasic suggestion and brings depression and depression opens the way to the attacks of the wrong forces. Your position should be, Let me do what I can; the Mothers force is there, the Divine is there to see that in due time all will be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
124:There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon, #KEYS
125:If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature, to forbid the turning away of our feet from her ordinary pastures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Jnana, [6], [T5],#KEYS
126:If something wrong happens, at once repeat my name- "Ma" "Ma" ..... Indeed it is like a meditation. Whenever you repeat the name of the Divine, you must always feel that the Divine is in your heart -- there you can feel sweetness and peace. No doubt, sometimes you do not feel the Divine's presence and peace, it is because your consciousness is entangled in the mind full of illusions. But you must understand that the hostile forces are false and the divine Forces are true. You must also develop your consciousness towards the divine Light. ~ The Mother, MOTHER YOU SAID SO....., Huta, #KEYS
127:the philosophic second period of indifference :::
There is next a period of high-seated impartiality and indifference in which the soul becomes free from exultation and depression and escapes from the snare of eagerness of joy as from the dark net of the pangs of grief and suffering. All things and persons and forces, all thoughts and feelings and sensations and actions, one's own no less than those of others, are regarded from above by a spirit that remains intact and immutable and is not disturbed by these things.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#KEYS
128:The black magician is one who learns to manipulate these forces for selfish and destructive purposes, his own aggrandizement of the fulfillment of desire, while the white magician prays that he may learn to manipulate them as God would have them manipulated - for the salvation of the divine creation. The powers are in the hands of those capable of invoking them; it makes no difference whether for good or ill. For this reason, the schools of white magic conceal these powers from man until, through growth, purification, and unfoldment, he gains the proper incentive for using them. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #KEYS
129:There are two factors that have to be considered in the matter [the causes of illness]. There is what comes from outside and there is what comes from your inner condition. Your inner condition becomes a cause of illness when there is a resistance or revolt in it or when there is some part in you that does not respond to the protection; or even there may be something there that almost willingly and wilfully calls in the adverse forces. It is enough if there is a slight movement of this kind in you; the hostile forces are at once upon you and their attack takes often the form of illness. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #KEYS
130:A bit of Prime, a bit of Matter, and a fair understanding of Life installs cybernetic devices and allows them to function; a blend of Forces and Prime conjures fire, wind, and light. With Correspondence alone, a skilled mage can step from one place to another without passing through the intervening space; add Time, and she can see past events in a distant place as well; add Forces, and she could project the images she sees upon a wall; use Matter and Correspondence instead, and she could open a door in one place, open another door in the next, and step between two doors that had not existed - and could not have existed - until that moment. ~ Mage 20th Anniversary Edition, #KEYS
131:There is always some tendency to looseness, forgetfulness and inattention in the physical consciousness. One has to be very vigilant and careful to prevent this tendency having its way. There are many [defects of the physical consciousness] - but mainly obscurity, inertia, tamas, a passive acceptance of the play of wrong forces, inability to change, attachment to habits, lack of plasticity, forgetfulness, loss of experiences or realisations gained, unwillingness to accept the Light or to follow it, incapacity (through tamas or through attachment or through passive reaction to accustomed forces) to do what it admits to be the Right and the Best.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
132:The wand weapon similarily appears in a profusion of forms. As an instrument to assist the projection of the magical will onto the aetheric and material planes, it could be a general purpose sigil, an amulet, a ring, an enchanting mantra, or even an act or gesture one performs. As with the pentacle, there is a virtue in having a small, portable, and permanent device of this class, for power accrues to it with use. As with the cup, the power of the wand is partly to fascinate the surface functions of the mind and channel the forces concealed in the depths. Like the sword, the wand is manipulated in such a way as to describe vividly to the will and subconscious what is required of them.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
133:t is not for nothing that our age calls for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the inescapable grip of the collective and save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from that fatal identity with the group psyche. For the group, because of its unconsciousness, has no freedom of choice, so psychic activity runs on in it like an uncontrolled law of nature. There is thus set going a chain reaction that comes to a stop only in catastrophe. The people always long for a hero, a slayer of dragons, when they feel the danger of psychic forces: hence the cry for personality. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
134:During this degenerate age in the outer world, there are many natural disasters due to the upsetting of the four elements. Also, demonic forces come with their many weapons to incite the fighting of wars. All of those forces have caused the world to come to ruin and led all to tremble - so terrified that their hair stands up on end. Still, the demonic forces find it necessary to come up with new types of weapons. If we were called on to confront them, there is no way we Dharma practitioners could defeat them. That is why we make supplication prayers to the three jewels, do the aspiration prayers, the offering prayers and the prayers of invocation. We are responsible for those activities. This is what I urge you to do. ~ Chatral Rinpoche, #KEYS
135:Attacks from adverse forces are inevitable: you have to take them as tests on your way and go courageously through the ordeal. The struggle may be hard, but when you come out of it, you have gained something, you have advanced a step. There is even a necessity for the existence of the hostile forces. They make your determination stronger, your aspiration clearer.
"It is true, however, that they exist because you gave them reason to exist. So long as there is something in you which answers to them, their intervention is perfectly legitimate. If nothing in you responded, if they had no hold upon any part of your nature, they would retire and leave you.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, (5 May 1929),#KEYS
136:Trump himself is a nothing, an empty vessel for cosmic forces to work through. Even on The Apprentice (which I used to enjoy) I remember he gave the guy who won a tour of his apartment, it was the tackiest thing you'd ever seen. Cluttered with gold furnishings so there was no space anywhere. The guy, who obviously worshipped Trump, asked who inspired him. So there he was, looking up to wait to hear some pearl of wisdom. And the Orange Clown just made some meaningless narcissistic comment about himself. It actually felt embarrassing (but not to Trump who simply isn't conscious of such things). It proves that even before his dementia he always was empty and vacuous. His ghost writer said Trump was the most evil human being he'd ever met. ~ M Alan Kazlev, FB, #KEYS
137:Although our fallen minds forget to climb,
Although our human stuff resists or breaks,
She keeps her will that hopes to divinise clay;
Failure cannot repress, defeat o'erthrow;
Time cannot weary her nor the Void subdue,
The ages have not made her passion less;
No victory she admits of Death or Fate.
Always she drives the soul to new attempt;
Always her magical infinitude
Forces to aspire the inert brute elements;
As one who has all infinity to waste,
She scatters the seed of the Eternal's strength
On a half-animate and crumbling mould,
Plants heaven's delight in the heart's passionate mire,
Pours godhead's seekings into a bare beast frame,
Hides immortality in a mask of death.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
138:For primitive man the world is full of demons and mysterious powers which he fears; the whole of Nature is animated by these forces, which are nothing but man's own inner powers projected into the outside world. Christianity and modern science have de-demonized Nature, which means that the European has consistently taken back the demonic powers out of the world into himself, and has steadily loaded his unconscious with them. Out of man himself the demonic powers rise up in revolt against the supposed spiritual constraints of Christianity. The demons begin to break out in Baroque art: the columns writhe, the furniture sprouts satyr's feet. Man is slowly transformed into a uroboros, the "tail-eater" who devours himself, from ancient times a symbol of the demon-ridden man. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
139:THE TRUE STUDENT OF OCCULT SCIENCE
The White Magician uses none of the powers of the animal world in his work, but rather seeks to transmute the poles of the beast within himself into higher and finer qualities. The White Magician labors entirely with the finer forces of the elemental planes. He is a builder--not a destroyer--and seeks to liberate rather than to dominate his fellow creatures. The White Magician has dedicated his soul to the immortal light, while the Black Magician has sold his for mortal glory. The Grimores of the Middle Ages are filled with chants and charms for the invoking of spirits. History is filled with stories of Black Magicians but the true student of occult science must have nothing to do with these things other than to protect himself against them. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Natural Occultism, 28,#KEYS
140:Thus slowly I lift man's soul nearer the Light.
But human mind clings to its ignorance
And to its littleness the human heart
And to its right to grief the earthly life.
Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God.
I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;
I bring back hope to the despairing heart;
I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.
I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.
Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth's soil;
Man's mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth
And body bear the immense descent of God."
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
141:With many people custom and habit of which ethics is but the social expression are the things most difficult to give up: and it is a useful practice to break any habit just to get into the way of being free from that form of slavery. Hence we have practices for breaking up sleep, for putting our bodies into strained and unnatural positions, for doing difficult exercises of breathing -- all these, apart from any special merit they may have in themselves for any particular purpose, have the main merit that the man forces himself todo them despite any conditions that may exist. Having conquered internal resistance one may conquer external resistance more easily. In a steam boat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 2, The Wand,#KEYS
142:Medieval alchemy prepared the way for the greatest intervention in the divine world that man has ever attempted: alchemy was the dawn of the scientific age, when the daemon of the scientific spirit compelled the forces of nature to serve man to an extent that had never been known before. It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the "superman" Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche's Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to "create a god for yourself out of your seven devils." Here we find the true roots, the preparatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter. ~ Carl Jung, "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942), CW 13, § 163., #KEYS
143: If everything depends on the Divine intervention, then man is only a puppet and there is no use of sadhana, and there are no conditions, no law of things - therefore no universe, but only the Divine rolling things about at his pleasure. No doubt in the last resort all can be said to be the Divine cosmic working, but it is through persons, through forces that it works - under the conditions of Nature. Special intervention there can be and is, but all cannot be special intervention.
The Divine Grace and Power can do everything, but with the full assent of the sadhak. To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga II, 1.4.01,#KEYS
144:A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space .... Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... The one test of the really weird is simply this - whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
145:Every human acheivement, be it a scientific discovery, a picture, a statue, a temple, a home or a bridge, has to be conceived in the mind first-the plan thought out-before it can be made a reality, and when anything is to be attempted that involves any number of individuals-methods of coordination have to be considered-the methods have to be the best suited for such undertakings are engineering methods-the engineering of an idea towards a complete realization. Every engineer has to know the materials with which he has to work and the natural laws of these materials, as discovered by observation and experiment and formulated by mathematics and mechanics else he can not calculate the forces at his disposal; he can not compute the resistance of his materials; he can not determine the capacity and requirements of his power plant; in short, he can not make the most profitable use of his resources. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
146: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
147:Does this happen even if one has a great aspiration?
The aspiration must be very vigilant.
I have known people (many, not only a few, I mean among those who do yoga), I have known many who, every time they had a fine aspiration, and their aspiration was very strong and they received an answer to this aspiration, every time, the very same day or at the latest the next day, they had a complete setback of consciousness and were facing the exact opposite of their aspiration. Such things happen almost constantly. Well, these people have developed only the positive side. They make a kind of discipline of aspiration, they ask for help, they try to come into contact with higher forces, they succeed in this, they have experiences; but they have completely neglected cleaning their room; it has remained as dirty as ever, and so, naturally, when the experience has gone, this dirt becomes still more repulsive than before. ~ The Mother, 1950-1951, 26 April 1951,#KEYS
148: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
149:Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.
A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe. ~ Nikola Tesla,#KEYS
150:The path of seeking truth within and without is not an easy one. It goes literally against everything we've been told and taught by society and governments. The indoctrination of lies, the conditioning and programming is deep and far reaching. It has been going on for millennia. It takes tremendous effort to wake up from the hypnotic slumber, where most people dream to be awake. At this time of transition, as more and more knowledge is coming to the surface, there is the potential to create a new earth. However, this is also the age of deception for there are forces at work that do not want this to happen. They do their best to vector us away from truth and the most effective way to swallow a lie is to sandwich it between some truth with some emotional hooks. As mentioned many times before, lies are mixed with truth, hence discernment is essential. We need to engage our higher emotional center connecting us to divine intuition and also activate our higher intellect, engaging in sincere, open minded critical thinking, fusing the heart and the mind, mysticism and science. ~ Bernhard Guenther, #KEYS
151: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
152:the supreme third period of greater divine equality :::
If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother. For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#KEYS
153:In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
154:3. Meeting the Mentor:For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance-promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
155:This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers, existences, but it is also the one transcendent Conscious Being and the All-Person of whom all conscious beings are the selves and personalities; for He is their highest Self and the universal indwelling Presence. It is a necessity for the soul in the universe - and therefore the inner trend of the evolutionary Energy and its ultimate intention - to know and to grow into this truth of itself, to become one with the Divine Being, to raise its nature to the Divine Nature, its existence into the Divine Existence, its consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, its delight of being into the divine Delight of Being, and to receive all this into its becoming, to make the becoming an expression of that highest Truth, to be possessed inwardly of the Divine Self and Master of its existence and to be at tthe same time wholly possessed by Him and moved by His Divine Energy and live and act in a complete self-giving and surrender.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, 688,#KEYS
156:Central to shamanism is the perception of an otherworld or series of otherworlds. This type of astral or aetheric dimension containing various powers entities and forces allows real effects to be created in this world. The shaman's soul journeys through this dimension while in ecstatic or drug-induced state of trance. The journey may be undertaken for divinatory knowledge, to cure sickness, to deliver a blow to enemies, or to find game animals. Prospective shamans are usually selected from those with a nervous disposition. They may either be assigned to shamanic instruction or are driven to it by a power present in the shamanic culture. Initiation invokes a journey into the otherworld, a meeting with spirits and a death-rebirth experience. In the deathrebirth experience, the candidate has a vision of his body being dismembered, often by fantastic beings or animal spirits, and then reassembled from the wreckage. The new body invariably contains an extra part often described as an additional bone or an inclusion of magical quartz stones or sometimes an animal spirit. This experience graphically symbolizes the location of the aetheric force field within the body or the addition of various extra powers to it.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
157:And now what methods may be employed to safeguard the worker in the field of the world? What can be done to ensure his safety in the present strife, and in the greater strife of the coming centuries? 1. A realisation that purity of all the vehicles is the prime essential. If a Dark Brother gains control over any man, it but shows that that man has in his life some weak spot.... 2. The elimination of all fear. The forces of evolution vibrate more rapidly than those of involution, and in this fact lies a recognisable security. Fear causes weakness; weakness causes a disintegration; the weak spot breaks and a gap appears, and through that gap evil force may enter.... 3. A standing firm and unmoved, no matter what occurs. Your feet may be bathed in the mud of earth, but your head may be bathed in the sunshine of the higher regions... 4. A recognition of the use of common-sense, and the application of this common-sense to the matter in hand. Sleep much, and in sleeping, learn to render the body positive; keep busy on the emotional plane, and achieve the inner calm. Do naught to overtire the body physical, and play whenever possible. In hours of relaxation comes the adjustment that obviates later tension. ~ Alice A. Bailey, Letters on Occult Meditation p. 137/8, (1922) #KEYS
158:There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve. People not yet sufficiently convinced of this statement could understand it to be meant comparatively only. But for those who are familiar with this phenomenon, it is a reality. If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity. Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in supersensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed. Therefore, it is above all necessary to begin with that the person who enters the spiritual world overcomes fear, feelings of helplessness, despair and anxiety. But these are exactly the feelings that belong to contemporary culture and materialism; because it estranges people from the spiritual world, it is especially suited to evoke hopelessness and fear of the unknown in people, thereby calling up the above mentioned hostile forces against them. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #KEYS
159:The Self, the Divine, the Supreme Reality, the All, the Transcendent, - the One in all these aspects is then the object of Yogic knowledge. Ordinary objects, the external appearances of life and matter, the psychology of out thoughts and actions, the perception of the forces of the apparent world can be part of this knowledge, but only in so far as it is part of the manifestation of the One. It becomes at once evident that the knowledge for which Yoga strives must be different from what men ordinarily understand by the word. For we mean ordinarily by knowledge an intellectual appreciation of the facts of life, mind and matter and the laws that govern them. This is a knowledge founded upon our sense-perception and upon reasoning from our sense-perceptions and it is undertaken partly for the pure satisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical efficiency and the added power which knowledge gives in managing our lives and the lives of others, in utilising for human ends the overt or secret forces of Nature and in helping or hurting, in saving and ennobling or in oppressing and destroying our fellow-men. Yoga, indeed, is commensurate with all life and can include these subjects and objects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
160:If we are religious-minded, perhaps we will see the gods who inhabit this world. Beings, forces, sounds, lights, and rhythms are just so many true forms of the same indefinable, but not unknowable, Essence we call God; we have spoken of God, and made temples, laws or poems to try to capture the one little pulsation filling us with sunshine, but it is free as the wind on foam-flecked shores. We may also enter the world of music, which in fact is not different from the others but a special extension of this same, great inexpressible Vibration. If once, only once, even for a few moments in a lifetime, we can hear that Music, that Joy singing above, we will know what Beethoven and Bach heard; we will know what God is because we will have heard God. We will probably not say anything grandiose; we will just know that That exists, whereupon all the suffering in the world will seem redeemed.
At the extreme summit of the overmind, there only remain great waves of multi-hued light, says the Mother, the play of spiritual forces, which later translate - sometimes much later - into new ideas, social changes, or earthly events, after crossing one by one all the layers of consciousness and suffering a considerable distortion and loss of light...
~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure Of Consciousness,#KEYS
161:The human being is at home and safe in the material body; the body is his protection. There are some who are full of contempt for their bodies and think that things will be much better and easier after death without them. But in fact the body is your fortress and your shelter. While you are lodged in it the forces of the hostile world find it difficult to have a direct hold upon you.... Directly you enter any realm of this [vital] world, its beings gather round you to get out of you all you have, to draw what they can and make it a food and a prey. If you have no strong light and force radiating from within you, you move there without your body as if you had no coat to protect you against a chill and bleak atmosphere, no house to shield you, even no skin covering you, your nerves exposed and bare. There are men who say, 'How unhappy I am in this body', and think of death as an escape! But after death you have the same vital surroundings and are in danger from the same forces that are the cause of your misery in this life....
"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." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, (12 May 1929),#KEYS
162:Supermind and the human mind are a number of ranges, planes or layers of consciousness - one can regard it in various ways - in which the element or substance of mind and consequently its movements also become more and more illumined and powerful and wide. The Overmind is the highest of these ranges; it is full of lights and powers; but from the point of view of what is above it, it is the line of the soul's turning away from the complete and indivisible knowledge and its descent towards the Ignorance. For although it draws from the Truth, it is here that begins the separation of aspects of the Truth, the forces and their working out as if they were independent truths and this is a process that ends, as one descends to ordinary Mind, Life and Matter, in a complete division, fragmentation, separation from the indivisible Truth above. There is no longer the essential, total, perfectly harmonising and unifying knowledge, or rather knowledge for ever harmonious because for ever one, which is the character of Supermind. In the Supermind mental divisions and oppositions cease, the problems created by our dividing and fragmenting mind disappear and Truth is seen as a luminous whole. In the Overmind there is not yet the actual fall into Ignorance, but the first step is taken which will make the fall inevitable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
163:Sometimes when an adverse force attacks us and we come out successful, why are we attacked once again by the same force?
Because something was left inside. We have said that the force can attack only when there is something which responds in the nature - however slight it may be. There is a kind of affinity, something corresponding, there is a disorder or an imperfection which attracts the adverse force by responding to it. So, if the attack comes, you must keep perfectly quiet and send it back, but it does not necessarily follow that you have got rid of that small part in you which allows the attack to come.
You have something in you which attracts this force; take, for example (it is one of the most frequent things), the force of depression, that kind of attack of a wave of depression that falls upon you: you lose confidence, you lose hope, you have the feeling you will never be able to do anything, you are cast down.
It means there is in your vital being something which is naturally egoistic, surely a little vain, which needs encouragement to remain in a good state. So it is like a little signal for those forces which intimates to them: "You can come, the door is open." But there is another part in the being that was watching when these forces arrived; instead of allowing them to enter, the part which... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
164:From above to below, the sefirot depict the drama of emanation, the transition from Ein Sof to creation. In the words of Azriel of Gerona, "They constitute the process by which all things come into being and pass away." From below to above, the sefirot constitute a ladder of ascent back to the One. The union of Tif'eret and Shekhinah gives birth to the human soul, and the mystical journey begins with the awareness of this spiritual fact of life. Shekhinah is the opening to the divine: "One who enters must enter through this gate." Once inside, the sefirot are no longer an abstract theological system; they become a map of consciousness. The mystic climbs and probes, discovering dimensions of being. Spiritual and psychological wholeness is achieved by meditating on the qualities of each sefirah, by imitating and integrating the attributes of God. "When you cleave to the sefirot, the divine holy spirit enters into you, into every sensation and every movement." But the path is not easy. Divine will can be harsh: Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac in order to balance love with rigor. From the Other Side, demonic forces threaten and seduce. [The demonic is rooted in the divine]. Contemplatively and psychologically, evil must be encountered, not evaded. By knowing and withstanding the dark underside of wisdom, the spiritual seeker is refined.~ Daniel C Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, 10, #KEYS
165:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
Uplift the stature of the human clay
Or slowly transmute it into heavens gold.
He is the Good for which men fight and die,
He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;
He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;
He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass
Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade
Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.
He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame
And the glad resignation of the saint
And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time
And the heros might wrestling with death and fate.
He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
And the calm autocracy of the sages rule.
He is the high and solitary Thought
Aloof above the ignorant multitude:
He is the prophets voice, the sight of the seer.
He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.
He is the riches of the spiritual Vast
Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;
He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,
He is infinity in a little space:
He is immortality in the arms of death.
These powers I am and at my call they come.
Thus slowly I lift mans soul nearer the Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
166:What is one to do to prepare oneself for the Yoga?
To be conscious, first of all. We are conscious of only an insignificant portion of our being; for the most part we are unconscious.
It is this unconsciousness that keeps us down to our unregenerate nature and prevents change and transformation in it. It is through unconsciousness that the undivine forces enter into us and make us their slaves. You are to be conscious of yourself, you must awake to your nature and movements, you must know why and how you do things or feel or think them; you must understand your motives and impulses, the forces, hidden and apparent, that move you; in fact, you must, as it were, take to pieces the entire machinery of your being. Once you are conscious, it means that you can distinguish and sift things, you can see which are the forces that pull you down and which help you on. And when you know the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the divine from the undivine, you are to act strictly up to your knowledge; that is to say, resolutely reject one and accept the other. The duality will present itself at every step and at every step you will have to make your choice. You will have to be patient and persistent and vigilant - "sleepless", as the adepts say; you must always refuse to give any chance whatever to the undivine against the divine. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
167:the fourth aid, time, kala :::
The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
168:To see life steadily and see it whole is only permitted to a Perfect and Infinite Consciousness standing outside Time, Space and Conditions. To such a divine Vision the working out of preordainment may present itself as a perfect, immediate and unhindered consummation. God said, 'Let there be Light' and, straightway,there was Light; and when the Light came into being, God saw that it was good. But to the imperfect finite consciousness, Light seems in its inception to have come into being by a slow material evolution completed by a fortuitous shock of forces; in its operation to be lavished with a prodigal wastefulness since only a small part is used for the purposes of life; in its presentation to be conveyed to a blinking and limited vision, hampered by obstacles and chequered with darkness. Limitation, imperfection, progression and retrogression are inseparable from phenomenal work, phenomenal intelligence, phenomenal pleasure and satisfaction. To Brahman the Will who measures all Time in a moment, covers all Space with one stride, embraces the whole chain of causation in one glance, there is no limitation, imperfection, progression or retrogression. He looks upon his work as a whole and sees that it is good. But the Gods cannot reach to His completeness, even though they toil after it; for ever He outruns their pursuit, moving far in front. Brahman, standing still, overtakes and passes the others as they run.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,#KEYS
169:In a letter the question raised was: "Is not all action incompatible with Sri Aurobindo's yoga"?
Sri Aurobindo: His idea that all action is incompatible with this yoga is not correct. Generally, it is found that all Rajasic activity does not go well with this yoga: for instance, political work.
The reasons for abstaining from political activity are:
1. Being Rajasic in its nature, it does not allow that quiet and knowledge on the basis of which the work should really proceed. All action requires a certain inner formation, an inner detached being. The formation of this inner being requires one to dive into the depth of the being, get the true Being and then prepare the true Being to come to the surface. It is then that one acquires a poise - an inner poise - and can act from there. Political work by Rajasic activity which draws the being outwards prevents this inner formation.
2. The political field, together with certain other fields, is the stronghold of the Asuric forces. They have their eye on this yoga, and they would try to hamper the Sadhana by every means. By taking to the political field you get into a plane where these forces hold the field. The possibility of attack in that field is much greater than in others. These Asuric forces try to lead away the Sadhaka from the path by increasing Kama and Krodha - desire and anger, and such other Rajasic impulses. They may throw him permanently into the sea of Rajasic activity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO#KEYS 170:[the value of sublimation:]
And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour.
In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, [71] [T1],#KEYS
171:The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again-if the powers have remained unfriendly to him-his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir). ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Keys, #KEYS
172:science of consciousness, the soul and objective matter :::
When the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in themselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought, proceeded at once to a process which resembles exactly enough the process adopted by modern science in its study of physical phenomena. For their object was to study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical Sciences study, arrange and utilize the forms, forces and working movements of objective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle, flexible and versatile than the most impalpable forces of which the physical Sciences have become aware; its motions were more elusive, its processes harder to fix; but once grasped and ascertained, the movements of consciousness were found by Vedic psychologists to be in their process and activity as regular, manageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The powers of the soul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly directed to practical life-purposes of joy, power and light as the modern power of electricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and physical illumination; but the results to which they give room and effect are more wonderful and momentous than the results of motorpower and electric luminosity. For there is no difference of essential law in the physical and the psychical, but only a difference and undoubtedly a great difference of energy, instrumentation and exact process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Towards a True Scientific Psychology, 106,#KEYS
173:...that personality, like consciousness, life, soul is not a brief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning of existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes aware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous place and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this occult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading consciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the device of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere. Above all stands an infinite conscious Being who is variously self-expressed in all these worlds; impersonality is only a first means of that expression. It is a field of principles and forces, an equal basis of manifestation; but these forces express themselves through beings, have conscious spirits at their head and are the emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their sorce. A multiple innumberable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim of the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite. Thus the world-creation is no more an illusion, a fortuitous mechanism, a play that need not have happened, a flux without consequence; it is an intimate dynamism of the conscious and living Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice, 127,#KEYS
174:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
175:Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo is speaking about occult endeavour here and says that those who don't have the capacity must wait till it is given to them. Can't they get it through practice?
No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn't have occult power, he may try for fifty years, he won't get anywhere. Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can't. It is a question of temperament.
What is the difference between occultism and mysticism?
They are not at all the same thing.
Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power - that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.
Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientific; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or find them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can find them. There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
176:principle of Yogic methods :::
Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and function to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the raionale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, Life and Yoga,#KEYS
177:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,
- some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
178:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows, - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,#KEYS
179:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,#KEYS
180:
Sweet Mother, here it is written: "There is a Yoga-Shakti lying coiled or asleep..." How can it be awakened?
I think it awakens quite naturally the moment one takes the resolution to do the yoga. If the resolution is sincere and one has an aspiration, it wakes up by itself.
In fact, it is perhaps its awakening which gives the aspiration to do yoga.
It is possible that it is a result of the Grace... or after some conversation or reading, something that has suddenly given you the idea and aspiration to know what yoga is and to practise it. Sometimes just a simple conversation with someone is enough or a passage one reads from a book; well, it awakens this Yoga-Shakti and it is this which makes you do your yoga.
One is not aware of it at first - except that something has changed in our life, a new decision is taken, a turning.
What is it, this Yoga-Shakti, Sweet Mother?
It is the energy of progress. It is the energy which makes you do the yoga, precisely, makes you progress - consciously. It is a conscious energy.
In fact, the Yoga-Shakti is the power to do yoga.
Sweet Mother, isn't it more difficult to draw the divine forces from below?
I think it is absolutely useless.
Some people think that there are more reserves of energy - I have heard this very often: a great reserve of energy - in the earth, and that if they draw this energy into themselves they will be able to do things; but it is always mixed.
The divine Presence is everywhere, that's well understood. And in fact, there is neither above nor below. What is called above and below, I think that is rather the expression of a degree of consciousness or a degree of materiality; there is the more unconscious and the less unconscious, there is what is subconscious and what is superconscious, and so we say above and below for the facility of speech.
But in fact, the idea is to draw from the energies of the earth which, when you are standing up, are under your feet, that is, below in relation to you. But these energies are always mixed, and mostly they are terribly dark.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955,#KEYS
181:It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances.We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it would still have been difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of Will and tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive to his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration,-Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Ego and the Dualities, #KEYS
182:I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural - though not inevitable - on the way, - not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. . . .
The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at least at the beginning, or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. I admit that if borne in that way the attacks of the Dark Forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difficulties in ourselves which we have to overcome and to say, "Here you must conquer us and here."
But all the same it is a too dark and difficult way which nobody should follow on whom the necessity does not lie.
In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, "I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga." And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like X (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years etc. These are clear formations of the Dark Forces seeking not only to sterilise your aspiration but to lead you away and so prevent your sharing in the fruit of the victory hereafter. I do not know what Krishnaprem has said but his injunction, if you have rightly understood it, is one that cannot stand as valid, since so many have done Yoga relying on tapasya or anything else but not confident of any Divine Grace. It is not that, but the soul's demand for a higher Truth or a higher life that is indispensable. Where that is, the Divine Grace whether believed in or not, will intervene. If you believe, that hastens and facilitates things; if you cannot yet believe, still the soul's aspiration will justify itself with whatever difficulty and struggle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
183:The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order. Moreover, we find that inwardly too, no less than outwardly, we are not alone in the world; the sharp separateness of our ego was no more than a strong imposition and delusion; we do not exist in ourselves, we do not really live apart in an inner privacy or solitude. Our mind is a receiving, developing and modifying machine into which there is being constantly passed from moment to moment a ceaseless foreign flux, a streaming mass of disparate materials from above, from below, from outside. Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use offer the manifestation of their forms and forces. The difficulty of our separate salvation is immensely increased by this complexity and manifold openness and subjection to tile in-streaming energies of the universe. Of all this we have to take account, to deal with it, to know what is the secret stuff of our nature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 1.02, #KEYS
184: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
185:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138, #KEYS
186:the three stages of the ascent :::
There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,#KEYS
187:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS
188: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
189:A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. How is it to be dealt with?—for such arrests are inevitably frequent enough, not only for you, but for everyone who is a seeker; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest—at least, that is a very common, if not a universal experience. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of the obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished,—for that cannot be at this stage,—but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here too the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.
On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties impedes the recovery, prolongs the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence. It is an attitude whose persistence or recurrence you must resolutely throw aside if you want to get over the obstruction which you feel so much—which the depressed attitude only makes, while it lasts, more acute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, LOY4, Imperfections and Periods of Arrest,#KEYS
190:This is true in a general way; when those born scattered over the world at great distances from one another are driven by circumstances or by an impulsion to come and gather here, it is almost always because they have met in one life or another (not all in the same life) and because their psychic being has felt that they belonged to the same family; so they have taken an inner vow to continue to act together and collaborate. That is why even though they are born far from one another, there is something which compels them to come together; it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness that is behind. And only to the extent the psychic consciousness is strong enough to order and organise the circumstances or the life, that is, strong enough not to allow itself to be opposed by outside forces, outside life movements, can people meet.
It is profoundly true in reality; there are large "families of beings" who work for the same cause, who have gathered in more or less large numbers and who come in groups as it were. It is as though at certain times there were awakenings in the psychic world, as though lots of little sleeping children were being called to wake up: "It is time, quick, quick, go down!" And they hurry down. And sometimes they do not drop at the same place, they are dispersed, yet there is something within which troubles them, pushes them; for one reason or another they are drawn close and that brings them together. But it is something deep in the being, something that is not at all on the surface; otherwise, even if people met they would not perhaps become aware of the bond. People meet and recognise each other only to the extent they become conscious of their psychic being, obey their psychic being, are guided by it; otherwise there is all that comes in to oppose it, all that veils, all that stupefies, all those obstacles to prevent you from finding yourself in your depths and being able to collaborate truly in the work. You are tossed about by the forces of Nature.
There is only one solution, to find your psychic being and once it is found to cling to it desperately, to let it guide you step by step whatever be the obstacle. That is the only solution. All this I did not write but I explained it to that lady. She had put to me the question: "How did I happen to come here?" I told her that it was certainly not for reasons of the external consciousness, it was something in her inner being that had pushed her. Only the awakening was not strong enough to overcome all the rest and she returned to the ordinary life for very ordinary reasons of living. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
191:Disciple: What are the conditions of success in this yoga?
Sri Aurobindo: I have often told of them. Those go through who have the central sincerity. It does not mean that the sincerity is there in all the parts of the being. In that sense no one is entirely ready. But if the central sincerity is there it is possible to establish it in all the parts of the being.
The second thing necessary is a certain receptivity in the being, what we call, the "opening" up of all the planes to the Higher Power.
The third thing required is the power of holding the higher Force, a certain ghanatwa - mass - that can hold the Power when it comes down.
And about the thing that pushes there are two things that generally push: One is the Central Being. The other is destiny. If the Central Being wants to do something it pushes the man. Even when the man goes off the line he is pushed back again to the path. Of course, the Central Being may push through the mind or any other part of the being. Also, if the man is destined he is pushed to the path either to go through or to get broken,
Disciple: There are some people who think they are destined or chosen and we see that they are not "chosen".
Sri Aurobindo: Of course, plenty of people think that they are specially "chosen" and that they are the first and the "elect" and so on. All that is nothing.
Disciple: Then, can you. say who is fit out of all those that have come?
Sri Aurobindo: It is very difficult to say. But this can be said that everyone of those who have come in has some chance to go through if he can hold on to it.
Disciple: There is also a chance of failure.
Sri Aurobindo: Of course, and besides, the whole universe is a play of forces and one can't always wait till all the conditions of success have been fulfilled. One has to take risks and take his chance.
Disciple: What is meant by "chance"? Does it mean that it is only one possibility out of many others, or does it mean that one would be able to succeed in yoga?
Sri Aurobindo: It means only that he can succeed if he takes his chance properly. For instance, X had his chance.
Disciple: Those who fall on the path or slip, do they go down in their evolution?
Sri Aurobindo: That depends. Ultimately, the Yoga may be lost to him.
Disciple: The Gita says: Na hi kalyānkṛt - nothing that is beneficial - comes to a bad end.
Sri Aurobindo: That is from another standpoint. You must note the word is kalyān kṛt - it is an important addition.
~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, RECORDED BY A B PURANI (20-09-1926),#KEYS
192:The Examiners
The integral yoga consists of an uninterrupted series of examinations that one has to undergo without any previous warning, thus obliging you to be constantly on the alert and attentive.
Three groups of examiners set us these tests. They appear to have nothing to do with one another, and their methods are so different, sometimes even so apparently contradictory, that it seems as if they could not possibly be leading towards the same goal. Nevertheless, they complement one another, work towards the same end, and are all indispensable to the completeness of the result.
The three types of examination are: those set by the forces of Nature, those set by spiritual and divine forces, and those set by hostile forces. These last are the most deceptive in their appearance and to avoid being caught unawares and unprepared requires a state of constant watchfulness, sincerity and humility.
The most commonplace circumstances, the events of everyday life, the most apparently insignificant people and things all belong to one or other of these three kinds of examiners. In this vast and complex organisation of tests, those events that are generally considered the most important in life are the easiest examinations to undergo, because they find you ready and on your guard. It is easier to stumble over the little stones in your path, because they attract no attention.
Endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness are the qualities specially needed for the examinations of physical nature.
Aspiration, trust, idealism, enthusiasm and generous self-giving, for spiritual examinations.
Vigilance, sincerity and humility for the examinations from hostile forces.
And do not imagine that there are on the one hand people who undergo the examinations and on the other people who set them. Depending on the circumstances and the moment we are all both examiners and examinees, and it may even happen that one is at the same time both examiner and examinee. And the benefit one derives from this depends, both in quality and in quantity, on the intensity of one's aspiration and the awakening of one's consciousness.
To conclude, a final piece of advice: never set yourself up as an examiner. For while it is good to remember constantly that one may be undergoing a very important examination, it is extremely dangerous to imagine that one is responsible for setting examinations for others. That is the open door to the most ridiculous and harmful kinds of vanity. It is the Supreme Wisdom which decides these things, and not the ignorant human will. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
193:10000 :::
The Only Way Out:
... Once you have no more desires, no more attachments, once you have given up all necessity of receiving a reward from human beings, whoever they are - knowing that the only reward that is worth getting is the one that comes from the Supreme and that never fails - once you give up attachment to all exterior beings and things, you at once feel in your heart this Presence, this Force, this Grace that is always with you. And there is no other remedy. It's the only remedy, for everybody without exception. To all those who suffer, for the same thing that has to be said: all suffering is the sign that the surrender is not total. Then, when you feel in you a 'bang' like that, instead of saying, 'Oh, this is bad' or 'This circumstance is difficult,' you say, 'My surrender is not perfect.' Then it's all right. And then you feel the Grace that helps you and leads you, and you go on. And one day you emerge into that peace that nothing can trouble.
You answer to all the contrary forces, the contrary movements, the attacks, the misunderstandings, the bad wills, with the same smile that comes from full confidence in the Divine Grace. And that is the only way out, there is no other.
But where to get such a strength?
Within you. The Divine Presence is in you. It is in you. You look for it outside; look inside. It is in you. The Presence is there. You want the appreciation of others to get strength - you will never get it. The strength is in you. If you want, you can aspire for what seems to you the supreme goal, supreme light, supreme knowledge, supreme love. But it is in you - otherwise you would never be able to contact it. If you go deep enough inside you, you will find it there, like a flame that is always burning straight up. And don't believe that it is difficult to do. It is because the look is always turned outside that you don't feel the Presence. But if, instead of looking outside for support, you concentrate and you pray - inside, to the supreme knowledge - to know at each moment what is to be done, the way to do it, and if you give all you are, all you do in order to acquire perfection, you will feel that the support is always there, always guiding, showing the way. And if there is a difficulty, then instead of wanting to fight, you hand it over, hand it over to the supreme wisdom to deal with it - to deal with all the bad wills, all the misunderstandings, all the bad reactions. If you surrender completely, it is no more your concern: it's the concern of the Supreme who takes it up and knows better than anybody else what is to be done. That is the only way out, only way out. There, my child
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, [T1],#KEYS
194:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
195:
Sweet Mother, is there a spiritual being in everybody?
That depends on what we call "being". If for "being" we substitute "presence", yes, there is a spiritual presence in everyone. If we call "being" an organised entity, fully conscious of itself, independent, and having the power of asserting itself and ruling the rest of the nature - no! The possibility of this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives.
In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there.... In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection, something which, even in half-consciousness, makes possible a certain harmony with the rest of creation so that irreparable catastrophes may not be constant and general. Without this presence the disorder created by the violences and passions of the vital would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light - which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness - is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished.
And this presence becomes quite obvious in the human being, even the most rudimentary. Even in the most monstrous human being, in one who gives the impression of being an incarnation of a devil or a monster, there is something within exercising a sort of irresistible control - even in the worst, some things are impossible. And without this presence, if the being were controlled exclusively by the adverse forces, the forces of the vital, this impossibility would not exist.
Each time a wave of these monstrous adverse forces sweeps over the earth, one feels that nothing can ever stop the disorder and horror from spreading, and always, at a certain time, unexpectedly and inexplicably a control intervenes, and the wave is arrested, the catastrophe is not total. And this is because of the Presence, the supreme Presence, in matter.
But only in a few exceptional beings and after a long, very long work of preparation extending over many, many lives does this Presence change into a conscious, independent, fully organised being, all-powerful master of his dwelling-place, conscious enough, powerful enough, to be able to control not only this dwelling but what surrounds it and in a field of radiation and action that is more and more extensive... and effective.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, 339-340,#KEYS
196:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,#KEYS
197: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
198:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],#KEYS
199:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS
200:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#KEYS
201:On that spring day in the park I saw a young woman who attracted me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had an intelligent and boyish face. I liked her at once. She was my type and began to fill my imagination. She probably was not much older than I but seemed far more mature, well-defined, a full-grown woman, but with a touch of exuberance and boyishness in her face, and this was what I liked above all .
I had never managed to approach a girl with whom I had fallen in love, nor did I manage in this case. But the impression she made on me was deeper than any previous one had been and the infatuation had a profound influence on my life.
Suddenly a new image had risen up before me, a lofty and cherished image. And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me as the craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice, for, even though I had not read Dante, I knew about Beatrice from an English painting of which I owned a reproduction. It showed a young pre-Raphaelite woman, long-limbed and slender, with long head and etherealized hands and features. My beautiful young woman did not quite resemble her, even though she, too, revealed that slender and boyish figure which I loved, and something of the ethereal, soulful quality of her face.
Although I never addressed a single word to Beatrice, she exerted a profound influence on me at that time. She raised her image before me, she gave me access to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple.
From one day to the next I stayed clear of all bars and nocturnal exploits. I could be alone with myself again and enjoyed reading and going for long walks.
My sudden conversion drew a good deal of mockery in its wake. But now I had something I loved and venerated, I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image.
I find it difficult to think back to that time without a certain fondness. Once more I was trying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period of devastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil from myself. And, furthermore, this present "world of light" was to some extent my own creation; it was no longer an escape, no crawling back to -nether and the safety of irresponsibility; it was a new duty, one I had invented and desired on my own, with responsibility and self-control. My sexuality, a torment from which I was in constant flight, was to be transfigured nto spirituality and devotion by this holy fire. Everything :brk and hateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious picures, no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, :.. and by consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of life which I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.
This cult of Beatrice completely changed my life.
~ Hermann Hesse, Demian,#KEYS
202:At it's narrowest (although this is a common and perhaps the official position; need to find ref in What is Enlightenment) "integral", "turquois" (Spiral Dynamics), and "second tier" (ditto) are all synonms, and in turn are equivalent to Wilber IV / AQAL/Wilber V "Post-metaphysical" AQAL. This is the position that "Integral = Ken Wilber". It constitutes a new philosophical school or meme-set, in the tradition of charismatic spiritual teachers of all ages, in which an articulate, brilliant, and popular figure would arise, and gather a following around him- or her-self. After the teacher passes on, their teaching remains through books and organisations dedicated to perpetuating that teaching; although without the brilliant light of the Founder, things generally become pretty stultifying, and there is often little or no original development. Even so, the books themselves continue to inspire, and many people benefit greatly from these tecahings, and can contact the original Light of the founders to be inspired by them on the subtle planes. Some late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century examples of such teachers, known and less well-known, are Blavatsky, Theon, Steiner, Aurobindo, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Alice Bailey, Carl Jung, Ann Ree Colton, and now Ken Wilber. Also, many popular gurus belong in this category. It could plausibly be suggested that the founders of the great world religions started out no different, but their teaching really caught on n a big way.
...
At its broadest then, the Integral Community includes not only Wilber but those he cites as his influences and hold universal and evolutionary views or teachings, as well as those who, while influenced by him also differ somewhat, and even those like Arthur M Young that Wilber has apparently never heard of. Nevertheless, all share a common, evolutionary, "theory of everything" position, and, whilst they may differ on many details and even on many major points, taken together they could be considered a wave front for a new paradigm, a memetic revolution. I use the term Daimon of the Integral Movement to refer to the spiritual being or personality of light that is behind and working through this broader movement.
Now, this doesn't mean that this daimon is necessarily a negative entity. I see a lot of promise, a lot of potential, in the Integral Approach. From what I feel at the moment, the Integral Deva is a force and power of good.
But, as with any new spiritual or evolutionary development, there is duality, in that there are forces that hinder and oppose and distort, as well as forces that help and aid in the evolution and ultimate divinisation of the Earth and the cosmos. Thus even where a guru does give in the dark side (as very often happens with many gurus today) there still remains an element of Mixed Light that remains (one finds this ambiguity with Sai Baba, with Da Free John, and with Rajneesh); and we find this same ambiguity with the Integral Community regarding what seems to me a certain offputting devotional attitude towards Wilber himself. The light will find its way, regardless. However, an Intregral Movement that is caught up in worship of and obedience to an authority figure, will not be able to achieve what a movement unfettered by such shackles could. ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, Wilber, Integral,#KEYS
203: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
204:There is no invariable rule of such suffering. It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt - which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them. This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form - opposition, calumny, attacks, persecution, misfortunes of many kinds, adverse conditions and circumstances, pain, illness, assaults from men or forces. There too the possibility of suffering is evident. There are two ways to meet all that - first that of the Self, calm, equality, a spirit, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within, calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a channel of the Divine Consciousness and Force, one without, still encroached on by the lower Nature; but then the disturbances of the latter become something superficial which are no more than an outer ripple, - until these under the inner pressure fade and sink away and the outer being too remains calm, concentrated, unattackable. There is also the way of the psychic, - when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-giving, surrender and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward. If the psychic is strong and master...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, 669,#KEYS
205:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
206:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183, #KEYS
207:Sometimes one cannot distinguish adverse forces from other forces.
That happens when one is quite unconscious. There are only two cases when this is possible: you are either very unconscious of the movements of your being - you have not studied, you have not observed, you do not know what is happening within you - or you are absolutely insincere, that is, you play the ostrich in order not to see the reality of things: you hide your head, you hide your observation, your knowledge and you say, "It is not there." But indeed the latter I hope is not in question here. Hence it is simply because one has not the habit of observing oneself that one is so unconscious of what is happening within.
Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up; it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discoveR But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning.
Simply observe. You are in a certain condition, a certain undefinable condition. Then look: "What! how is it I am like that?" You try to see first if you have fever or some other illness; but it is all right, everything is all right, there's neither headache nor fever, the stomach is not protesting, the heart is functioning as it should, indeed, all's well, you are normal. "Why then am I feeling so uneasy?"... So you go a little further within. It depends on cases. Sometimes you find out immediately: yes, there was a little incident which wasn't pleasant, someone said a word that was not happy or one had failed in his task or perhaps did not know one's lesson very well, the teacher had made a remark. At the time, one did not pay attention properly, but later on, it begins to work, leaves a painful impression. That is the second stage. Afterwards, if nothing happened: "All's well, everything is normal, everything usual, I have nothing to note down, nothing has happened: why then do I feel like that?" Now it begins to be interesting, because one must enter much more deeply within oneself. And then it can be all sorts of things: it may be precisely the expression of an attack that is preparing; it may be a little inner anxiety seeking the progress that has to be made; it may be a premonition that there is somewhere in contact with oneself something not altogether harmonious which one has to change: something one must see, discover, change, on which light is to be put, something that is still there, deep down, and which should no longer be there. Then if you look at yourself very carefully, you find out: "There! I am still like that; in that little corner, there is still something of that kind, not clear: a little selfishness, a little ill-will, something refusing to change." So you see it, you take it by the tip of its nose or by the ear and hold it up in full light: "So, you were hiding! you are hiding? But I don't want you any longer." And then it has to go away.
This is a great progress.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 102-104, [T4],#KEYS
208:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
209::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#KEYS
210:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
211:Sweet Mother, how can we make our resolution very firm?
By wanting it to be very firm! (Laughter)
No, this seems like a joke... but it is absolutely true. One does not want it truly. There is always, if you... It is a lack of sincerity. If you look sincerely, you will see that you have decided that it will be like this, and then, beneath there is something which has not decided at all and is waiting for the second of hesitation in order to rush forward. If you are sincere, if you are sincere and get hold of the part which is hiding, waiting, not showing itself, which knows that there will come a second of indecision when it can rush out and make you do the thing you have decided not to do...
[] But if you really want it, nothing in the world can prevent you from doing what you want. It is because one doesn't know how to will it. It is because one is divided in one's will. If you are not divided in your will, I say that nothing, nobody in the world can make you change your will.
But one doesn't know how to will it. In fact one doesn't even want to. These are velleities: "Well, it is like this.... It would be good if it were like that... yes, it would be better if it were like that... yes, it would be preferable if it were like that." But this is not to will. And always there at the back, hidden somewhere in a corner of the brain, is something which is looking on and saying, "Oh, why should I want that? After all one can as well want the opposite." And to try, you see... Not like that, just wait... But one can always find a thousand excuses to do the opposite. And ah, just a tiny little wavering is enough... pftt... the thing swoops down and there it is. But if one wills, if one really knows that this is the thing, and truly wants this, and if one is oneself entirely concentrated in the will, I say that there is nothing in the world that can prevent one from doing it, from doing it or being obliged to do it. It depends on what it is.
One wants. Yes, one wants, like this (gestures). One wants: "Yes, yes, it would be better if it were like that. Yes, it would be finer also, more elegant."... But, eh, eh, after all one is a weak creature, isn't that so? And then one can always put the blame upon something else: "It is the influence coming from outside, it is all kinds of circumstances."
A breath has passed, you see. You don't know... something... a moment of unconsciousness... "Oh, I was not conscious." You are not conscious because you do not accept... And all this because you don't know how to will.
[] To learn how to will is a very important thing. And to will truly, you must unify your being. In fact, to be a being, one must first unify oneself. If one is pulled by absolutely opposite tendencies, if one spends three-fourths of one's life without being conscious of oneself and the reasons why one does things, is one a real being? One does not exist. One is a mass of influences, movements, forces, actions, reactions, but one is not a being. One begins to become a being when one begins to have a will. And one can't have a will unless one is unified.
And when you have a will, you will be able to say, say to the Divine: "I want what You want." But not before that. Because in order to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will, otherwise you can will nothing at all. You would like to. You would like it very much. You would very much like to want what the Divine wants to do. You don't possess a will to give to Him and to put at His service. Something like that, gelatinous, like jelly-fish... there... a mass of good wills - and I am considering the better side of things and forgetting the bad wills - a mass of good wills, half-conscious and fluctuating....
Ah, that's all, my children. That's enough for today. There we are.
Only, put this into practice; just a little of what I have said, not all, eh, just a very little. There.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
212:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
213: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
214:
In the lower planes can't one say what will happen at a particular moment?
That depends. On certain planes there are consciousnesses that form, that make formations and try to send them down to earth and manifest them. These are planes where the great forces are at play, forces struggling with each other to organise things in one way or another. On these planes all the possibilities are there, all the possibilities that present themselves but have not yet come to a decision as to which will come down.... Suppose a plane full of the imaginations of people who want certain things to be realised upon earth - they invent a novel, narrate stories, produce all kinds of phenomena; it amuses them very much. It is a plane of form-makers and they are there imagining all kinds of circumstances and events; they play with the forces; they are like the authors of a drama and they prepare everything there and see what is going to happen. All these formations are facing each other; and it is those which are the strongest, the most successful or the most persistent or those that have the advantage of a favourable set of circumstances which dominate. They meet and out of the conflict yet another thing results: you lose one thing and take up another, you make a new combination; and then all of a sudden, you find, pluff! it is coming down. Now, if it comes down with a sufficient force, it sets moving the earth atmosphere and things combine; as for instance, when with your fist you thump the saw-dust, you know surely what happens, don't you? You lift your hand, give a formidable blow: all the dust gets organised around your fist. Well, it is like that. These formations come down into matter with that force, and everything organises itself automatically, mechanically as around the striking fist. And there's your wished object about to be realised, sometimes with small deformations because of the resistance, but it will be realised finally, even as the person narrating the story up above wanted it more or less to be realised. If then you are for some reason or other in the secret of the person who has constructed the story and if you follow the way in which he creates his path to reach down to the earth and if you see how a blow with the fist acts on earthly matter, then you are able to tell what is going to happen, because you have seen it in the world above, and as it takes some time to make the whole journey, you see in advance. And the higher you rise, the more you foresee in advance what is going to happen. And if you pass far beyond, go still farther, then everything is possible.
It is an unfolding that follows a wide road which is for you unknowable; for all will be unfolded in the universe, but in what order and in what way? There are decisions that are taken up there which escape our ordinary consciousness, and so it is very difficult to foresee. But there also, if you enter consciously and if you can be present up there... How shall I explain that to you? All is there, absolute, static, eternal: but all that will be unfolded in the material world, naturally more or less one thing after another; for in the static existence all can be there, but in the becoming all becomes in time, that is, one thing after another. Well, what path will the unfolding follow? Up there is the domain of absolute freedom.... Who says that a sufficiently sincere aspiration, a sufficiently intense prayer is not capable of changing the path of the unfolding?
This means that all is possible.
Now, one must have a sufficient aspiration and a prayer that's sufficiently intense. But that has been given to human nature. It is one of the marvellous gifts of grace given to human nature; only, one does not know how to make use of it. This comes to saying that in spite of the most absolute determinisms in the horizontal line, if one knows how to cross all these horizontal lines and reach the highest Point of consciousness, one is able to make things change, things apparently absolutely determined. So you may call it by any name you like, but it is a kind of combination of an absolute determinism with an absolute freedom. You may pull yourself out of it in any way you like, but it is like that.
I forgot to say in that book (perhaps I did not forget but just felt that it was useless to say it) that all these theories are only theories, that is, mental conceptions which are merely more or less imaged representations of the reality; but it is not the reality at all. When you say "determinism" and when you say "freedom", you say only words and all that is only a very incomplete, very approximate and very weak description of what is in reality within you, around you and everywhere; and to be able to begin to understand what the universe is, you must come out of your mental formulas, otherwise you will never understand anything.
To tell the truth, if you live only a moment, just a tiny moment, of this absolutely sincere aspiration or this sufficiently intense prayer, you will know more things than by meditating for hours.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
215: Sri Aurobindo writes here: "...Few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour." Why?
(1 "The Way", Cent. Vol. 17, p. 40.)
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, "Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty", and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, "Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen", whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul.... After all, it is perhaps a means, isn't it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this "horror" facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, "Here I am."
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, "I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal"; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - It is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
So, the conclusion:
One must never wish for death.
One must never will to die.
One must never be afraid to die.
And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.353-355,#KEYS
216:[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
217:The Two Paths Of Yoga :::
14 April 1929 - What are the dangers of Yoga? Is it especially dangerous to the people of the West? Someone has said that Yoga may be suitable for the East, but it has the effect of unbalancing the Western mind.
Yoga is not more dangerous to the people of the West than to those of the East. Everything depends upon the spirit with which you approach it. Yoga does become dangerous if you want it for your own sake, to serve a personal end. It is not dangerous, on the contrary, it is safety and security itself, if you go to it with a sense of its sacredness, always remembering that the aim is to find the Divine.
Dangers and difficulties come in when people take up Yoga not for the sake of the Divine, but because they want to acquire power and under the guise of Yoga seek to satisfy some ambition. if you cannot get rid of ambition, do not touch the thing. It is fire that burns.
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
If you take up this path of surrender fully and sincerely, there is no more danger or serious difficulty. The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga. If you were dealing in human affairs, then you could resort to deception; but in dealing with the Divine there is no possibility of deception anywhere. You can go on the Path safely when you are candid and open to the core and when your only end is to realise and attain the Divine and to be moved by the Divine. There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, "I don't want it, I don't want it", the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned. The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them. If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires. There are many self-appointed Masters, who do nothing but that. And then when you are off the straight path and when you have a little knowledge and not much power, it happens that you are seized by beings or entities of a certain type, you become blind instruments in their hands and are devoured by them in the end. Wherever there is pretence, there is danger; you cannot deceive God. Do you come to God saying, "I want union with you" and in your heart meaning "I want powers and enjoyments"? Beware! You are heading straight towards the brink of the precipice. And yet it is so easy to avoid all catastrophe. Become like a child, give yourself up to the Mother, let her carry you, and there is no more danger for you.
This does not mean that you have not to face other kinds of difficulties or that you have not to fight and conquer any obstacles at all. Surrender does not ensure a smooth and unruffled and continuous progression. The reason is that your being is not yet one, nor your surrender absolute and complete. Only a part of you surrenders; and today it is one part and the next day it is another. The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity. Till then you cannot hope to be without difficulties - difficulties, for example, like doubt or depression or hesitation. The whole world is full of the poison. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. It is sufficient for you to come near a place where there is plague in order to be infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
218:Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, "This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime." As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: "I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty." There are some other difficulties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hours - perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months - says to itself: "We haven't gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn't this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing." And then, if one pushes a little more, here's this gentleman saying, "Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don't want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won't trouble you, but don't bother me!" And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, "My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me." And to the other, the enthusiast who says, "Everything must be done now, immediately", your reply is, "Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' wholeheartedly."
So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way. Suddenly one thinks one has overcome an obstacle; I say "thinks", because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to flare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly. (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.) One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, "Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again", one begins to laugh and says, "Well, well! One hasn't yet seen the end of it. Look now, aren't you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous! Is it worthwhile getting angry?" One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn't get angry again, it is quiet - and one relaxes one's attention. One thinks the difficulty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: "My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going fine." And the next day, one loses one's temper. It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, "Here we are, it's no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible." On the contrary, one must say, "I wasn't vigilant enough." One must wait long, very long, before one can say, "Ah! It is done and finished." Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....
I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance - for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being - a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done overnight? And your body?... You have a weakness, a difficulty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn't it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is finished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can't control themselves or almost can't. It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, "I am going to control this." One makes an effort - a yogic effort, not a material one - one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, "The body has forgotten how to cough." And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, "I am cured." But unfortunately it is not always true, for this goes down into the subconscient and, one day, when the balance of forces is not so well established, when the strength is not the same, it begins again. And one laments, "I believed that it was over! I had succeeded and told myself, 'It is true that spiritual power has an action upon the body, it is true that something can be done', and there! it is not true. And yet it was a small thing, and I who want to conquer immortality! How will I succeed?... For years I have been free from this small thing and here it is beginning anew!" It is then that you must be careful. You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, "I want to do yoga", I reply, "Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed." I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
219:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
220:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
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221: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
222:The Supreme Discovery
IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
The ancient traditions rightly said:
"Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
On this a sage has said:
"I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Society forces you to conform. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 2:Writing forces consciousness. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 3:I believe in divine forces and energies. ~ richard-pryor, @wisdomtrove 4:Great results, can be achieved with small forces. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 5:The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 6:The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 7:We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 8:Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 9:A politician is not as narrow-minded as he forces himself to be. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 10:He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 11:You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 12:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 13:When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 14:Few people realize the profound part angelic forces play in human events. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 15:In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 16:Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 17:There are always two forces warring against each other within us. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 18:One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 19:All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 20:Communism is evil. Its driving forces are the deadly sins of envy and hatred. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 21:All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 22:Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse; We make of our own enemies our guests. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 23:Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 24:I believe in the healing power of laughter. I believe laughter forces us to breathe. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 25:The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 26:If their forces are substantial, prepare for them; if their forces are strong, avoid them. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 27:If you move boldly in the direction of your goals, unseen forces will come to your aid. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 28:Blaming our behavior on forces outside ourselves is a way of avoiding responsibility. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 29:We can decide to let our trials crush us, or we can convert them to new forces of good. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 30:Many people who help me encounter a lot of resistance from other people and from forces. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 31:Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavour and human creations. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 32:The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 33:We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature, or go insane. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 34:Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 35:A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 36:The external forces conceal from the eyes the deep meaning of existence; True faith resides in the heart. ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 37:The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 38:Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 39:All the forces that are working in this body have been produced out of food; we see that every day. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 40:Only the destructive forces know death as lord. Only spiritual forces know life as the Lord. Know ye the Lord! ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 41:We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 42:Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 43:Forces of light on earth shall overcome the force of darkness. Complete spiritual enlightenment on earth will occur. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 44:It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 45:We don't need to fight the forces of chaos so much as we need to restore and revitalize the forces of peace. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 46:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 47:Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 48:You need to shelter yourself from the abrasive forces of life that drain you and keep you in a lower state of mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 49:Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 50:These two enormous forces - truth and meaning - are at war in today's world... And something sooner or later has to give. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 51:These two enormous forces — truth and meaning — are at war in today's world... .And something sooner or later has to give. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 52:The commander of the forces of a large State may be carried off, but the will of even a common man cannot be taken from him. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 53:It doesnt matter how long it’s been or how impossible it looks, all the forces of darkness cannot stop what God wants to do. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 54:The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 55:Where the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will, where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atoms and come united. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 56:God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 57:Without contradiction, there would be no life, no movement, no progress, a deadly slumber of all forces. ~ friedrich-wilhelm-joseph-schelling, @wisdomtrove 58:War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 59:Gratitude is one of the most creative and noble forces of human nature. It makes everything – absolutely everything – better. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 60:Can everybody contact the higher forces? No, not indeed; but they submit themselves to a discipline and this brings them success. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 61:Failures . . . believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 62:It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 63:My verse represents a handle I can grasp in order not to yield to the centrifugal forces which are trying to throw me off of the world. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 64:He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 65:Every atom is working and resisting every thought in the mind. Everything we see and know is but the resultant of these two forces. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 66:Word to the Nation: Guard zealously your right to serve in the Armed Forces, for without them, there will be no other rights to guard. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 67:It is a flaw / In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - / It forces us in summer skies to mourn, / It spoils the singing of the nightingale. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 68:There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 69:You must have tremendous power of focus to direct your life and not allow all these variant forces, different vibrations, to enter you. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 70:And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 71:Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 72:The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 73:Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 74:Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 75:Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 76:Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 77:Life is a purposeless play, a play of infinite forces-beautiful if you don’t have an achiever’s mind, ugly if you have ambition to become something. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 78:We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 79:A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 80:The conjunction of effort, concentration and balance in asana forces us to live intensely in the present moment, a rare experience in modern life. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 81:The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 82:Truthfulness, uprightness, and honesty are in this connection creative forces, while mendacity, deceitfulness, and dishonesty are destructive forces. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 83:Know that all healing forces are within, not without! The applications from without are merely to create within a coordinating mental and spiritual force. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 84:In the universe, there is darkness and light. We call this duality. When you seek knowledge and power, there are forces and people that will oppose you. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 85:No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 86:It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 87:A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 88:We do not keep security establishments merely to defend property or territory or rights abroad or at sea. We keep the security forces to defend a way of life. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 89:It is dangerous to trust our future to market forces, because these forces do what's good for the market rather than what's good for humankind or for the world. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 90:When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 91:If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 92:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest. All great revolutions originate in fear, for the play of interests does not lead to accomplishment. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 93:In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 94:Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 95:Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 96:In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: ‚ÄúHelp me! ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 97:Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 98:Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 99:The Force which has to be called down from above must be pure and quiet because there are all kinds of forces - it will not do to call them all. And one must have sincerity. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 100:Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 101:The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 102:It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 103:I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 104:The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 105:Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 106:Any time some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 107:Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 108:Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 109:Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 110:Life wears us down. We all die here. Depending upon the way you expose yourself to energies and powers and forces will determine whether you have a lot of energy or you lose energy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 111:There are powers and forces that will seek to block you, to make your life more difficult. But if you are up to the study, then you continue to progress without getting discouraged. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 112:Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 113:We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 114:For all healing, mental or material, is attuning each atom of the body, each reflex of the brain forces, to the awareness of the divine that lies within each atom, each cell of the body. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 115:Put on light-coloured clothes and some perfume, take care of your body and do everything you can to fight against the forces of darkness. It is not an easy struggle, but it is worthwhile. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 116:You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 117:... the exchange of students... should be vastly expanded... Information and education are powerful forces in support of peace. Just as war begins in the minds of men, so does peace. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 118:Your mind is your invisible talisman. The letters PMA (positive mental attitude) are emblazoned on one side, and NMA (negative mental attitude) on the other. These are powerful forces. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 119:We were sent into the world alive with beauty. As soon as we choose Beauty, unseen forces conspire to guide and encourage us towards unexpected forms of compassion, healing and creativity. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 120:Ideas are intangible forces, but they have more power than the physical brains that give birth to them. They have the power to live on, after the brain that creates them has returned to dust. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 121:The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs. ... It¬¥s us. Only us. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 122:Don’t be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn’t allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 123:Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 124:Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 125:To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 126:The devil, darkness, and death may swagger and boast, the pangs of life will sting for a while longer, but don't worry; the forces of evil are breathing their last. Not to worry... He's risen! ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 127:Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 128:Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 129:No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 130:Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 131:Anyone who seeks enlightenment is going to encounter opposition, whether it is from their society or from non-physical forces or friends or whatever it is. Be strong enough to go through that and win. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 132:There are those who will seek to block you. There are also non-physical forces. To win in the world of enlightenment, it is necessary to be able to will away these forces, to see they're insubstantial. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 133:Naturally, along the way, there are beings and forces that will challenge you. They want to try and get some of your power, take it away from you, all this nonsense, and of course, you just defeat them. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 134:There can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defence and protection of the community in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the NATIONAL FORCES. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 135:Don't listen to voices. If you hear voices talking to you, forget it. Disregard the information, even if it is right occasionally. You are dealing with non-physical forces that are trying to influence you. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 136:Laughter brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 137:Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 138:[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 139:But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 140:Those who do not know the plans of competitors cannot prepare alliances. Those who do not know the lay of the land cannot maneuver their forces. Those who do not use local guides cannot take advantage of the ground. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 141:The more you see yourself as what you'd like to become, and act as if, what you want is already there, the more you'll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 142:Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is HIS business. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 143:Expect forces to interfere with you and expect to conquer them all, if you are serious about the study. Just as there are powers that interfere with those who seek enlightenment, there are forces that will help. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 144:There are two great forces, God's force of good and the devil's force of evil, and I believe Satan is alive and he is working, and he is working harder than ever, and we have many mysteries that we don't understand. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 145:Today, however, those things which occupy us in the field of education are the interests of humanity at large and of civilization, and before such great forces we can recognize only one country-the entire world. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 146:General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 147:It is necessary to be occupied almost all the time, to have your mind focused; otherwise, you get very spaced out. There are many variant psychic forces and powers that roam through the worlds. You can pick them up. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 148:Materialism has cast man into such depths that a mighty concentration of forces is necessary to raise him again. He is subject to illnesses of the nervous system which are veritable epidemics of the life of the soul. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 149:We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 150:Everything is amplified in the world of attention at night. People are more open to forces. That is why human beings cluster around each other in housing developments - a group force pervades and keeps the beings out. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 151:Our minds become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 152:The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 153:The forces are different up here at the continental divide. The magnetic lines of energy run in specific directions. The United States is divided into power zones. The Divide itself is the point where the energy meets. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 154:There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 155:My favorite is when you go to Afghanistan and you meet the special forces guys, and they look like these heavily armed surfers. These guys are the best. You see guys dressed as full Afghans, but then wearing a Yankees hat. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 156:As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying & 157:Every time you encounter something that forces you to “handle it,” your self-esteem is raised considerably. You learn to trust that you will survive, no matter what happens. And in this way your fears are diminished immeasurably. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 158:When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 159:There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 160:As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 161:If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 162:Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 163:Two conflicting forces cannot exist in one human heart. When doubt reigns, faith cannot abide. Where hatred rules, love is crowded out. Where selfishness rules, there love cannot dwell. When worry is present, trust cannot crowd its way in. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 164:There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 165:I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 166:In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 167:It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 168:The petitions of Moses discomfited the enemy more than the fighting of Joshua. Yet both were needed. No, in the soul's conflict, force and fervor, decision and devotion, valour and vehemence, must join their forces, and all will be well. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 169:There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 170:The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 171:Refugee today means somebody who has no home. No homeland. No security. No government to protect him or her. And it is of course one feels not only uprooted, one feels useless. One feels always surrounded by hostile forces. Arousing suspicion. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 172:All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 173:Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 174:Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 175:We have never considered any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price to a point where we believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother about the costs. The new price forces the cost down. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 176:Paulus Aemilius, on taking command of the forces in Macedonia, and finding them talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all commanders, issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keen swords, and leave the rest to ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 177:In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 178:We have to have armies! We have to have military power! We have to have police forces, whether it's police in a great city or police in an international scale to keep those madmen from taking over the world and robbing the world of its liberties. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 179:Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 180:The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 181:As a person progresses along the path of power, they attract certain forces and beings from other dimensions, who feel the power that you are storing. Sometimes they want some of it; sometimes they want to ruin you. We call these beings entities. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 182:It is not advisable for persons who are in the early stages of meditation to mediate on the two lower chakras. You will unleash powers and forces that will throw you into very powerful altered state of consciousness that might not be pleasant at all. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 183:Learning certain things purely through memory is related to the developmental forces that are present between the sixth or seventh year and the fourteenth year of life. This quality of human nature is what mathematical instruction should be based on. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 184:Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 185:Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 186:During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 187:Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 188:We cannot rely on ourselves, for we have learned by bitter experience the folly of self-confidence. We are compelled to look to the Lord alone. Blessed is the wind that drives the ship into the harbor. Blessed is the distress that forces us to rest in our God. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 189:We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 190:Does a population have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces? ... Failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 191:Never lose sight of this maxim, that you should establish your cantonments at the most distant and best protected point from the enemy, especially where a surprise is possible. By this means you will have time to unite all your forces before he can attack you. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 192:Am I better off making up an alternate reality in my mind and then fighting with reality to make it be my way, or am I better off letting go of what I want and serving the same forces of reality that managed to create the entire perfection of the universe around me? ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 193:The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 194:Women do not win formula one races, because they simply are not strong enough to resist the G-forces. In the boardroom, it is different. I believe women are better able to marshal their thoughts than men and because they are less egotistical they make fewer assumptions. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 195:Great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. When sorrow is deepest all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 196:In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 197:When what we introduce into the children's world of ideas and feelings is in line with the direction of the developmental forces of a given stage of life, we strengthen the entire developing person in a way that remains a source of strength throughout that person's life. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 198:The fate of a battle is the result of a moment, of a thought: the hostile forces advance with various combinations, they attack each other and fight for a certain time; the critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides, and the least reserve accomplishes the object. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 199:every political structure, new or old, left to itself develops stabilizing forces which stand in the way of constant transformation and expansion. Therefore all political bodies appear to be temporary obstacles when they are seen as part of an eternal stream of growing power. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 200:Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 201:It is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain- body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 202:The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 203:Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 204:There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 205:I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 206:In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 207:The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 208:The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 209:There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 210:When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for a long time it will dull your forces and blunt you edge... If you keep your armies out in the field for a long time, your supplies will be insufficient. Transportation of provisions itself consumes 20 times the amount transported. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 211:Anything that forces you to act at the possible harm of your own existence is going to exact a cost. You have to then think about, "Can I pay this? What will this mean to me - to my relationships, to my family, to everybody? What is this going to take? How much of me is this going to take?" ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 212:When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective... . There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 213:If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 214:There are no limits to what you can create for you, because your ability to think is unlimited! But you cannot create other people's lives for them. You cannot think for them, and if you try to force your opinions on others you will only attract like forces to you. So let all others create the life they want. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 215:I know no study that will take you nearer the way to happiness than the study of nature - and I include in the study of nature not only things and their forces, but also mankind and their ways, and the moulding of the affections and the will into an earnest desire not only to be happy, but to create happiness. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 216:Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 217:Deep beneath the surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment, the energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome explosion... . Climbing at millions of miles per hour, an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the Sun and head out across space. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 218:Our freedom must be buttressed by a homogeny equally and unchallengeably free, no matter what color they are, so that all the other inimical forces everywhere - systems political or religious or racial or national - will not just respect us because we practice freedom, they will fear us because we do. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 219:War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 220:The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 221:Man has become a superman ... because he not only disposes oinnate, physical forces, but because he is in command ... olatent forces in nature and because he can put them to his service... . But the essential fact we must surely all feel in our hearts ... is that we are becoming inhuman in proportion as we become supermen. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 222:That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 223:Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 224:This is the ultimate truth of synchrodestiny—that the sum total of the universe is conspiring to create your personal destiny… We cannot even imagine the complex forces behind every event that occurs in our lives. There’s a conspiracy of coincidences that weave the web of karma or destiny and creates an individual’s personal life. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 225:When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self. This is the ego, a mind- made "me." That mentally constructed self feels incomplete and precarious. That’s why fearing and wanting are its predominant emotions and motivating forces ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 226:A child is a child in any country, whatever the politics. Let's get down to basics. That's what a child forces you to do. Nothing else much matters, there is no complicated diplomacy, when a child is starving. It's simple. And we'd better do something about it. For our sakes, too. That is, if we want to continue to call ourselves human. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 227:A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 228:Kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthest reaching and the most effective of all forces. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 229:What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 230:You have choice. You can select joy over despair. You can select happiness over tears. You can select action over apathy. You can select growth over stagnation. You can select you. And you can select life. And it's time that people tell you you're not at the mercy of forces greater than yourself. You are, indeed, the greatest force for you. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 231:But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 232:Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 233:& 234:Some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles-or who are looked upon with scorn as compromising "politicians"-are simply engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and enabling our Government to function. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 235:All things are in flux; the flux is subject to a unifying measure or rational principle. This principle (logos, the hidden harmony behind all change) bound opposites together in a unified tension, which is like that of a lyre, where a stable harmonious sound emerges from the tension of the opposing forces that arise from the bow bound together by the string. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 236:Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community. . . . The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 237:I had always enjoyed the title of Commander-in-Chief until I was informed ... that the only forces that cannot be transferred from Washington without my express permission are the members of the Marine Corps Band. Those are the only forces I have. I want it announced that we propose to hold the White House against all odds at least for some time to come. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 238:My hand moves because certain forces& 239:I interviewed one of the most powerful lawyers in the world and he told me, At the time, it was the worst thing in the world not to be able to get a job at a fancy law firm, but it's the greatest thing that ever happened in my life. It was a humble acknowledgment of how forces much larger than himself shaped his career. I really wanted to bring that point home. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 240:The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horse back, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 241:To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 242:For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given& 243:Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 244:All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 245:As I stood alone and forsaken, and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my own nothingness, and on the other hand, the sure flight of the birds recalled the words spoken by Christ: Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father: then, all at once, I felt how great and how small I was; then did those two mighty forces, pride and humility, happily unite in friendship. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 246:All the forces that we see in nature, such as gravitation, attraction, and repulsion, or as thought, feeling, and nervous motion - all these various forces resolve into that Prana, and the vibration of the Prana ceases. In that state it remains until the beginning of the next cycle. Prana then begins to vibrate, and that vibration acts upon the Akasha, and all these forms are thrown out in regular succession. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 247:It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, & 248:Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 249:When he tries to extend his power over objects, those objects gain control of him. He who is controlled by objects loses possession of his inner self... Prisoners in the world of object, they have no choice but to submit to the demands of matter! They are pressed down and crushed by external forces: fashion, the market, events, public opinion. Never in a whole lifetime do they recover their right mind!... What a pity! ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 250:If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is tempermental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 251:For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 252:Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 253:The relative size of your force as against that of your adversary is by itself of no consequence. What controls is the relative size of your force at the point where you join in battle. You can strike with the few and be many if you strike your adversary in his gaps. Seek out places where the defense is not strict, the place not tightly guarded, the generals weak, the troops disorderly, the supplies are scarce and the forces are isolated. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 254:Our status as a free society and world power is not based on brute strength. When we've taken up arms, it has been for the defense of freedom for ourselves and for other peaceful nations who needed our help. But now, faced with the development of weapons with immense destructive power, we've no choice but to maintain ready defense forces that are second to none. Yes, the cost is high, but the price of neglect would be infinitely higher. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 255:Parenting forces us to get to know ourselves better than we ever might have imagined we could& 256:Be very careful that you do not unconsciously assume that nervous tension is power. This is vital. Watch yourself the next time you work toward some goal. Look very closely to discover tense feelings and nervous thoughts whirling around inside. Do not let them deceive you into assuming that they are creative forces; they are not. They are thieves of genuine powers. As always, your awareness of their thievery is your first fine step toward casting them out. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove 257:Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as be wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 258:The Bible indicates that for three days, Jesus went into the very depths of hell. Right into the enemy's own territory. And He did battle with Satan face to face. Can you imagine what a show down that was? It was good vs. evil. Right vs. wrong. Holiness vs. filth. Here are the two most powerful forces in the universe have come together to do battle for the first time in history. But thank God. The Bible says, "Satan was no match for our Champion". This was no contest. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 259:The use of violence in our struggle would be both impractical and immoral. To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 260:Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 261:I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 262:Someone with whom we have a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow... those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds& 263:Life is called Samsara - it is the result of the conflicting forces acting upon us. Materialism says, "The voice of freedom is a delusion." Idealism says, "The voice that tells of bondage is but a dream." Vedanta says, "We are free and not free at the same time." That means that we are never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual side. The Self is beyond both freedom and bondage. We are Brahman, we are immortal knowledge beyond the senses, we are Bliss Absolute. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 264:The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 265:Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 266:Somewhere in the arrangement of this world there seems to be a great concern about giving us delight, which shows that, in the universe, over and above the meaning of matter and forces, there is a message conveyed through the magic touch of personality. ... Is it merely because the rose is round and pink that it gives me more satisfaction than the gold which could buy me the necessities of life, or any number of slaves. ... Somehow we feel that through a rose the language of love reached our hearts. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 267:Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces, are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 268:It is often said that in today's modern and postmodern world that the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearess shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 269:He must also know evil, hate and bigotry as real phenomena, but he must see love as the greater force. He must not doubt this even for a moment or he is lost. His only salvation is to dedicate himself to love, in the same fashion as Gandhi did to militant nonviolence, as Socrates to truth, as Jesus did to love and as More did to integrity. Only then will he have the strength to combat the forces of doubt, confusion and contradiction. He can depend upon no on or no thing for reinforcement and assurance but himself. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 270:What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true? ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 271:The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 272:Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 273:History shows that great economic and social forces flow like a tide over communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. Wise statesmen foresee what time is thus bringing, and try to shape institutions and mold men's thoughts and purposes in accordance with the change that is silently coming on. The unwise are those who bring nothing constructive to the process, and who greatly imperil the future of mankind by leaving great questions to be fought out between ignorant change on one hand and ignorant opposition to change on the other. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 274:The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 275:The analytic psychotherapist thus has a threefold battle to wage - in his own mind against the forces which seek to drag him down from the analytic level; outside the analysis, against opponents who dispute the importance he attaches to the sexual instinctual forces and hinder him from making use of them in his scientific technique; and inside the analysis, against his patients, who at first behave like opponents but later on reveal the overvaluation of sexual life which dominates them, and who try to make him captive to their socially untamed passion. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 276:It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 277:In fact, ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even worse chaos. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 278:When we look about us, we wee scores of people suffering from an abnormal condition of the nervous system. This has been called the American Disease, because it is apparently more prevalent here than in other lands, although it is found wherever people worry. Worry and Fear are at the base of Nervousness, and when these two monsters are driven forth the patient makes rapid recovery. The trouble is that the patient suffering from Nervousness is generally in such a weakened condition that it is hard for him to make use of the forces within him which will enable him to get rid of the sources of his trouble. But it can be done. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 279:The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 280:This is a dynamic and mysterious universe and human life is, no doubt, conditioned by imponderables of which we are only dimly aware. People sometimes say, "the strangest coincidence happened." Coincidences may seem strange, but they are never a result of caprice. They are orderly laws in the spiritual life of man. They affect and influence our lives profoundly. These so-called imponderables are so important that you should become spiritually sensitized to them. Indeed, the more spiritually minded you become the more acute your contact will be with these behind-the-scenes forces. By being alive to them through insight, instruction, and illumination, you can make your way past errors and mistakes on which, were you less spiritually sensitive, you might often stumble. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 281:Relax and steady the mind, focusing on the breath. Pick a situation in which you feel someone has wronged you. Be mindful of your reactions to this person, especially the deeper ones. Scan yourself for any ill will. Now reflect on some of the various causes—the ten thousand things—that have led this person to act in the way that he has. Consider biologically based factors affecting him, like pain, age, innate temperament, or intelligence. Consider the realities of his life: race, gender, class, job, responsibilities, daily stresses. Consider whatever you know about his childhood. Consider major events in his life as an adult. Consider his mental processes, personality, values, fears, hot buttons, hopes, and dreams. Consider his parents in light of whatever you know or can reasonably guess about them; consider, too, the factors that may have shaped their lives. Reflect on the historical events and other upstream forces that have formed the river of causes flowing through his life today. Look inside yourself again. Do you feel any differently now about him? Do you feel any differently about yourself? ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 282:The Battle of Good and Evil Polytheism gave birth not merely to monotheist religions, but also to dualistic ones. Dualistic religions espouse the existence of two opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes that evil is an independent power, neither created by the good God, nor subordinate to it. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between these two forces, and that everything that happens in the world is part of the struggle. Dualism is a very attractive world view because it has a short and simple answer to the famous Problem of Evil, one of the fundamental concerns of human thought. ‘Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Monotheists have to practise intellectual gymnastics to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God allows so much suffering in the world. One well-known explanation is that this is God’s way of allowing for human free will. Were there no evil, humans could not choose between good and evil, and hence there would be no free will. This, however, is a non-intuitive answer that immediately raises a host of new questions. Freedom of will allows humans to choose evil. Many indeed choose evil and, according to the standard monotheist account, this choice must bring divine punishment in its wake. If God knew in advance that a particular person would use her free will to choose evil, and that as a result she would be punished for this by eternal tortures in hell, why did God create her? Theologians have written countless books to answer such questions. Some find the answers convincing. Some don’t. What’s undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil. For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen even to good people because the world is not governed single-handedly by a good God. There is an independent evil power loose in the world. The evil power does bad things. Dualism has its own drawbacks. While solving the Problem of Evil, it is unnerved by the Problem of Order. If the world was created by a single God, it’s clear why it is such an orderly place, where everything obeys the same laws. But if Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? Two rival states can fight one another because both obey the same laws of physics. A missile launched from Pakistan can hit targets in India because gravity works the same way in both countries. When Good and Evil fight, what common laws do they obey, and who decreed these laws? So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:forces in Batjan on June 11.61 ~ Ian W Toll, #NFDB
2:Society forces you to conform. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
3:True love never forces. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
4:Lawyers don't run sales forces. ~ Jeff Raikes, #NFDB
5:Writing forces consciousness. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
6:If his forces are united, separate them. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
7:I love and respect the Armed Forces. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
8:Don't fight forces, use them. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
9:You are one of the forces of nature. ~ Jules Michelet, #NFDB
10:Hard stuff forces you to grow up fast... ~ Lisa McMann, #NFDB
11:Pain forces even the innocent to lie. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
12:I believe in divine forces and energies. ~ Richard Pryor, #NFDB
13:And whoever forces himself to love anybody ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
14:forces of nature. A man either ran for ~ Jayne Ann Krentz, #NFDB
15:Gravity wins over all other known forces. ~ Andrea M Ghez, #NFDB
16:All forces that reside in the body are angels. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
17:Becoming a parent forces you to be selfless, ~ Kelly Rimmer, #NFDB
18:Great results, can be achieved with small forces. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
19:These forces are trajectories, not destinies. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
20:Magic is the art of manipulating the unseen forces of nature, #NFDB
21:He oversaw American forces in the Korean War, ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
22:I hate it when life forces me to be mature. ~ Suzanne Johnson, #NFDB
23:Our adaptation to the natural forces ~ Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, #NFDB
24:Our technology forces us to live mythically ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
25:Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
26:When someone forces me to do something I don't do it. ~ Mo Yan, #NFDB
27:When two forces unite, their efficiency double. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
28:As an American, I want our forces to prevail. ~ George McGovern, #NFDB
29:Heroes need to be challenged by outside forces. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
30:[Osip] Mandelstam was killed by Stalinist forces. ~ Robert Hass, #NFDB
31:Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
32:Love never forces itself on another’s will. So ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
33:The imagination is one of the forces of nature. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
34:Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
35:I have a fairly adequate knowledge of Satanic forces. ~ James Dean, #NFDB
36:Meditation is like an oven that forces the truth out. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
37:Reality is shaped by the forces that destroy it. ~ D Harlan Wilson, #NFDB
38:Satanic forces are here and they are not friendly! ~ Chuck Missler, #NFDB
39:There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
40:This banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender. ~ Pete Seeger, #NFDB
41:We're gonna build up our forces, including the Army. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
42:Market forces do not make cities, they destroy them ~ Charles Correa, #NFDB
43:New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations. ~ Tom Waits, #NFDB
44:Martin [Luther King] wasn't one to buck forces too much. ~ Ella Baker, #NFDB
45:The only watchmaker is the blind forces of physics. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
46:We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
47:Stay out of trouble. Be positive forces to the world. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
48:The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. ~ John Jay Chapman, #NFDB
49:Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
50:Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen. ~ Stephen Ambrose, #NFDB
51:Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces. ~ Sidney Hook, #NFDB
52:The power of social media is it forces necessary change. ~ Erik Qualman, #NFDB
53:The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
54:we start with powers of production, or ‘productive forces’, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
55:Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song. ~ Edmund Clarence Stedman, #NFDB
56:I can't find a person without some link to the armed forces! ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
57:I expertly angled my raison bran to accomodate the g-forces. ~ John Green, #NFDB
58:...it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
59:Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
60:The Iraqi forces are conducting the Mother of all Retreats. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
61:THE SILENT, SUBTLE BUILDING FORCES OF MIND AND SPIRIT ~ Ralph Waldo Trine, #NFDB
62:Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
63:Or was the chill I felt triggered by forces other than wind? ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
64:Step into the light. Unseen forces are cheering you on. ~ Cheryl Richardson, #NFDB
65:…a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil… ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
66:Imagination is a concentrated extract of all the forces of life. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
67:A witch is a person who can attract and manipulate unseen forces, ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
68:Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
69:no principality is secure without having its own forces; ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
70:Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
71:Only the forces of ignorance and darkness benefit from secrecy. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
72:Concepts become forces when they resist one another ~ Johann Friedrich Herbart, #NFDB
73:The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
74:You sometimes have to join forces with those you'd rather avoid. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
75:Acting forces me to socialise, which is good for me, I think. ~ Jesse Eisenberg, #NFDB
76:I rather enjoy being contradicted. It forces me to think harder. ~ Gemma Malley, #NFDB
77:Modern man is battered by the fundamental forces of his own psyche. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
78:The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
79:Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
80:we are pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
81:We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
82:All the forces of darkness cannot keep you from your destiny. When ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
83:Focused mind power is one of the strongest forces on earth. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
84:He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
85:May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
86:Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
87:Planet Earth is our shared island, let us join forces to protect it ~ Ban Ki moon, #NFDB
88:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
89:Words and magic are two powerful forces that can change the world. ~ Amy Neftzger, #NFDB
90:You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
91:You know children, always playing with the forces of darkness. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
92:Artists... disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
93:Entropy and optimism: The twin forces that make the world go around. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
94:Entropy and optimism: the twin forces that make the world go around. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
95:For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces. ~ Bridget Riley, #NFDB
96:The forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
97:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
98:Winston Churchill, the towering personality of the forces of light. ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
99:Art is animated by invisible forces that rule the universe. ~ Leopold Sedar Senghor, #NFDB
100:Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
101:Being right keeps you in place, being wrong forces you to explore. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
102:If you don't change, reality in the end forces that change upon you. ~ Stuart Wilde, #NFDB
103:In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature. ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
104:Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us. ~ Julia Penelope, #NFDB
105:Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain ~ Aeschylus,#NFDB
106:Competitive forces = the underlying drivers of profitability P.25 ~ Michael E Porter, #NFDB
107:Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces. ~ Geraldo Rivera, #NFDB
108:Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
109:I am president, I don't own the country so they are not my forces. ~ Bashar al Assad, #NFDB
110:Keep the enemy in the dark about where and when our forces will attack. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
111:Monday night that Russian forces had dramatically escalated the standoff ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
112:Think BIG. There are unseen forces ready to support your dreams. ~ Cheryl Richardson, #NFDB
113:FACT: Nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. ~ Valerie Jarrett, #NFDB
114:Matter is a holograph of itself in its own internal radiation.” Forces ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
115:Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces. ~ Adam Zagajewski,#NFDB
116:Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
117:Engaging with exceptionally hard problems forces us to think differently. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
118:forces the thought into her mind, keeps it trapped there, believes it. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
119:If we need women in our defense forces, we must not need much defense. ~ Joseph Sobran, #NFDB
120:Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made. ~ Alan Rickman, #NFDB
121:School forces unique individuals to think, act, and, look alike. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
122:The adverse forces have no power when one loves the Divine. Be confident. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
123:Use all your forces for endeavour and leave no room for carelessness. ~ Buddhist Texts, #NFDB
124:When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
125:forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas. ~ Fareed Zakaria, #NFDB
126:It is indeed time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
127:“The adverse forces have no power when one loves the Divine. Be confident. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
128:We've been able to build up the Afghan security forces and stabilize it. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
129:YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature and YOU! WILL! ATONE! ~ Arthur Jensen, #NFDB
130:Few people realize the profound part angelic forces play in human events. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
131:I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
132:It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces. ~ William H Seward, #NFDB
133:The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
134:In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
135:I think of myself as Special Forces, clearing the path for the infantry. ~ Geraldo Rivera, #NFDB
136:"It is indeed time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
137:Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
138:Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
139:Mormonism" teaches that intelligence is the force of forces.] "Mormonism ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
140:My work as secretary of state was not influenced by the outside forces. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
141:Once you the forces that govern behavior,it's harder to blame the behaver ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
142:Periods are a period when nature forces prostitutes to go on leave. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
143:There are always two forces warring against each other within us. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
144:We are tough. We are bold. We are fierce. We are forces to be reckoned with. ~ Mandy Hale, #NFDB
145:Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
146:Each in himself is sole by Nature’s law. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces, #NFDB
147:Our men and women in our armed forces are the real heroes in this conflict. ~ Wayne Allard, #NFDB
148:Our soul is governed by four invisible forces: love, death, power and time. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
149:Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes place for that ~ John Green, #NFDB
150:Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
151:The training and equipping of Iraqi security forces should be accelerated. ~ Peter DeFazio, #NFDB
152:I’m counting on greed and egotism, forces that are as reliable as gravity ~ Josiah Bancroft, #NFDB
153:Keeping quiet forces other people to do all the talking and all the revealing. ~ Jamie Beck, #NFDB
154:Mainly through sins of impurity, do the forces of darkness subjugate souls. ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
155:many suppressive forces that direct our thinking toward mediocre levels. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
156:Reading forces you to be quiet in a place that no longer makes place for that. ~ John Green, #NFDB
157:Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes place for that. ~ John Green, #NFDB
158:Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism. ~ Benazir Bhutto, #NFDB
159:If one abuses or neglects internal powers, external forces will act accordingly. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
160:It is a process of diverting one's scattered forces into one powerful channel. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
161:Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
162:One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
163:All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
164:Communism is evil. Its driving forces are the deadly sins of envy and hatred. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
165:Do not let the forces of evil take over to make this a Christian America. ~ Howard Metzenbaum, #NFDB
166:I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to. ~ Rihanna, #NFDB
167:I believe you can make forces of good and evil work for you, to get what you want. ~ GG Allin, #NFDB
168:Needless help is an actual hindrance to the development of natural forces. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
169:Our smallness saves us from the Infinite
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
170:Some men return to their past, so that new forces may arise for the reconquest ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB
171:The real spiritual man is broad everywhere. His love forces him to be so. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
172:Truth and nonviolence are perhaps the activest forces you have in the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
173:Your belief that you can do the thing gives your thought forces their power. ~ Robert Collier, #NFDB
174:All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
175:Corruption often exists because there are too many market forces, not too few. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
176:Creation is the harmony of contrary forces—the forces of attraction and repulsion. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
177:Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
178:If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
179:over 10 per cent of the population; two thirds of them from the armed forces. ~ Neil MacGregor, #NFDB
180:Some men return to their past, so that new forces may arise for the reconquest. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB
181:The feeling of emptiness is a pre-existing condition. Jargon forces intimacy. ~ Rae Armantrout, #NFDB
182:The U.S. victory in Gulf War was a stirring victory for the forces of aggression. ~ Dan Quayle, #NFDB
183:Basil King once said, “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
184:It is rarely a lack of love that forces two hearts apart, but other obstacles. ~ Robin LaFevers, #NFDB
185:Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse; We make of our own enemies our guests. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
186:Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
187:Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ~ David Mitchell, #NFDB
188:Pressure and responsibility are driving forces, but only knowledge creates power. ~ Katie Cross, #NFDB
189:Raise up your glasses against evil forces; Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses. ~ Toby Keith, #NFDB
190:treachery, weakness, envy, fanaticism—the most destructive forces available to man. ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
191:When all has been explained nothing is known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces, #NFDB
192:Ideas are forces; our acceptance of one determines our reception of others. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
193:In my books, my idea is always to explore social context and social forces. ~ Alix Kates Shulman, #NFDB
194:Let's all just follow the lead of Glamour, and join forces and lift each other up. ~ Amy Schumer, #NFDB
195:Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
196:Many are God’s forms by which he grows in man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces, #NFDB
197:The simplicity of total trust is one of the most powerful forces in the world. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
198:To me, hope is a moral imperative. I have hope and faith in forces unseen. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
199:Behind mundane disagreement he saw not legitimate opinion but malevolent forces. ~ Stephen Kotkin, #NFDB
200:Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
201:I carry the fire that never can be quenched.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
202:Workers in industry are the partners in war of the fighting forces. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King, #NFDB
203:actively rebel against those forces that have pushed you away from your true path. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
204:Animals are inspirational. They don’t know how to lie. They are natural forces. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
205:Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. ~ Peter Arnett, #NFDB
206:I believe in the healing power of laughter. I believe laughter forces us to breathe. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
207:I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective. ~ Max Beckmann, #NFDB
208:I think having an uncompromising ideology eventually forces you out of the norm. ~ David Bezmozgis, #NFDB
209:No one realises that some individuals consume herculesque forces only to be normal. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
210:One nation is weakened by a victory, another finds new forces in defeat ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
211:The chief enemies in China's revolutionary war are imperialism and the feudal forces. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
212:The forces by which the workers are kept in subjugation must be retaliated by force. ~ Louis Lingg, #NFDB
213:The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
214:This is what death does. It forces intimacy at the same time it snatches it away. ~ Kimberly Belle, #NFDB
215:Life is conflict; peace is death. Forces of chaos keep the cycles of history moving. ~ Jack Donovan, #NFDB
216:Of all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
217:One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
218:Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (Balko, Radley) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
219:The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
220:We can in fact remove from our hearts the toxic forces of greed, hate, and delusion. ~ Gil Fronsdal, #NFDB
221:Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are. ~ Kathleen Norris, #NFDB
222:Clutter forces the brain to consume energy. Create uncluttered environments instead. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
223:If their forces are substantial, prepare for them; if their forces are strong, avoid them. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
224:[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces. ~ Paul Bremer, #NFDB
225:I sometimes like the situation that forces you to rely on your instinct and impulses. ~ Donna Murphy, #NFDB
226:One of the most powerful forces in human nature is our belief that change is possible. ~ Shawn Achor, #NFDB
227:People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
228:Rather than living our lives, we are ''lived'' by unknown and uncontrollable forces. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
229:we were practically the same person and were bound by forces bigger than both of us. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
230:You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers. ~ James Wolfe, #NFDB
231:Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat. ~ Vo Nguyen Giap, #NFDB
232:His hunger for the eternal thou must nurse
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces, [T5],#NFDB
233:I want to be judged harshly because that forces me to really sit down and focus. ~ Seth Grahame Smith, #NFDB
234:The book forces itself into my mind when I am lugging furniture, or pulling weeds. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
235:The U.S. Forces are winning in Iraq. It is to be hoped that they will win at home also. ~ John Linder, #NFDB
236:The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
237:This book is an account of the collision of two forces: aspiration and authoritarianism. ~ Evan Osnos, #NFDB
238:Blaming our behavior on forces outside ourselves is a way of avoiding responsibility. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
239:People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
240:Ridicule is also a weapon against forces of evil. Really clever, intelligent ridicule. ~ Ralph Fiennes, #NFDB
241:The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. ~ George S Patton, #NFDB
242:The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution. ~ Ross Macdonald, #NFDB
243:To attain our aim we should stop at nothing even if we must join forces with the devil. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
244:We can decide to let our trials crush us, or we can convert them to new forces of good. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
245:Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
246:By 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for Isis than for the British armed forces. ~ Douglas Murray, #NFDB
247:I feel the heavy, funeral drumbeats of marriage as he forces sari up around my waist. ~ Meena Kandasamy, #NFDB
248:India is committed to strong armed forces, well-equipped with modern arms & technology! ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
249:In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
250:It’s the game of seeing all but reacting to nothing. Until necessity forces the issue. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
251:I will stand off the forces of the entire country here... and die a resplendent death. ~ Torii Mototada, #NFDB
252:Knowledge is like the great army that will help us crush the forces of our own faults. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
253:Surprise is the tool of the Devil and it is the greatest power of the evil forces! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
254:Technology is similarly just a catalyst at times for fundamental forces already present. ~ Scott D Cook, #NFDB
255:these two forces were to survive; namely, barbarian soldiers and the Christian Church. ~ Lynn Thorndike, #NFDB
256:Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards. ~ Charles W Chesnutt, #NFDB
257:But is it coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
258:Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse ~ William James, #NFDB
259:Just rejoice at the news and congratulate our armed forces and the Marines. Rejoice! ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
260:Moving pictures have become one of the greatest revitalizing forces in race adjustment. ~ Oscar Micheaux, #NFDB
261:One should never risk one's whole fortune unless supported by one's entire forces. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
262:Thor—the Batman or James Bond of the gods—has once again conquered the forces of evil. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
263:Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
264:Each is a mass of forces thrown in shape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Discoveries of Science - III, #NFDB
265:Everything makes so much more sense, when you forget what life forces you to remember. ~ Constantina Maud, #NFDB
266:Good pain is pain that forces you to rise beyond it — then you are stronger than suffering. ~ Sharon Maas, #NFDB
267:Many people who help me encounter a lot of resistance from other people and from forces. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
268:the forces of rulers and ritual slowly, slowly will kill our freedom to live as we choose. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
269:What cancer does is, it forces you to focus, to prioritize, and you learn what’s important. ~ Joel Siegel, #NFDB
270:what Shakespeare really aimed to show: the destruction of a soul by demonic forces. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
271:Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
272:Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces, [T5],#NFDB
273:I'd like to think humans have a stronger sense of justice than the random forces of nature do. ~ Dan Wells, #NFDB
274:I know that I'm here - I believe that I'm here for a purpose. I believe in forces of fate. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
275:Minimizing forces us to confront our stuff, and our stuff forces us to confront ourselves. ~ Joshua Becker, #NFDB
276:The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see. ~ John Tukey, #NFDB
277:There are two forces at work in the world: the power of light and the power of darkness. ~ Seth Adam Smith, #NFDB
278:When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits - not animals. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
279:When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
280:With difficulty he is beaten who can estimate his own forces and those of his enemy. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
281:All action is surrounded by a complexity of forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #NFDB
282:All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for enough good women to do nothing. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
283:God is in no sense the Creator of natural forces and laws; He is the director of them. The ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
284:Never underestimate the magnitude of the power of the forces that reinforce the status quo. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
285:No man can avail himself of the forces of his creative imagination, while dissipating them. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
286:One man alone can't defeat the forces of evil, but many good people coming together can. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
287:The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
288:We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature, or go insane. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
289:A quantum theory of gravity that unites it with the other forces is the Holy Grail of physics. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
290:Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
291:I don't see lethality as the problem. I mean, the lethality of US forces is quite remarkable. ~ James Mattis, #NFDB
292:I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
293:I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. You know, I ~ John Coltrane, #NFDB
294:secretive committees responsible for reforming government, overhauling the armed forces, finance ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
295:The forces which move the cosmos are not different from those which move the human soul. ~ Anagarika Govinda, #NFDB
296:The natural economic, humanitarian and social integration, do not require any armed forces. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
297:There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey. ~ Chris Heimerdinger, #NFDB
298:we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature – or go insane. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
299:We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
300:You need to create pathways in your consciousness through which the creative forces operate. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
301:Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways. ~ Drew Goddard, #NFDB
302:Global market forces will sort out those companies that do not have sound corporate governance. ~ Mervyn King, #NFDB
303:I agree with Bill Clinton that US forces should not be sent to Haiti, but not for his reasons. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
304:I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
305:It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces. ~ Rem Koolhaas, #NFDB
306:Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth, but #Goddess forces us back to embrace them ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
307:Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
308:See, those who wield the primordial forces of creation have a long-running grudge with physics. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
309:The observer listens to nature: the experimenter questions and forces her to reveal herself. ~ Georges Cuvier, #NFDB
310:The president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the commander of the armed forces, full stop. ~ Mohammed Morsi, #NFDB
311:The sovereign way to personal freedom is to help determine the forces that determine you. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
312:because blaming our behavior on forces outside ourselves is a way of avoiding responsibility. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
313:History is a tale, Franklin came to believe, not of immutable forces but of human endeavors. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
314:If you keep avoiding the forces that can defeat you, you may never learn your true power! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
315:I think pressure when you work is good. It forces you to take risks and to do other things. ~ James Badge Dale, #NFDB
316:Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
317:The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
318:You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature. ~ William Rotsler, #NFDB
319:You've got to hae ground forces that are capable of going after them and rooting them out. ~ Raymond T Odierno, #NFDB
320:A play that forces us to question our moral responsibility to the victims of human rights abuse. ~ Lynn Nottage, #NFDB
321:Buildings keep being pushed around by three irresistible forces—technology, money, and fashion. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
322:Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth. ~ Albert Ellis, #NFDB
323:Every new change forces all the companies in an industry to adapt their strategies to that change. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
324:No man wants to sleep with a woman. He wants to fuck her. And nobody forces me to do shit. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
325:Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
326:Special Forces were the armed wing of the CIA, which was the hands-on wing of the State Department, ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
327:The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made available for their existence. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
328:Today’s economic landscape is being shaped by two powerful forces—technology and globalization. ~ Philip Kotler, #NFDB
329:Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas. ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
330:Having been a cheerleader, I know all too well what these girls give up to join forces and compete. ~ Kelly Ripa, #NFDB
331:stoicism and silence does not serve us nor our communities, only the forces of things as they are. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
332:The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them ~ Paul Hawken, #NFDB
333:The interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
334:A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
335:and the room exploded in silver and shadow, two forces colliding in a way that shook the world. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
336:Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years. ~ John Darnielle, #NFDB
337:Growing up sometimes forces us to confront the distance between our childhood hope and the truth. ~ Sara Shandler, #NFDB
338:It's not enough for an official to be good. There has to be a system that forces them to be good. ~ Jesse Robredo, #NFDB
339:Rumor forces us to act before we are ready, or ruins a situation before it becomes fully ripe. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
340:The external forces conceal from the eyes the deep meaning of existence; True faith resides in the heart. ~ Kabir, #NFDB
341:The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them. ~ Paul Hawken, #NFDB
342:The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made available for their existence. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
343:The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal. ~ Warren Christopher, #NFDB
344:Today, America has become one of the most powerful forces for good on earth. We must keep it so. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
345:When who you are and what you are is not decided by any external forces, then you are in dignity. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
346:You have to face reality some time. But there's no sense in facing it until somebody forces you to. ~ Billy Beane, #NFDB
347:You know, 1% of us is in the armed forces, protecting the other 99, and they're all volunteers. ~ Benjamin Walker, #NFDB
348:All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
349:Every other consideration and plan and emphasis is secondary to that of wielding the forces of prayer. ~ John Mott, #NFDB
350:Human life is fatally fragile and subject to forces beyond our power to manage. Life is tragic. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
351:If you are not happy with the song, don't sing it. Simple as that - no-one forces you to do it. ~ Rebecca Ferguson, #NFDB
352:Love and Death? What has great music or poetry ever been about, but those twin forces that undo a man? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
353:Midlife doesn’t introduce you to a new you; it forces you to admit who you have been all along. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
354:Our police forces were created not to protect Americans of color, but to control Americans of color. ~ Ijeoma Oluo, #NFDB
355:The vibrations of mental forces are the finest and consequently the most powerful in existence. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
356:We need to redefine strength in men, not as the power over other people, but as forces for justice. ~ Jackson Katz, #NFDB
357:Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power. ~ Boris Johnson, #NFDB
358:I have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me to do something, I don't do it. ~ Mo Yan, #NFDB
359:I]t is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although ~ Huey P Newton, #NFDB
360:Solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective. ~ Samora Machel, #NFDB
361:The world is a chaos, an irreducible plurality of forces, instincts and drives which ceaselessly clash. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
362:If wish to remain above the forces here, do not let anyone's disapproval dictate your actions. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
363:If you wish to remain above the forces here, do not let anyone's approval dictate your actions ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
364:I, too, believe in the force of superstition, one of the greatest forces the world has ever known. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
365:Reluctantly he realized some forces could not be conquered and some vengeances can never be sated. ~ Bill Willingham, #NFDB
366:Resistance is more than a battle; it is the indomitable presence of life against forces of destruction. ~ Rivera Sun, #NFDB
367:The Bhagavadgita is a gospel of non-co-operation between the forces of darkness and those of light. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
368:The essence of instability [in fundamental forces of nature] is that small fluctuations get amplified. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
369:The Yogi knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces.~ The Mother, #NFDB
370:A maid’s love for her own children often forces her to pretend to love her employer’s children. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
371:As a building is resistant to forces acting upon it, a person must be equally tenacious in life. ~ Santiago Calatrava, #NFDB
372:Destiny doesn’t ask you if you want it, Syn; it just forces it into your lap, and you deal with it. ~ Amelia Hutchins, #NFDB
373:Fear forces you to reach into places within you to summon courage and power you never thought you had. ~ Elicia Hyder, #NFDB
374:I like swordwork. It's like riding, that way - it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
375:I like to try all kinds of styles so it always challenges me and forces me to try to look different. ~ Nancy Kerrigan, #NFDB
376:She had a nasty feeling that forces beyond her control were gathering and preparing to shake her world. ~ M J Arlidge, #NFDB
377:There are certain protective forces in the universe that do watch over us, but the innocent die too. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
378:The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
379:Trump’s budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
380:We are all gods, all forces of nature. We can destroy, we can build. We are like oceans and like fires. ~ Barry White, #NFDB
381:When preached purely, His Word exalts, frightens, shocks, and forces us to reassess our whole life. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
382:Confederate forces were being whittled down and could not be replaced by the South’s smaller population. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
383:Destiny doesn't ask you if you want it Syn, it just forces it into your lap and deal with it. -RYDER ~ Amelia Hutchins, #NFDB
384:Grief is an ocean, fathomless and wide, and on the surface its most impelling forces arrive in waves ~ John Birmingham, #NFDB
385:If one could divine the nature of the economic forces in the world, one could foretell the future. ~ Robert Heilbroner, #NFDB
386:It is natural to try to understand one's own time and to seek to analyse the forces that move it. ~ Emily Greene Balch, #NFDB
387:It's orange down low near the horizon, and pink on top, like the sky's blushing as it forces out the sun. ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
388:Love and Death? What has great music or poetry ever been about, but those twin forces that undo a man? ~ Douglas Wynne, #NFDB
389:The main forces for convergence are the diffusion of knowledge and investment in training and skills. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
390:The present is the most precious moment. Use all the forces of thy spirit not to let that momentescape thee. ~ Tolstoy, #NFDB
391:The same forces of nature which enable us to fly to the stars, enable us also to destroy our star. ~ Wernher von Braun, #NFDB
392:All the forces that are working in this body have been produced out of food; we see that every day. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
393:As a magician, you must think about chaos and order. Those are the two forces that control the universe. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
394:I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
395:Our forces shall spread like a great plague across the earth, every blue zone on the planet will feel our wrath! ~ Kane, #NFDB
396:People are most vociferously opposed to those forces they have to resist more fiercely within themselves. ~ Tim Kreider, #NFDB
397:There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism. ~ Daniel Dennett, #NFDB
398:To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
399:A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
400:All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good women to do nothing. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
401:Characters are not people or things, they are forces…arcs of transformation caused by high-stakes choices. ~ Damon Suede, #NFDB
402:Giving in to the forces of low ambition would be an act of climate appeasement. This is our Munich moment. ~ Chris Huhne, #NFDB
403:Is it? If somebody forces you to do something and there’s no possible way to avoid it, is it really sin? ~ David Eddings, #NFDB
404:Martin Campbell is a director who has that ability to marshal so many forces together and create a film. ~ Ryan Reynolds, #NFDB
405:North Carolina, particularly the 8th District, has long played a key role in our Nation's military forces. ~ Robin Hayes, #NFDB
406:The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
407:All through the ages the African people have made efforts to deliver themselves from oppressive forces. ~ Wangari Maathai, #NFDB
408:Deny my individuality and I become an animal, mute, a mere creature of all the forces that act upon me. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
409:Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
410:[Hezbollah forces] cannot exist all over Syria anyway, for many reasons, but they exist on the borders. ~ Bashar al Assad, #NFDB
411:If the world is the product of nothing but natural forces and natural law, divine intervention is impossible. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
412:(People are most vociferously opposed to those forces they have to resist most fiercely within themselves.) ~ Tim Kreider, #NFDB
413:The need for gain, and advantage over others, is one of the chief driving forces behind all human misery. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
414:This Is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God To Market Forces! ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
415:You should only fall in love with a person who enjoys your madness. Not an idiot who forces you to be normal. ~ Elin Peer, #NFDB
416:Actually, the most frightening power of freedom is to freely give itself up to the forces that stunt it. ~ Truman G Madsen, #NFDB
417:Conservatives truly love America and support the armed forces, while liberals are unpatriotic draft dodgers. ~ Joe Conason, #NFDB
418:Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
419:More British Muslims have joined the ranks of ISIS than have volunteered to serve in the British armed forces. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
420:Play the move that forces the win in the simplest way. Leave the brilliancies to Alekhine, Keres and Tal. ~ Irving Chernev, #NFDB
421:Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
422:Slow adaptation is driven by forces such as evolution. Fast adaptation is driven by forces such as insight. ~ Gary A Klein, #NFDB
423:Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses ones. ~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, #NFDB
424:A man who has command over his senses and the forces of his being, has a just title to the name of king. ~ Angelus Silesius, #NFDB
425:Anybody who has anybody in the armed forces, I don't care how well-trained they are, there's nothing safe about it. ~ Ice T, #NFDB
426:[Barack Obama] still fighting these mysterious, powerful forces trying to stop him, yet he's the president. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
427:Burn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure. ~ Stanislaw Lem, #NFDB
428:Heterosexual love,. is in sync with cosmic forces. Not everyone has the stomach for daily war with nature. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
429:Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
430:It's mainly a few elite women who benefit greatly from standing with the forces that keep women down. ~ Catharine MacKinnon, #NFDB
431:She knew now that there were darker forces in the world than she had ever imagined, and brighter ones, too. ~ Robert Beatty, #NFDB
432:The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
433:There are plagues, and there are victims, and it's the duty of good men not to join forces with the plagues. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
434:All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good women to do nothing. The ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
435:Coincidence is the language of the stars, for something to happen, so many forces have to be put into action. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
436:Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind. ~ Ahad Ha am, #NFDB
437:I think part of the appeal of Antarctica is experiencing some sort of power, the forces of the natural world. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
438:It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
439:Only the destructive forces know death as lord. Only spiritual forces know life as the Lord. Know ye the Lord! ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
440:Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds. ~ Emile Durkheim, #NFDB
441:The universe is knowable and what one need not apeal to mystical, magical forces to account for things ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
442:When army review its forces more than 6 months and not attacking the enemy, know it is a danger to his people ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
443:When your parents regulate everything you hear and everything you intake, it forces you to get creative in other ways. ~ SZA, #NFDB
444:Most people do not really choose—they undergo the play of the forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #NFDB
445:The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
446:The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization. ~ John G Kemeny, #NFDB
447:The man who can make others laugh secures more votes for a measure than the man who forces them to think. ~ Malcolm De Chazal, #NFDB
448:The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force. ~ Max Eastman, #NFDB
449:This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this, compassion is the only way. Love is the only way. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
450:Are you really going to ask such inane questions all the time? Mystic bloody forces; just accept them and cope! ~ Kate Griffin, #NFDB
451:Capital and labor are both wild forces which require intelligent legislation to hold them in restriction. ~ John D Rockefeller, #NFDB
452:Dynamics Concerning forces and changes in the world. Semantics Concerning meaning, interpretation and intent. ~ Mark Burgess, #NFDB
453:I feel so strongly that I use a different word in going around that our forces are depleted - they're depleted. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
454:If it was true, it didn’t matter if it was SEALs, Delta, or Special Forces. They were teammates in the same fight. ~ Mark Owen, #NFDB
455:isolated near Iukhnov, and Kluge and his army commanders shifted their few mobile forces to meet new threats. ~ David M Glantz, #NFDB
456:Just a little meddling with dark forces better left alone,” I said lightly, holding up the burning shingle. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
457:Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long. ~ Angela Merkel, #NFDB
458:Since reason and love, the forces I had come to rely on in my life, have betrayed me, I am in unknown territory. ~ David Sheff, #NFDB
459:The real fight isn't left or right but between forces of democracy across the spectrum and the forces of tyranny. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
460:The vibrations of mental forces are the finest and consequently the most powerful in existence.” Charles Haanel ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
461:Vital forces want neither liberation nor transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #NFDB
462:All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
463:Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
464:I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
465:In 2003, I warned of a 'creeping coup' in Russia against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
466:I think fate is massive, and it's never really had its place among forces we respect as having control over us. ~ Steven Conrad, #NFDB
467:Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
468:Mankind's ability to understand and control the forces of nature greatly exceeds our ability to govern ourselves ~ George Soros, #NFDB
469:proportionately, being a journalist in a war is more dangerous than being in the Special Forces, and more important. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
470:Sometimes if you have financial restraints, it's a benefit. It forces you to come up with a more creative way. ~ Robert De Niro, #NFDB
471:The forces of adversaries are more diminished by the loss of those who flee than of those who are killed. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
472:but when you're dealing with a wizard like Black, you sometimes have to join forces with those you'd rather avoid. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
473:Colors are forces, radiant energies that affect us positively or negatively, whether we are aware of it or not. ~ Johannes Itten, #NFDB
474:Muse is a tyrant. It gets you out of bed in the twilight of the morning and forces you to create something! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
475:Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
476:Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
477:The hard part about living in the present is it forces you to abandon hope for the future. Thanks for nothing, now. ~ Dana Gould, #NFDB
478:When consciousness has no thoughts in it, one can experience spirit and live in harmony with the universal forces. ~ Alan Finger, #NFDB
479:Decluttering forces you to let go of the past. It creates an opening for the future. What are you making room for? ~ Regina Brett, #NFDB
480:I didn't have an identity. It was manufactured. My identity now? It was written on the wall by ancient forces. ~ Robert Downey Jr, #NFDB
481:A field marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice. ~ Wilhelm Keitel, #NFDB
482:All our inventions have endowed material forces with intellectual life, and degraded human life into a material force. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
483:All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
484:Forces of light on earth shall overcome the force of darkness. Complete spiritual enlightenment on earth will occur. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
485:Iraqi forces are still in control of the city, and they are engaging in an attrition war with the enemy. ~ Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, #NFDB
486:it was more likely that they would lose consciousness from the gee forces first—a relatively painless way to go. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
487:Let come the forces of night! We will stand!"
"We will get the hell out of here is what we will do," I muttered. ~ Jim Butcher,#NFDB
488:Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
489:Stop thinking of the adverse forces and they will have no power over you. My force is always there to protect you.
~ The Mother,#NFDB
490:There’s a penalty for trying to do what’s right. The dark forces don’t like it, and stress will make you sick. ~ Patricia Cornwell, #NFDB
491:The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
492:The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you. ~ Tarjei Vesaas, #NFDB
493:We don't need to fight the forces of chaos so much as we need to restore and revitalize the forces of peace. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
494:What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #NFDB
495:Conservatives unwittingly side with the social forces that contribute to the destruction of traditional values. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
496:Government and culture are two diametrically opposed forces - the one blinds and oppresses, the other uplifts and unites. ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
497:Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
498:No one received them [the coalition forces] with roses. They were received with bombs, shoes and bullets. ~ Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, #NFDB
499:The Universe is testing your resolve. Whenever we make a change, the static forces align and form a barrier. ~ Joanna Campbell Slan, #NFDB
500:When any of these forces gains the upper hand, it is usually because of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Yet ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB
501:Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
502:Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity. ~ Stephen Greenblatt, #NFDB
503:If only the authorities could be made to realize that the forces leading them on in the armament race are just insane. ~ Alva Myrdal, #NFDB
504:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
505:I think that the solution of the question of numerical superiority of Russian conventional forces has to be solved. ~ Helmut Schmidt, #NFDB
506:I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
I trample the corpses of the demon hordes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
507:Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
508:Love is kind, not rude. Love brings heartbreak. Love brings life. Love brings healthy relationships. Love never forces . ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
509:Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These weren’t forces to play with. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
510:Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
511:Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist. ~ Stanley Milgram, #NFDB
512:Other feelings, outside forces, fears. These were the enemies of a good thing. These were the problems people faced. ~ Josh Malerman, #NFDB
513:Secrecy is like oxygen to politicians and defense forces; there’s always got to be some of it to keep them going. ~ Peter F Hamilton, #NFDB
514:Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
515:Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
516:Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
517:To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power & movement. The enemy's 'Center of Gravity' ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
518:True collaborative, nurturing, and safe power is a combining of forces that can only happen on a pretty small scale. ~ Peter Buffett, #NFDB
519:Ukraine — The embattled government in Kiev said Monday night that Russian forces had dramatically escalated the standoff ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
520:We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
521:We live on a planet that has been invaded by evil forces, and God’s followers are called to be part of the solution. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
522:You need to shelter yourself from the abrasive forces of life that drain you and keep you in a lower state of mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
523:Hier, au lieu de cracher par terre, j’ai craché sur moi. Les forces m’ont manqué; je n’ai pas pu cracher plus loin. ~ R jean Ducharme, #NFDB
524:Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
525:It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
526:Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
527:Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These were not forces to play with. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
528:No one will stop to help you when you are in need, but everyone forces opinions upon you that you do not require. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
529:Resistane violence may help unite the putschists' basic supporters and military forces against the anti coup defenders ~ Gene Sharp, #NFDB
530:The free spirit can stand fearless before even the biggest forces of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #NFDB
531:To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power and movement. The enemy’s "center of gravity ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
532:Two forces are succesfully influencing the education of a cultivated man: art and science. Both are united in the book. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
533:Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
534:We raise our voices in holy gladness to celebrate the victory of the risen Christ over the terrible forces of death. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
535:You know, sometimes even when two people love each other the universe still conspires against them, forces them apart. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
536:A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
537:Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
538:How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature! ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
539:If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat. ~ Anthony Zinni, #NFDB
540:Je n'aurais jamais cru que ce soit si compliqué de garder à ses côtés la personne que l'on aime de toutes ses forces ~ Mathias Malzieu, #NFDB
541:Man is never beautiful; he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
542:The gospel of Jesus Christ must be defended in every generation. It is always the center of attack by the forces of evil. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
543:There are pedosexuals who, even if the court forces them to go into treatment, do not pursue it or cannot pursue it. ~ Volkmar Sigusch, #NFDB
544:These two enormous forces - truth and meaning - are at war in today's world... And something sooner or later has to give. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
545:The three largest forces on the planet—technology, globalization, and climate change—are all accelerating at once. ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
546:We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces; nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
547:Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
548:Machines are the concealed wishes of actants which have tamed forces so effectively that they no longer look like forces ~ Bruno Latour, #NFDB
549:No one forces you to buy a Twinkie. But governments do force you to fight in their wars and pay for their bailouts. ~ Thomas E Woods Jr, #NFDB
550:On the equator, where centrifugal forces are greatest, a 150-pound person will be a slender 149 pounds 14 ounces. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
551:Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
552:The capacity of Iraq's security forces has improved, and Iraq's leaders have made strides toward political accommodation ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
553:The continuous war between the reactionary and the progressive forces determine the degree of mankind's happiness. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
554:The force of nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the material forces of nature, like electricity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
555:The role of the hero was filled, surprisingly, by the most frightening of untested forces in the market—the mutual funds. ~ John Brooks, #NFDB
556:A terminal illness forces us to make every second count, whereas the forces of boredom make us count every second. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
557:By using the systems archetypes we can learn how to “structure” the details into a coherent picture of the forces at play. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
558:Clashes of taste are an inevitable by-product of a world where forces continually fragment and deplete us in new ways. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
559:Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself it’s own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
560:His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore
Of the huge ocean of his ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
561:I'm also fascinated by the interplay between personal history and the larger forces that form the context for our lives. ~ Julie Salamon, #NFDB
562:I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
563:Making everyone work in support forces everyone to take customers seriously, which we should since they pay our salaries. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
564:Rather than simply being subject to them, I had wanted to know what it felt like to be one of the forces in this world. ~ Joshua Gaylord, #NFDB
565:The commander of the forces of a large State may be carried off, but the will of even a common man cannot be taken from him. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
566:We just want government to be a smart, supportive, reliable partner to the forces that are working for good in this country. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
567:Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
568:He looked, in this moment, so much like a creature that exerts its own forces on the world, and not the other way around, ~ Lisa Halliday, #NFDB
569:He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
570:His pains are her means to grow, to see and feel;
His death assists her immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
571:If we're serious about America's leadership in the world, then we need to make sure that we have the back of the armed forces. ~ Jeb Bush, #NFDB
572:I guide man to the path of the Divine
And guard him from the red Wolf and the Snake. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
573:It is forces that effect great political changes, not moral sentiments or vague generosities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Elections, #NFDB
574:[I]t is tragic that the forces for destruction that we unleashed are stronger than man's present ability to control them. ~ Leslie Groves, #NFDB
575:Limited resources force you to make do with what you've got. There's no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
576:Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control. ~ Robert Gilpin, #NFDB
577:The conflict of forces and the struggle of opposing wills are of the essence of our universe and alone hold it together. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
578:The most important part of discernment is pinpointing the forces to be reckoned with, both the constructive and destructive. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
579:There are forces at work you do not perceive. I weave a delicate strategy which rash actions could rend. Patience , please. ~ Jim Starlin, #NFDB
580:These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
581:War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo, #NFDB
582:Wear it, Eragon. If you wish to remain above the forces here, do not let anyone’s disapproval dictate your actions. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
583:When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
584:A culture and a nation that cuts itself off from the great ethical and religious forces of its own history commits suicide. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
585:Culture was felt to be a fragile achievement, which could always fall prey to the forces of disorder and disintegration. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
586:Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
587:Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: You know you’re watching something good when it forces you to shelve your laptop. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
588:It was in fact the British who first produced Beetles after the end of the Second World War, for their occupation forces. ~ Neil MacGregor, #NFDB
589:Law should seek far more than mere reconciliation; it should be one of the great creative forces of our social life. ~ Mary Parker Follett, #NFDB
590:Man's will, sustained by an indominable conviction, is much more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
591:Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
592:The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
593:The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world. ~ Georgia Harkness, #NFDB
594:Those who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
595:Capitalism has begun to constrain the productive forces of technology, or at least, direct them towards needlessly narrow ends. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
596:Don't worry about society's conditioning and the labels that are put on you by external forces. Hold onto your true self. ~ Gugu Mbatha Raw, #NFDB
597:Fear teaches you to be cautious, careful, and conscientious. It also forces you to be creative, compassionate, and calculating. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
598:Heartache forces us to embrace God out of desparate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada, #NFDB
599:post·ing n. 1 CHIEFLY BRIT. an appointment to a job, esp. one abroad or in the armed forces: he requested a posting to Japan. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
600:There are many cases around the world in which the presence of UN peace-keeping forces has had a somewhat beneficial effect. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
601:The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed. ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
602:To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
603:Uncontrolled, mass immigration displaces British workers, forces people onto benefits, and suppresses wages for the low-paid. ~ Theresa May, #NFDB
604:You can’t make decisions outside the scope of your job. If external market forces doom the company, they doom you as well. ~ Taylor Pearson, #NFDB
605:Geopolitical and demographic forces are so rooted in the unchangeable that political action often generates little but noise. ~ Peter Zeihan, #NFDB
606:It is essential that the foreign forces who have invaded and occupy large parts of the Congo halt their offensive action ~ Richard Holbrooke, #NFDB
607:Other forces were at work besides conformism. But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
608:Our society has been eaten up by the economic view of things, which routinely forces us to work at jobs that don't mean anything. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
609:The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
610:The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
611:the essence of Macbeth is seeing a great and intelligent man succumb to the forces of darkness. What gives the tragedy ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
612:The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
613:The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
614:Twitter taught me how to become better at writing jokes because it forces you to chip away at all the extraneous words. ~ Peter Serafinowicz, #NFDB
615:When man has love he is no longer at the mercy of forces greater than himself, for he, himself, becomes the powerful force ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
616:Where the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will, where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atoms and come united. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
617:A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion. ~ John Welwood, #NFDB
618:But the blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long is Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#NFDB
619:Faith is the most powerful of all forces operating in humanity and when you have it in depth nothing can get you down. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
620:God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
621:I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
622:I make even sin and error stepping-stones
And all experience a long march towards Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
623:Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. ~ Brenna Yovanoff, #NFDB
624:It occurred to me that we were the same, in a way. Both of us treading water, pushing against forces we couldn’t control. ~ Heather Demetrios, #NFDB
625:My ear is leaned to the cry of the oppressed,
I topple down the thrones of tyrant kings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
626:Public television goes dark only in two circumstances: when a country is occupied by foreign forces or when there is a coup. ~ Alexis Tsipras, #NFDB
627:starships of the future may have to spin, creating an artificial gravity via centrifugal forces in order to sustain human life. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
628:The photograph gives constant reference to the rectangle. This forces any idea into the confines of pictorial illusionism. ~ Dennis Oppenheim, #NFDB
629:We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force. ~ Ian Bogost, #NFDB
630:Without contradiction, there would be no life, no movement, no progress, a deadly slumber of all forces. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, #NFDB
631:Working together, America's military, Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people have won a major battle in the war on terrorism. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
632:A thinking animal, Nature’s struggling lord,
Has made of her his nurse and tool and slave ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
633:Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing. ~ Ba Jin, #NFDB
634:Each of us is like a wave in the ocean, a gust of wind, a lightning bolt—unique, yet at the same time part of a pattern of forces. ~ P Z Myers, #NFDB
635:Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist. ~ Andrew Weil, #NFDB
636:Grief is like that sometimes. Like water, it finds any opening, forces itself through any crack until it explodes, inexorable. ~ Cody McFadyen, #NFDB
637:If Polity forces were to turn up here, then your king would have to respond, by which time the turd trajectory would be fanwards. ~ Neal Asher, #NFDB
638:Technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning. ~ Langdon Winner, #NFDB
639:The idea that women are 'our own worst enemies' forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted too. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
640:The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
641:The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
642:Two forces pervade human life, the Gita says: the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
643:Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
644:In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
645:It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives. ~ Robert McNamara, #NFDB
646:My God, Sky. You look like you’re about to pass out. Sit down.” She takes the bottle from my hands and forces me into a chair. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
647:Productive forces are things used to produce. They include labour-power, raw materials, and the machines available to process them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
648:Sooner or later, Chrono believed, the magical forces of the Universe would put everything back together again. They always did. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
649:The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it, regardless of the environment and circumstances. ~ Jean Sibelius, #NFDB
650:To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
651:When you drill down and see the forces that are shaping nations, you can see that the menu from which they choose is limited. ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
652:A company needs to have good business reflexes, to be able to marshal its forces in a crisis or in response to any unplanned event. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
653:Chaos in nature is immediately challenging and forces a good artist to impose some type of order on his or her perception of a site. ~ Wolf Kahn, #NFDB
654:Given our examination of the behavior of our police forces at this moment the question of protection has an extra resonance, yes? ~ Laura Mullen, #NFDB
655:I am sure of the fact that Fidel and Chávez are commanders of the forces of freedom in America, to liberate America and the world. ~ Evo Morales, #NFDB
656:if He-Man ever took out Skeletor, the forces of evil would be pretty well fucked, as the rest of them were a bunch of numbnuts. ~ Rick Gualtieri, #NFDB
657:It's always money no matter kind of budget you have, though, it forces you to be creative and not take anything for granted. ~ Matthew Bonifacio, #NFDB
658:Nothing so demoralizes the forces of the soul as fear. Only as we realize the presence of the Lord does fear give place to faith. ~ Sarah Smiley, #NFDB
659:That won’t work, isn’t Special Forces where everyone gets a hug?” Charlie called. “That’s the Special Olympics,” Rivera said ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
660:The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
661:The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
662:To succeed in life and achieve results, you must understand and master three mighty forces— desire, belief, and expectation. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
663:You must consider that there is opposition from other human beings and also non-physical forces that don't want you to succeed. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
664:Can everybody contact the higher forces? No, not indeed; but they submit themselves to a discipline and this brings them success. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
665:Head knowledge without heart knowledge is worse than useless; but when head and heart join forces, it changes our lives forever. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
666:most powerful military in the world is sent to do a task best accomplished by schoolteachers, police forces, persuasion, and time. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
667:Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find - and there will be plenty. ~ Robert Kagan, #NFDB
668:War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
669:What's most interesting about trying to figure out AI is the questions that it forces you to ask about the nature of consciousness. ~ Oscar Isaac, #NFDB
670:When man begins to think that he is responsible for writing the script of the world, he forgets the forces that dream up our reality. ~ R F Kuang, #NFDB
671:With respect to the situation in Al-Faw, the British told big lies. In Al-Faw, our forces' positions remained in place. ~ Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, #NFDB
672:All projects are a dance between two forces, expanding to consider more ideas and shrinking to narrow things down enough to finish. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
673:All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz, #NFDB
674:Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death do not have the final say. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
675:I believe that there are forces of light and darkness in the world, and I don't want to be a contributor to the force of darkness. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
676:I really did not think much about the size of the transfer fee when I left Barcelona because it was all down to market forces, not me. ~ Luis Figo, #NFDB
677:I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
678:It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
679:It made strategic sense to uphold two rival forces, Sikh fundamentalism and Muslim conservatism, both pro-Empire in this period. ~ Rajmohan Gandhi, #NFDB
680:It was like he was being pulled in a single direction, but by two diametrically opposed forces—if such a thing could be possible. ~ Michael Bunker, #NFDB
681:Only once we understand how social interactions work together with competitive forces can we hope to ensure stability and fairness ~ Alex Pentland, #NFDB
682:Ronald Reagan was able to accomplish extraordinary purposes for our country without having to put our military forces into conflict. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
683:The chances against two of us so well matched meeting in the manner we did are infinite. Divine forces are clearly at work. ~ Andrew Jonathan Fine, #NFDB
684:The fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89 unleashed forces that ultimately liberated all the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
685:The idea that women are “our own worst enemies” forces us to admit that we don’t have the power to be, even if we wanted to. When ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
686:The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces. ~ Philip G Zimbardo, #NFDB
687:The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
688:The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
689:This is certainly a very tricky point: How to ally yourself to other leftist forces without losing your feminist specificity. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
690:Though invisible, its forces are mighty. Within your subconscious mind you will find the solution for every problem, and the cause ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
691:We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
692:Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity? ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, #NFDB
693:Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
694:It's our machines and our technologies that are now the major evolutionary forces acting upon us. It's not our political systems. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
695:I will wear the same thing for three years straight unless somebody, like, forces me not to. It's like, hey, I got this Gucci sweater. ~ Jared Leto, #NFDB
696:Of all the branches of men in the forces there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils than the submariners. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
697:Perhaps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only recognition of the forces that brought us and bound us to our inevitable fates. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
698:Saddam Hussein's soldiers and his great forces gave the Americans a lesson which will not be forgotten by history. Truly. ~ Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf, #NFDB
699:The occultist does not try to dominate Nature, but to bring himself into harmony with these great Cosmic Forces, and work with them. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
700:To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
701:Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
702:Guerrilla wars, and even more so terrorist assaults, are conducted only by forces with insufficient strength to carry out a real war. ~ Conrad Black, #NFDB
703:Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren’t they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had visible effects? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
704:It's the gravity that shapes the large scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of four categories of forces ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
705:One can overcome the forces of negative emotions, like anger and hatred, by cultivating their counter-forces, like love and compassion. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
706:One last question," Sprite said. "Who are you? Special Forces? CIA? Xenobiologist?" "I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft. ~ Edward W Robertson, #NFDB
707:The heroine of my writings is She, whom I love with all the forces of my being, She who always was, is and will be beautiful, is Truth ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
708:The thing about chaos, is that while it disturbs us, it too forces our hearts to roar in a way we secretly find magnificent ~ Christopher Poindexter, #NFDB
709:They all claimed to be religious men, but what kind of religion forces polygamous “marriages” on girls still playing with Barbie dolls? ~ Betty Webb, #NFDB
710:Tom starts the engine, puts on his blinker, and forces the car out into the Houston traffic. He’s a wonderfully aggressive driver. When ~ Amy Gentry, #NFDB
711:Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
712:I extend my deepest gratitude to our Armed Forces and first responders serving both at home and abroad in the war against terrorism. ~ John Doolittle, #NFDB
713:It's the gravity that shapes the large scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of four categories of forces. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
714:Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse;
We make of our own enemies our guests. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#NFDB
715:People have always been telling me what I can't do. I guess I have wanted to show them. That's been one of my driving forces all my life. ~ Ben Hogan, #NFDB
716:"Power," Nita heard her father say behind her. "Creation. Forces from before time. This is--this business is for saints, not children!" ~ Diane Duane, #NFDB
717:The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders It's not the end. It's the start of a new era. ~ Abdullah Ocalan, #NFDB
718:When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
719:When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara, #NFDB
720:All in all, the purification of the armed forces, state institutions, and the communist party led to about fifty thousand executions. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
721:Earth’s eyes half-see, her forces half-create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven’s art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#NFDB
722:Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren’t they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had invisible effects? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
723:He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
724:If both sides reduced their long-range missiles by 50%, SDI would be an unacceptable threat to the remaining Soviet rocket forces. ~ Sergey Akhromeyev, #NFDB
725:... if one is exclusively occupied with oneself, one gets shut up in a sort of carapace and is not open to the universal forces. ~ The Mother, mcw, 6, #NFDB
726:If the Commander-in-Chief will look beyond the defence forces, he will discover that the real India is not military but peace-loving. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
727:If the research agenda reflects "market forces", the problems of the poor are likely to be even more neglected than they already are. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
728:I’m glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them. There’s nothing worth having that doesn’t die. ~ Jeff Zentner, #NFDB
729:I never wanted to do TV. I just did what I was trained to do through the Special Forces, and I've been doing that from a very young age. ~ Bear Grylls, #NFDB
730:I shall hear the silver swing of heaven’s gates
When God comes out to meet the soul of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
731:I think we are, by our own closed-door admissions, a fractious untrusting tribe unified only because we are besieged by larger forces. ~ Andrew X Pham, #NFDB
732:The town maps in the 1939 [Michelin] guide were so accurate they were used by the Allied forces in 1944 during the liberation of France. ~ Peter Mayle, #NFDB
733:Those who need a champion cannot afford compromise, in the face of forces that are powerful, persistent and pernicious and greedy. ~ Elizabeth Edwards, #NFDB
734:Two friends . . . there are stronger forces on earth, perhaps, but few as tenacious and enduring as the bond between true friends. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
735:Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
736:Every atom is working and resisting every thought in the mind. Everything we see and know is but the resultant of these two forces. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
737:Evil forces can always attack in moments of unconsciousness or half-consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #NFDB
738:Fate and free will are equally powerful forces but I consider free will to be more important as it is your free will that determines your fate. ~ Vyasa, #NFDB
739:I salute you for your courage, and I applaud your perseverance, and I embrace you for your faith in the face of adversarial forces. ~ Alanis Morissette, #NFDB
740:Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
741:Marriage tears off the rose-colored glasses and forces us to look at each other for who we are rather than who we want each other to be. ~ Janis Thomas, #NFDB
742:Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
743:She had been led to this conclusion by forces greater than she. Conquers all! All you need is! Is a many-splendored thing! Surrender to! ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
744:The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
745:The educated man tries to repress the inferior one in himself, without realizing that by this he forces the latter to become revolutionary. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
746:There is no law of conservation which forces the growth of new centers of economic strength to be at the expense of existing centers. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
747:There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it - hysteria, ignorance, malice , stupidity, hatred, and fear ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
748:The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism, #NFDB
749:Two forces pervade human life, the Gita says: the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
750:🌸We must never give a chance to the adverse forces to do theirmischief — they take advantage of the slightest unconsciousness. ~ The Mother(CWM 15:20)🌸, #NFDB
751:We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
752:Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
753:Word to the Nation: Guard zealously your right to serve in the Armed Forces, for without them, there will be no other rights to guard. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
754:Earth is the play ground of our children and their children. We cannot allow it to be the play ground of the nuclear arms of the evil forces. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
755:God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces. ~ Richard Brookhiser, #NFDB
756:I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the forces of Hades will not overpower it. Matthew 16:18 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
757:Intersectionality forces people to interact with, listen to, and consider people they don’t usually interact with, listen to, or consider. ~ Ijeoma Oluo, #NFDB
758:Maybe we'll understand more about how the universe came to be, and what forces drove it in the early days and which forces drive it now. ~ Edward Boyden, #NFDB
759:Since he wasn’t part of the Psy race’s armed forces, she thought it was because he had curls; Psy hated anything that was out of control. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
760:The fall of Eastern Aleppo marks a watershed in the five-year Syrian civil war. Opposition forces first took part of the city in 2012. ~ Margaret Warner, #NFDB
761:There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
762:There's no observational evidence that I know of that indicates electric and magnetic forces are important on cosmological scales. ~ Jeremiah P Ostriker, #NFDB
763:two powerful, opposing forces - one seducing people to eat and the other telling them they are failures if they do - create heartache everywhere. ~ Emme, #NFDB
764:We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
765:Well, either you've been out fighting the forces of evil or you've come from a much wilder party than we have.
-Jace Herondale ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
766:Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
767:You must have tremendous power of focus to direct your life and not allow all these variant forces, different vibrations, to enter you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
768:And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
769:For, although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
770:I felt heat and
my body trembled
and forces
beyond my control
pulled me to him
as the music ripped
through our bodies ~ Lisa Schroeder,#NFDB
771:If you look at little kids and wild animals, these are two groups of things that whenever I'm with them forces me to be in the moment. ~ Dominic Monaghan, #NFDB
772:It is not your job to make something happen—Universal Forces are in place for all of that. Your work is to simply determine what you want. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
773:One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
774:technology was unfamiliar territory for me. See, those who wield the primordial forces of creation have a long-running grudge with physics. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
775:The forces of internationalism, humanism and solidarity will have to be victorious, or soon there will be nothing left of the human race. ~ Andre Vltchek, #NFDB
776:There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
777:There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change. ~ Ama Ata Aidoo, #NFDB
778:Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
779:Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
780:Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves ~ Lorna Goodison, #NFDB
781:He concluded that governments were like wars: the reasons and the forces might change, but it was still the same dying over the same soil. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
782:Ironically, their shocking success also awakened the very forces that eventually would marginalize them within the empire they had created. ~ Sven Beckert, #NFDB
783:Leur cohabitation devenait un théâtre de deux forces antagoniques: une attirance progressive brimée par une distance toujours respectée. ~ David Foenkinos, #NFDB
784:Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive each of us. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
785:Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
786:Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
787:Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
788:The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy. ~ Elliott Abrams, #NFDB
789:The end of tamas is disintegration, dispersal of forces, failure of material. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Care of Material Things, #NFDB
790:There is a world within - a world of thought and feeling and power; of light and beauty, and although invisible, its forces are mighty. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
791:There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
792:To succeed in life and achieve results, you must understand and master three mighty forces— desire, belief, and expectation." Iyadurai ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
793:We like to believe we can break strategy down to Five Forces or Seven Ss. But you can't. Strategy is extraordinarily emotional and demanding. ~ Gary Hamel, #NFDB
794:And who would deny that the consumer demand for ever more stuff at ever cheaper prices is one of the great deterministic forces in history? ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
795:Grace forces you to feel the pain of your regrets, but never asks you to pay for them, because the price has already been paid by Jesus. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
796:If you begin to imagine evil powers working against you, or that there is a jinx following you, or that other forces and people are working ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
797:I spent quite a while gazing out and pondering what primeval forces had conspired together to create such a place. Then I ate my sandwiches. ~ Magnus Mills, #NFDB
798:It is unlikely that supernatural forces will bring about a Judgement Day. But it is inevitable that we will be judged by our descendants. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
799:It's not about destiny but i do think there's balance in the world and forces we don't understand intervene to tip the scales the right way. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
800:My mind is constantly in five different places, but golf is great because it forces you to focus completely and purely on what you're doing. ~ Jessica Alba, #NFDB
801:To be less dumb is to see the danger in believing in forces that do not exist and trusting them when you would do better to trust yourself. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
802:Today, the language of the market penetrates every pore and forces every interpersonal relation into the schema of individual preference. ~ J rgen Habermas, #NFDB
803:By discovering the enemy’s dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the enemy’s must be divided. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
804:Dread shows a weakness—the free spirit can stand fearless before even the biggest forces of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #NFDB
805:I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo: your time has come - and gone. It's time for change in America. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
806:In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. ~ Joss Whedon, #NFDB
807:I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check - it forces me to work harder at what I'm interested in. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
808:Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal, without those two great forces , Faith and Love . Prayer is sublime. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
809:Nobody has been held accountable for the Bytyqi murders. Those in command of the camp and the forces operating there have never been charged. ~ Avis Bohlen, #NFDB
810:Our senses perceive the way they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so...because we learn what to perceive. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
811:The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
812:The special forces gave me the self-confidence to do some extraordinary things in my life. Climbing Everest then cemented my belief in myself. ~ Bear Grylls, #NFDB
813:The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
814:We are constantly being shaped by seemingly irrelevant stimuli, subliminal information, and internal forces we don't know a thing about. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
815:We will build our military forces to a level that will be, I believe, stronger than ever before if I become President of the United States... ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
816:All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
817:A tax on capital would promote the general interest over private interests while preserving economic openness and the forces of competition. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
818:Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection. ~ Richard Leakey, #NFDB
819:Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything. ~ Egon Friedell, #NFDB
820:history, like nature, has its own economy, its own balancing of forces in the final accounting. Nothing can be lost, except to awareness. ~ Helen Foster Snow, #NFDB
821:I have realized sometimes I do better working under a crazy schedule. It gives me less time to overthink things and forces me to be present. ~ Torrey DeVitto, #NFDB
822:Is it not possible that we are still living in the Dark Ages, still mocking the suggestion of 'mystical' forces that we cannot see or comprehend. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
823:I've always been drawn to stories and characters facing some sort of struggle against forces beyond our control, be it love, loss, betrayal. ~ Nathan Parsons, #NFDB
824:...one of my motivating forces has been to recreate the world I know into a world I wish I could be in. Hence my optimism and happy endings. ~ Kristin Hunter, #NFDB
825:Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
826:Sorry, are you telling me that your demon-slaying buddies need to be driven to their next assignment with the forces of darkness by my mom? ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
827:The forces of justice had finally come to Annawadi. That the beneficiaries were horses was a source of bemusement to Sunil and the road boys. ~ Katherine Boo, #NFDB
828:The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces. ~ Jackson Pollock, #NFDB
829:There are definitely Dark Forces out there that none of us fully understand. People fear what they don't understand, and lash out against it ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
830:There is strength in numbers, yes, but even more so in collective good will. For those endeavors are supported by mighty forces unseen. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
831:The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
832:Throughout the infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
833:We used to fight the LRA with only one dimensional force that only walks on foot, but now, we have got multiple forces to fight the rebels. ~ Yoweri Museveni, #NFDB
834:When individuals and communities do not govern self, they risk being ruled by external forces that care less about the well-being of the village. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
835:A story happens when two equally appealing forces, or characters, or ideas try to occupy the same place at the same time, and they're both right. ~ Amy Hempel, #NFDB
836:Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
837:Jesus himself has shown us by his own example that prayer and fasting are the first and most effective weapons against the forces of evil. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
838:My teaching forces me to articulate what I think works in a piece of fiction and how I think it works. All of that gives me energy as a writer. ~ Dana Spiotta, #NFDB
839:The 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
840:The loss of a reliance on others often helpfully forces a more sophisticated rumination that enables the opening of previously unknown avenues. ~ Pawan Mishra, #NFDB
841:The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver. ~ Israel Nathan Herstein, #NFDB
842:A broad and far-sighted policy rests on capacity for development; on the inner forces that, once awakened, will sooner or later reveal their power. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
843:All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and stultifying human life into a material force. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
844:Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
845:Dormant forces, faculties, and talents come alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
846:I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable forces, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
847:I do a lot of stuff with Wounded Warriors and the Armed Forces Foundation; if you want to get these guys to stop talking, start complimenting! ~ Brian Kilmeade, #NFDB
848:I have always been haunted by the feeling that the painter has much to gain from making use of the forces that tend to work against his action. ~ Jean Dubuffet, #NFDB
849:Life is always dangerous—never forget that. In the end, perhaps, not only great natural forces, but the work of our own hands may destroy it. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
850:Life is grade A bullshit. You’re either eager to spread ’em and the man’s not interested, or you’re not interested and he forces you to spread ’em. ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
851:New words are needed to express new ideas, new forms are necessary to manifest new forces. With My blessings.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 01 Augest,#NFDB
852:Revolution by its nature can not be overly programmed or directed. There are so many forces at work that you don't know where and how it all ends. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
853:Sexual starvation forces a heterosexual man to see beauty in every single female who he can sleep with without his society’s disapproval. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
854:The different social forces that affected my parents' lives or my friends' lives or I saw around me became essential for me to write about. ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
855:The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
856:We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people. ~ Rick Hillier, #NFDB
857:A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
858:Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
859:humans obtained mastery over one of those other forces, the world might be vaporized in a moment. In the face of madness, rationality was powerless. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
860:Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
861:Reason? Justice? The forces that victimized and paralysed him now were those that had created the world. Who was he to contend against them? ~ John Cowper Powys, #NFDB
862:The military-industrial complex was one of Pakistan’s binding forces, alongside Islam, national pride, suspicion of India and America, and cricket. ~ Steve Coll, #NFDB
863:All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #NFDB
864:Barack Obama's mother-in-law might be moving into the White House with him. Joe Biden was right. Hostile forces will test him in the first few months. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
865:Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
866:Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
867:How do you find out if there are shadowy forces manipulating people’s minds? You find a clean template, and make a before-and-after comparison. ~ Hannu Rajaniemi, #NFDB
868:I don't believe in prom,' I reminded her as she rounded a corner. I expertly angled my raisin bran to accomodate the g-forces. I'd done this before. ~ John Green, #NFDB
869:It's marvelous the change that comes about when a man gets together all his forces and centers them upon the doing of one thing at a time. ~ George Matthew Adams, #NFDB
870:Once upon a time, I would have said we choose our paths at random: this happened, then that, hence the other. Now I know better. There are forces. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
871:On the border area with Lebanon where [Hezbollah forces] want to protect themselves and cooperate with us, but they don't exist all over Syria. ~ Bashar al Assad, #NFDB
872:Our Special Operations units deal primarily with nontraditional security threats we call the ‘three forces’: terrorism, separatism, and extremism. ~ Marc Cameron, #NFDB
873:The Spirit reveals, unfolds, takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us, and prepares us to be more than a match for Satanic forces. ~ Smith Wigglesworth, #NFDB
874:To the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to tell you something: You can have my gun. You can pry it from my cold dead hands! ~ Charlton Heston, #NFDB
875:Up high, biology vanishes to reveal a world shaped by the starker forces of geology and meteorology, the bare bones of the earth wrapped in sky. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
876:Within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not - I am not only a casuality, I am also a warrior. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
877:A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don't respect their victimhood, they'll destroy you. ~ Joseph Sobran, #NFDB
878:Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good? ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
879:As much as Henry Kissinger wanted to attribute historical movement to impersonal forces, he too conceded to "the difference personalities make". ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
880:Clasps his laps around minas throat, pieces her skin and drinks her blood. He then forces her into an act that binds her to the vampire for eternity ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
881:Doing battle with the forces of… I was going to say evil, but I’m increasingly unsure exactly where everyone around me falls on the Jedi-Sith Index. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
882:For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression. ~ David Grann, #NFDB
883:He had rid my inherited house of a lustful ghost, opened my eyes to a concealed world of strange forces and arcane knowledge, and buggered me twice. ~ K J Charles, #NFDB
884:misquote Edmund Burke rather than Milton. All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good women to do nothing. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
885:So. You get handed a holy sword by an archangel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you're saying? ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
886:The conjunction of effort, concentration and balance in asana forces us to live intensely in the present moment, a rare experience in modern life. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
887:The purified heart is obnoxious to the devil and to all the forces of the lost world. They will not rest until they have won back what they have lost. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
888:We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
889:We expected anyway that the democratic forces which have agreed with us in Zimbabwe would have rallied behind us. But it was a difficult struggle. ~ Robert Mugabe, #NFDB
890:What is this, Harry Potter?” Nick sniggered. “That’s what you just sounded like. Yes, I am aware that even now dark forces are trying to sabotage me, ~ Kevin Kwan, #NFDB
891:...and I wondered at the way we all change, all the outside forces that press and mold and push us into people and things we hadn’t planned to be. ~ Mary E Pearson, #NFDB
892:But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
893:Effective leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others to action because they understand the “invisible forces” that shape us ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
894:Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
895:How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an imperfect means to a novel? ~ Randall Jarrell, #NFDB
896:I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
897:Our job is to help Iraq forces be better equipped, to help their police be able to deal with these extremists and to help their government succeed. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
898:Photography forces one out into the world, interacting with people and the environment. It flexes all those right brain, spatially-adept muscles. ~ Deborah Copaken, #NFDB
899:She’s this wrecking ball who tears down my defences and makes me feel, forces me to live. My need for her is about the same as my need for oxygen. ~ Rebecca Yarros, #NFDB
900:The US State Department cables Bradley Manning leaked to Julian Assange contained the names of Afghans who had helped allied forces fight the Taliban. ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
901:Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#NFDB
902:As a soldier and combat veteran, I believe American military forces should only be used in the defense and furtherance of our nation's vital interests. ~ Joni Ernst, #NFDB
903:Australia and New Zealand are now threatened by the might of the Imperial Japanese forces, and both of them should know that any resistance is futile. ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
904:If you or I or anybody think constantly of the forces that seem to be against us, we will build them up into a power far beyond that which is justified. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
905:In order to hold off the Forces of Darkness, you will need a number two pencil and a calendar, preferably one without pictures of kitties on it. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
906:I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her. ~ Sidney Poitier, #NFDB
907:Justice and vengeance get all tangled together when the law is written by a tyrant and ultimately overturned by the forces of anger and resentment. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
908:Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings. ~ Walter Bagehot, #NFDB
909:One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us? ~ Bruce Feiler, #NFDB
910:She forces me to endure this ridiculous therapy, when the so-called counselors are little better than misguided do-gooders with degrees. -Artemis Fowl ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
911:Success, in a generally accepted sense of the term, means the opportunity to experience and to realize to the maximum the forces that are within us. ~ David Sarnoff, #NFDB
912:The idea is to be open to forces outside of themselves—whether people or nature—to redirect them in ways that make their tasks and their lives easier. ~ Jan Spiller, #NFDB
913:There had to be forces outside. The prayer went, "Lead me not in temptation." If people were not led by others, why was the famous prayer that it was? ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
914:Barack Obama treated too lightly the people and forces determined to destroy him. They spat in his face and didn't even get ticketed for a misdemeanor. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
915:I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live. ~ Sol LeWitt, #NFDB
916:My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
917:Now if only I could do something about my neurosis that forces me to narrate my life out loud for everyone to hear,” I said, to no one in particular. ~ Iain S Thomas, #NFDB
918:Oman is an example of how globalization at its best is built on vigorous localisms that can survive the onslaught of destructive commercial forces. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
919:Our perceptions about our lives are the outcome of many forces that shape experience, each having an impact on whether we feel good or bad. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
920:Social democracy, one of the dominant forces shaping Western European politics in the two generations following World War II, has been in retreat. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
921:The hostile forces do not need a cause for attacking—they attack whenever and whoever they can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #NFDB
922:The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
923:To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders talent praises death. ~ Cynthia Ozick, #NFDB
924:Why would the disciples invent a God whose holiness was more terrifying than the forces of nature that provoked them to invent a god in the first place? ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
925:For the first time, Manning felt frightened. It was an indefinite fear, of being small and vulnerable among large forces that were indifferent to him. ~ Michael Frayn, #NFDB
926:How rare that an artist should make something which forces us to think, and encourages us to stop and think, to question why we behave the way we do. ~ Martin Firrell, #NFDB
927:I had been friendly with people who were in the Communist party and all the rest of the Left forces, which were oriented in the direction of mass action. ~ Ella Baker, #NFDB
928:In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
929:I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives. ~ Julianna Baggott, #NFDB
930:Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
931:Man’s soul crosses through thee to Paradise,
Heaven’s sun forces its way through death and night. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
932:One must be careful that no force comes through one except the right forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #NFDB
933:Politics forces us to confront those who disagree with us, and we’re not naturally inclined to see those on the other side of an issue as rational beings. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
934:Religion and politics must therefore be seen as drivers of behavior and change in their own right, not as by-products of grand economic forces. THE ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
935:Strategy can be viewed as building defenses against the competitive forces or finding a position in the industry where the forces are weakest. P.35 ~ Michael E Porter, #NFDB
936:The BBC provides the commentary on our lives, the soundtrack of the nation. It is one of the most powerful unifying forces in the United Kingdom today. ~ Gavyn Davies, #NFDB
937:The organism cannot be regarded as simply the passive object of autonomous internal and external forces; it is also the subject of its own evolution. ~ Richard Levins, #NFDB
938:The quintessential revolution is that of spirit. Without this, the forces which produce the inequalities of the old order will continue to operate. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
939:Truthfulness, uprightness, and honesty are in this connection creative forces, while mendacity, deceitfulness, and dishonesty are destructive forces. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
940:American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
941:Among seekers of truth, painters perhaps come closest to discovering the secret of the balance of forces of the universe, and hence of man's fulfillment. ~ Jean Renoir, #NFDB
942:Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
943:Heaven's sun forces its way through death and night;
Its light is seen upon our being's verge...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
944:He tries to force the anger down, but it's like an anvil on his chest. He closes his eyes, like Sammy taught him, and forces the anvil up; he softens. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
945:How sweet the morning air is! ...How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature! ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
946:I do not believe the President requires any additional authorization from the Congress before committing US forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
947:It seems that life, in order to maintain itself, must revolt every so often against man's ceaseless attempts to master its irrational forces with his mind. ~ Otto Rank, #NFDB
948:Nothing has to be rejected, all has to be raised to the pure levels of the divine consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Indra and the Thought-Forces, #NFDB
949:Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
950:Some people believe that they are guided by forces, that the universe cuts paths for them through the dense forest of life, showing them where to go. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
951:The bare edge of freedom is insured and preserved inside us by God, and no matter what forces oppress us from without or within, it is indestructible.19 ~ Gerald G May, #NFDB
952:The Russians eventually killed more than 4.5 million German soldiers, while American and British ground and air forces accounted for only about 500,000. ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
953:The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good. ~ L Sprague de Camp, #NFDB
954:You cannot create new science unless you realise where the old science leaves off and new science begins, and science fiction forces us to confront this. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
955:You must remember that the common criminal will always join the armed forces for, if nothing else, regular meals and expert training in the use of guns. ~ Warren Ellis, #NFDB
956:You put her body on display." His lips brush my ear as he forces the words through clenched teeth. Pain hums in his voice. "I'll do the same to you. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
957:You see all kinds of anarchic forms of rebellion, but the moment of preparation is when the Communists and other kinds of political forces play a roll. ~ Vijay Prashad, #NFDB
958:Construction work was the art of making the city become aware of itself as a fragile organism at the mercy of forces against which there was no appeal. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
959:Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night; it is already morning. ~ Hilaire Belloc, #NFDB
960:I loved my body and did not want it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
961:Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. The law creates the world. ~ Brenna Yovanoff, #NFDB
962:Know that all healing forces are within, not without! The applications from without are merely to create within a coordinating mental and spiritual force. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
963:No one could understand the bond between me and my brother. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another. ~ Barry White, #NFDB
964:Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens. ~ Martha Gellhorn, #NFDB
965:Sometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life. ~ Jenna Fischer, #NFDB
966:Tests come sometimes from the hostile forces, sometimes in the course of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #NFDB
967:The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment… that maximize[s] consumption at the long-term cost of well-being, ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
968:The forces of rotation caused red hot masses of stones to be torn away from the Earth and to be thrown into the ether, and this is the origin of the stars. ~ Anaxagoras, #NFDB
969:The greatest evil is that which uses others for its own gratification, which forces change on others and causes pain for nothing more than its own pleasure. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
970:The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march ~ Bhagat Singh, #NFDB
971:This radical transformation of world power relationships reflects primarily in the case of both the USA and the USSR the growth of the productive forces. ~ Earl Browder, #NFDB
972:We are very grateful for what the Ontario provincial government is doing, and for cooperation from provincial and local police forces all across Canada. ~ Paul Cellucci, #NFDB
973:As Freud observed, "Mortals can keep no secret. If their lips are silent, they gossip with their fingertips; betrayal forces its way through every pore. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
974:Dans les époques de stérilité, on devrait hiberner, dormir jour et nuit pour conserver ses forces, au lieu de les dépenser en mortifications et en rages. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
975:Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over. ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
976:Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
977:Every man in a big position knows in his own heart that forces entirely outside himself have played a large part in his making.” —Bruce Barton, 1928 “Many ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
978:Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces. ~ Julius Caesar, #NFDB
979:I do believe that an improved understanding of the multiple irrational forces that influence us could be a useful first step toward making better decisions. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
980:If you think of a special operations team—SEALs, Special Forces, Rangers, and the Air Force Pararescuemen and combat controllers—like a boat, everybody rows. ~ Mark Owen, #NFDB
981:In the universe, there is darkness and light. We call this duality. When you seek knowledge and power, there are forces and people that will oppose you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
982:It's not about destiny, but I do think there's a balance in the world, and sometimes forces we don't understand intervene to tip the scales the right way. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
983:More women speaking up and seizing the helm of power can create its own momentum. It can change the culture that helps perpetuate those external forces. ~ Nancy Birdsall, #NFDB
984:No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business - doing good for the environment. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
985:Our best theories of people, presented on their own terms and without reference to underlying particles and forces, leave plenty of room for human choice. ~ Sean Carroll, #NFDB
986:Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
987:Religion and science, then, in my analysis are the two great sister forces which have pulled, and are still pulling, mankind onward and upward. ~ Robert Andrews Millikan, #NFDB
988:Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should. ~ Georges Braque, #NFDB
989:Shame forces us to put so much value on what other people think that we lose ourselves in the process of trying to meet everyone else’s expectations. Shame: ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
990:Spartan is about this elite unit of the armed forces named the Delta Force. I play a protege of Val Kilmer's character, and he kind of gives me a hard time. ~ Derek Luke, #NFDB
991:The largest single contributor to Iraq's security is that effort of Iraqi people who continue to step forward to join the various Iraqi security forces. ~ Craig L Thomas, #NFDB
992:We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill , going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
993:We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
994:A change in perspective, in physical location, quite simply forces mindfulness. It forces us to reconsider the world, to look at things from a different angle ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
995:But human withdrawal is a very painful and lonely process, because it forces us to face directly our own condition in all its beauty as well as misery. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
996:Hating someone forever is a difficult thing to do. It uses up all your energy and wears you down. It forces you to be someone and something you’re not. ~ Bette Lee Crosby, #NFDB
997:I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
998:If a socialist economy is opened up to increasing degrees of market forces, a point will be reached at which democratic governance becomes a possibility. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
999:It is a story I never tire of telling, because to me it is the perfect coming together to science and spirituality-the twin driving forces of my life. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
1000:Litterature provides us with the opportunity to escape into fictional worlds that are ultimately rooted in human universals shaped by common biological forces. ~ Gad Saad, #NFDB
1001:Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary. ~ Wallace Stegner, #NFDB
1002:The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves. To ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
1003:The malignancy of hostile Powers
Puts craftily back the clock of destiny
And mightier seems than the eternal Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1004:The unconscious is a marvelous universe of unseen energies, forces, forms of intelligence—even distinct personalities—that live within us. ~ Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work, #NFDB
1005:When you offer a vibration, the Universal forces are working in concert with each other in order to satisfy you. You really are the center of the Universe. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1006:According to Sun Tzu, great results can be achieved with small forces… But I choose to interpret that as: pissing off a bunch of women is a really bad idea. ~ Addison Cain, #NFDB
1007:Democracy is not a mere consequence, a certain stage in the development of society. It is the condition on which the survival of productive forces depends. ~ Wei Jingsheng, #NFDB
1008:Discipline is a necessary tool to help you get what you want in life. It forces you to stay on center and to move away from the things that are not necessary. ~ Diana Ross, #NFDB
1009:Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back to an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
1010:Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything. —EGON FRIEDELL, ~ Clive James, #NFDB
1011:Every body persists in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces having impact upon it. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
1012:I feel a strange sensation brewing inside of me. It tickles my throat and forces my lips into a grin. Before I can stifle it, I giggle. And then I laugh. ~ Kristen Simmons, #NFDB
1013:...it is impossible for a genuine people's revolution in any country to win victory without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1014:Nature's Process
A nearness thrilled of the spirit to its source
And deepest things seemed obvious, close and true. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1015:No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1016:She forces me to endure this ridiculous therapy, when the so-called counselors are little better than misguided do-gooders with degrees.
-Artemis Fowl ~ Eoin Colfer,#NFDB
1017:The fact is that I’m fat because life is a snarl of physical, emotional, and cultural forces both in and out of my control. I’m fat because life is life. Like ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
1018:The Pythagoreans were probably the first to recognize the concept that the basic forces in the universe may be expressed through the language of mathematics. ~ Mario Livio, #NFDB
1019:The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
1020:What is moral is everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to … regulate his actions by something other than … his own egoism. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1021:After suffering another insomniac night, Nixon went to the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs showed him maps detailing where Communist forces occupied Cambodia. ~ Tim Weiner, #NFDB
1022:but I believe that pain can be the most important tool in a person’s life. It forces a person to pay attention to something that needs to be changed. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
1023:First, the sprint forces your team to focus on the most pressing questions. Second, the sprint allows you to learn from just the surface of a finished product. ~ Jake Knapp, #NFDB
1024:I am the giver of the bowl of rice,
I am the worshipped Angel of the House.
I am in all that suffers and that cries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1025:Instead of being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundating waters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his own psyche. ~ Robert A. Johnson, Ecstasy, #NFDB
1026:June 6, 1944: Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, on 'D-Day,' beginning the liberation of German-occupied western Europe during World War II. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1027:Most of Set’s forces were running towards our boat, screaming and throwing rocks (which tended to fall down and hit them, but no one says demons are bright). ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1028:There are dark forces in the world that would have you believe that you can't succeed and that you're a failure and that you're evil and all this nonsense. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1029:There are forces, Lucius, infinitely more powerful than reason and science."
" What are they?" asked Cotta.
"Ignorance and folly," replied Aristaeus. ~ Anatole France,#NFDB
1030:There is a world within - a world of thought and feeling and power; of light and beauty, and although invisible, its forces are mighty. -Charles Haanel P.g92 ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1031:This, for Homer, is the tragedy of being human: to desire freedom, and be tortured by a sense of autonomy, and yet be imprisoned by forces beyond our control. ~ Kenan Malik, #NFDB
1032:This was Special Forces’ rule number one: let men experience failure so they never fail again. And by failing, they will learn how to be successful soldiers. ~ Doug Stanton, #NFDB
1033:"We do not know where the roots of the feeling of moral freedom lie; and yet they exist no less surely than the instincts, which are felt as compelling forces." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1034:Well, either you’ve been out fighting the forces of evil or you’ve come from a much wilder party than we have,” Jace said.
“Hello, there, Blackthorns. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1035:We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone. ~ Warren Christopher, #NFDB
1036:And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces. ~ Richard Ford, #NFDB
1037:But clearly the fact that we've gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it's not enough. ~ John Abizaid, #NFDB
1038:Dangerous forces lie within me. You awaken them, and not to your advantage. You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors. ~ Leopold von Sacher Masoch, #NFDB
1039:How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? ~ Walter Pater, #NFDB
1040:It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
1041:Our hopes, desires and ambitions are powerful forces existing within us for the shaping of the future. They are the generating forces that create the future. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
1042:Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie. ~ Alexander von Humboldt, #NFDB
1043:Statism, which forces all of us within its orbit, is nothing but a political system of organized plunder, managed by every conceivable type of pressure group. ~ Leonard Read, #NFDB
1044:The forces that are driving mankind toward unity and peace are deep-seated and powerful. They are material and natural, as well as moral and intellectual. ~ Arthur Henderson, #NFDB
1045:The greatness of America has grown out of a political and social system and a method of control of economic forces distinctly its own - our American system. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
1046:The history of man proves that religion perverts man's concept of life and the universe, and has made him a cringing coward before the blind forces of nature. ~ Joseph Lewis, #NFDB
1047:There will be no greater burden on our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time in order to make our quest ofa new freedom for America. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
1048:There will be no recognition of Israel and there will be no security for the occupation and colonization forces. Resistance will remain our strategic option. ~ Khaled Mashal, #NFDB
1049:… the understanding of the reasons for the totalitarian flight from freedom is a premise for any action which aims at the victory over the totalitarian forces. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1050:This is the kind of room poets are supposed to work in, the kind of room that threatens to break your spirit and forces you into constant battle with yourself. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
1051:To have a breakthrough, you must consciously connect with the invisible forces that are everywhere around you, urging you to go beyond your old conditioning. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1052:Two opposing physical forces, they create an inexplicable reaction overpowered by a third, stronger force—the knowledge of having deprived his wife of a child. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
1053:When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of evolution. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
1054:His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1055:Historical materialism is that “the nature of a set of productive relations is explained by the level of development of the productive forces embraced by it”[12]. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1056:I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go. ~ Brian Ferneyhough, #NFDB
1057:La vie a bien plus d’imagination que nous tous réunis, elle est parfois porteuse de petits miracles, tout est possible, il suffit d’y croire de toutes ses forces. ~ Marc Levy, #NFDB
1058:She had power over the most magnificent forces on Earth, but she still didn’t feel like she had power over the most important thing of all—her own heart. ~ Josephine Angelini, #NFDB
1059:There are forces in life working for you and against you. One must distinguish the beneficial forces from the malevolent ones and choose correctly between them. ~ Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
1060:When we have succeeded in preventing all the forces in the world from throwing us off our balance, then alone we have attained to freedom, and not before. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1061:You’ll run out of expletives soon; I’d advise saving some for later. Not that keeping forces in reserve has ever been precisely you guys’ strong point, has it? ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
1062:A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1063:And all was centred in a single view
As when by distance separate scenes grow one
And a harmony is made of hues at war. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1064:Any comment that forces you to look in another module for the meaning of that comment has failed to communicate to you and is not worth the bits it consumes. ~ Robert C Martin, #NFDB
1065:A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
Her feet upon a couchant lion’s back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1066:Cornwallis had grown so desperate that he infected blacks with smallpox and forced them to wander toward enemy lines in an attempt to sicken the opposing forces. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1067:Feminism remains a crucial element of any program for social justice today, which is why patriarchal forces attempt to eliminate or marginalize feminist ideas. ~ Robert Jensen, #NFDB
1068:In other words, ideas can become powerful forces, but only to the extent to which they are answers to specific human needs prominent in a given social character. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1069:Not only that, this “negative gravity” will ultimately win the tug-of-war, as it forces the cosmic expansion to accelerate exponentially into the future. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1070:Rhetoric is the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic. And it harnesses the most powerful of social forces, argument. ~ Jay Heinrichs, #NFDB
1071:She forces me to endure this ridiculous therapy when the school's so-called counselors are nothing more than misguided do-gooders with degrees."
-Artemis Fowl ~ Eoin Colfer,#NFDB
1072:United States and Coalition forces will remain in Iraq and will operate under American command as part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations. ~ Jim Gerlach, #NFDB
1073:All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1074:...and led me to finally recognise that I was but an automaton devoid of free will in thought and action and merely responsible to the forces of the environment. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1075:But environments are never static for long. The forces of nature inevitably unleash themselves in such a manner that the necessity for adaptation will be stirred. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
1076: Carley saw two forces in life--the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism. ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
1077:Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being insticated by three groups. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1078:Every increase of needs tends to increase one's independence on outside forces over which one cannont have control and therefore increases existential fear ~ Ernst F Schumacher, #NFDB
1079:I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any treat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
1080:In November 2004, U.S. occupation forces launched their second major attack on the city of Falluja. The press reported major war crimes instantly, with approval. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1081:In so many ways, forces unleashed in response to the Movement have come to dominate our politics, and technology is allowing the same injustices to be seen anew. ~ Andrew Aydin, #NFDB
1082:Put your mind where your body is. One day at a time forces you to reckon with the instant you actually occupy, rather than living in fantasy la-la that never comes. ~ Mary Karr, #NFDB
1083:Reporting in general makes me pretty nervous. But I realized: all the amazing work experiences of my life were thanks to reporting. So that forces you to go do it. ~ Joel Stein, #NFDB
1084:The artist speaks with inspiring tools of creativity. Thinkers challenge with the weapons of choice. These two forces are necessary to move souls beyond limitation. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
1085:We are all tossed on the stormy seas of fate, at the mercy of men and forces beyond our power to comprehend, control or deflect. Sometimes we need an illusion. ~ Stephen Coonts, #NFDB
1086:What's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life? ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
1087:Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater, #NFDB
1088:And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss
and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces. ~ Richard Ford,#NFDB
1089:Anyone can bear a catastrophe, once it has occurred, by at least seeming to avoid it through keeping busy, no matter which work routine he forces himself into. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1090:As I see it, Being, the Cosmos, whatever you want to call it, is a struggle between two implacable forces: Novelty on the one side and habit on the other side. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1091:Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1092:History is full of instances of people who challenged the mighty forces of evil and they were not only fighting a lonely battle but were left alone to die. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer, #NFDB
1093:I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
1094:It’s not about destiny,” I said, “but I do think there’s balance in the world, and sometimes forces we don’t understand intervene to tip the scales the right way. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
1095:It was best not to spend too much time in the Corridors. Nightmares lurked there, forces and energies that the living and the dead could not quite explain. ~ Leanna Renee Hieber, #NFDB
1096:Man only sees the cosmic surfaces.
Then wondering what may lie hid from the sense
A little way he delves to depths below: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1097:No section of the American populace has been more completely deceived by the forces interested in keeping the truth from the people than America's youth. ~ Francis Parker Yockey, #NFDB
1098:The bourgeois during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1099:There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
1100:To Dennis, “undoubtedly the easiest way to unite and animate large numbers in political association for action is to exploit the dynamic forces of hatred and fear. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1101:We are mandating forces to hold regular neighbourhood beat meetings. These meetings will give local people the chance to scrutinise the work of their local police. ~ Theresa May, #NFDB
1102:What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command. ~ Eugene V Debs, #NFDB
1103:Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty. ~ Roman Dmowski, #NFDB
1104:His kindness an investment for return,
His altruism is ego’s other face:
He serves the world that him the world may serve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1105:Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1106:I really admire visual storytelling that shows you what's happening, instead of tells you what's happening. I think it really forces the filmmaking to be very clear. ~ John Kahrs, #NFDB
1107:It's still very difficult for me to rely. Your weakness, the blessing of your weakness is it forces you into friendships. The things that you lack, you look for in others. ~ Bono, #NFDB
1108:Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation ~ Charles Evans Hughes, #NFDB
1109:Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
1110:The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1111:The universe, they say, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1112:We need to embed our forces - our troops inside the Iraqi military. We need to arm directly the Kurds. And all of that has to be done in concert with the Arab nations. ~ Jeb Bush, #NFDB
1113:When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods. ~ Leon Battista Alberti, #NFDB
1114:Why do we calculate our forces, and consult with flesh and blood to our grievous wounding? Jehovah has power enough without borrowing from our puny arm. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1115:Aline," he interrupted tersely, "the forces of heaven and hell combined couldn't stop me from making love to you right now."
That hardly left room for ambiguity. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1116:And in that full day, while Jed slept and woke and worked and loved, the forces in the world around him rushed headlong toward an inevitable, and violent, climax. ~ Michael Bunker, #NFDB
1117:As we are all aware, Special Operations Forces, SOF, are playing an increasingly essential role as we continue to fight and, more importantly, win the war on terror. ~ Robin Hayes, #NFDB
1118:Everytime we say that god is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was caused by the forces of nature. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1119:Feel the feeling as though the prayer has already been answered, and in that feeling we are speaking to the Forces of Creation, allowing the world to respond to us. ~ Gregg Braden, #NFDB
1120:Grave of the Fireflies is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation... It belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
1121:Hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. ~ Edward Bellamy, #NFDB
1122:It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one,
to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous,
to divide our army into two. ~ Sun Tzu,#NFDB
1123:Teaching someone that doesn't know something forces you to think about almost every single aspect of it, including parts of it that you could sort of take for granted. ~ Joe Rogan, #NFDB
1124:The greatest challenge of the next 50 years, I believe, will be to create dignified work for everyone... not through handouts and charity, but through market forces. ~ Leila Janah, #NFDB
1125:The hierarchy of the ordered Powers,
The high changeless values, the peaked eminences,
The privileged aristocracy of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1126:there are periods in which competition, among experts and among organizations, creates powerful forces that favor a collective blindness to risk and uncertainty. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1127:There is, therefore, wisdom in reserving one's decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1128:You're supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1129:And what's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life? ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
1130:As Iraqi forces continue the liberation of Mosul, I'm pleased that NATO will be meeting the commitment we made in Warsaw to begin training additional forces in Iraq. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1131:Cities can be rebuilt, industries can be rebuilt, what really matters are strategy forces, military forces and the cadres leaders, political, military and economic. ~ Richard Pipes, #NFDB
1132:Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
1133:Don't you know that Al-Azhar is a hotbed of Islamic militancy? It is been thoroughly penetrated by the forces of Al Qaeda and the Muslim brotherhood. - Gabriel Allon ~ Daniel Silva, #NFDB
1134:Empedocles believed that there were two different forces at work in nature. He called them love and strife. Love binds things together, and strife separates them. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1135:Extending over more than a century and including most nations of the globe, the cause of woman suffrage has been one of the great democratic forces in human history. ~ Ellen DuBois, #NFDB
1136:[Francois] Hollande said the United States and Russia should join forces. And his words specifically were to fight this terrorist army in a broad single coalition. ~ Corey Flintoff, #NFDB
1137:I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
1138:It's amazing the gymnastics you can do when you don't want to do something. How you can force yourself against all the forces of nature. I threw myself backward. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
1139:I've always been making up my own restrictions for myself, from day one, and it's compelling, because it forces me to think. That's always been a driving force for me. ~ Jack White, #NFDB
1140:Oh, well. There were only light units available in Sol anyway. And so were the forces at Thermopylae.” “They lost, sir,” Blades pointed out. “We’ll have to avoid that. ~ John Ringo, #NFDB
1141:Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world. And the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1142:Psychic development makes you strong. It develops a common sense attitude in which you don't expose yourself to forces, people and situations that would drain you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1143:Ranger is a man of few words. He's Cuban-American, former Special Forces, he makes a much better friend than an enemy, and he's Vinnie's numero uno bounty hunter. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
1144:The dangers which threaten us are twofold: First, from the Confederate forces, composed of men whose earnest convictions and reckless bravery it is idle to deny. ~ Robert Dale Owen, #NFDB
1145:The Goldschmidts had joined forces with other Rothschild cousins, the Bischoffsheims, to form a banking partnership which financed the North in the American Civil War. ~ David Icke, #NFDB
1146:The left-wing, which consists of armoured and motorized forces and has no enemy in front of it, will be stopped dead in its tracks upon direct order from the Fuhrer. ~ Franz Halder, #NFDB
1147:There are enough negative forces in this world—don’t let the pessimistic voice that lives inside you get away with that stuff, too. That voice is NOT a good roommate. ~ Felicia Day, #NFDB
1148:There are two phases of the redeployment of the Israeli forces in the West Bank: One, to allow elections. Second, after the elections, to help further redeployment. ~ Yitzhak Rabin, #NFDB
1149:The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible. ~ Alfred Nobel, #NFDB
1150:The seemingly most hateful, those on the front lines of despair, are mere instruments of sinister forces, which pull the manipulative strings of manufactured supremacy. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
1151:We do not keep security establishments merely to defend property or territory or rights abroad or at sea. We keep the security forces to defend a way of life. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1152:You cannot always understand boys, the things they do. They act, sometimes, as though in thrall to severe but natural forces. They can be waterfalls or wind gusts. ~ Joshua Gaylord, #NFDB
1153:Being great involves luck, and unique circumstances, and a lot of other forces beyond your control. You can’t just make it happen by working more or trying harder. ~ Charles Wheelan, #NFDB
1154:But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity. ~ John Abizaid, #NFDB
1155:Close your eyes after having read this chapter to this point, and try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breathing and life forces come. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
1156:I am Prometheus under the vulture’s beak,
Man the discoverer of the undying fire,
In the flame he kindled burning like a moth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1157:I have great faith in the millennials and in what they understand about social media, and how they're going to be able to counter fascist forces as they come. ~ Lynn Hershman Leeson, #NFDB
1158:It was announced as a French victory by the French Minister of War. I did not see any sign of victory but only the retreat of the French forces engaged in the battle. ~ Philip Gibbs, #NFDB
1159:I Use The Square To Begin My Solutions Because The Square Is A Non-choice, Really. In The Course Of Development, I Search For The Forces That Would Disprove The Square. ~ Louis Kahn, #NFDB
1160:Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, #NFDB
1161:Much better to figure out where the marketplace is going to be in a few years, focus on providing a solution to that, and let the market forces catch up to you. ~ Jessica Livingston, #NFDB
1162:Playing solo is difficult because you have to keep the momentum yourself. You have to continue to create and develop, so it forces you to stretch in a variety of ways. ~ McCoy Tyner, #NFDB
1163:Sometimes we let things go for longer that they should, and we don't make a change until something life-altering forces us to see the life we've lived in a new light. ~ Cameron Dane, #NFDB
1164:The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings. ~ Laurel Clark, #NFDB
1165:There are two apparently opposing forces that govern our lives. No, not good and evil. Love and fear.
That's right: the opposite of love is not hate, but fear ~ John C Parkin,#NFDB
1166:We must reverse the decision made in 2011 to withdraw all our forces from Iraq, but our military should help the people of Iraq learn how to win by themselves. The ~ Sebastian Gorka, #NFDB
1167:When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
1168:When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1169:When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen... Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1170:When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces when you authorize him to be able to use the forces. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
1171:When you're president, you have more power to help more people, but you also are the prisoner of circumstances as well, and countervailing political forces more. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
1172:An important consequence of giving highest priority to the metaphor of Moral Strength is that it rules out any explanations in terms of social forces or social class. ~ George Lakoff, #NFDB
1173:Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo. ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
1174:Continuer la lutte lorsqu'on est victorieux, c'est aussi bien diminuer ses propres forces qu'affaiblir le gage exigé du vaincu. (notes de L. Nachin (1948) sur l'article II) ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
1175:Doing battle with the forces of things trying to kill me, or my friends, or people who can’t protect themselves is not a rowdy summer adventure movie. It’s a nightmare. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1176:I am guided by the same intelligence and inspired by the same imagination which scatters the moon beams across the waves and holds the forces of nature in it's grasp. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
1177:If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1178:If the Zionist commit the folly and attack Iran, they will receive a crushing response from the Islamic Republic's armed forces which will lead to their annihilation. ~ Mohsen Rezaee, #NFDB
1179:Inequality is the very basis of creation. At the same time the forces struggling to obtain equality are as much a necessity of creation as those which destroy it. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1180:It’s not about destiny,” I said, “but I do think there’s balance in the world, and sometimes forces we don’t understand intervene to tip the scales the right way. Miss ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
1181:It was necessary, temporarily, to limit certain requirements, accumulate necessary means, strain forces. We acted precisely in this way and built a socialist society. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
1182:Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1183:Sound waves are pressure waves in the air. When a dog barks, she forces air out through her mouth and sets up a vibration that travels through the air in all directions. ~ Chad Orzel, #NFDB
1184:The armed forces knew he was a homosexual, that he was certain to fall in love with other fighting men, and the armed forces didn’t want to put up with such love affairs. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1185:The God, above my powers enthroned, He cannot change external forces. So, by the burden of my days oppressed, Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest! ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1186:There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest. All great revolutions originate in fear, for the play of interests does not lead to accomplishment. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1187:There were few forces greater than the power of a fourteen-year-old’s determination when she wanted something. A teenager would stop at nothing in order to get her way. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
1188:Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1189:Animals are the messengers of the tree, and trees the gardens of animals. Life depends upon life. All forces, all elements, all life forms are the biomass of the tree. ~ Bill Mollison, #NFDB
1190:Anything that forces the human soul to scream out and fight really brings out the best in us, and to have an opportunity to portray characters like that is inspiring. ~ Nathan Parsons, #NFDB
1191:A progress made often stirs the adverse forces to activity, they want to diminish its effect as much as possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #NFDB
1192:A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived ~ Vanessa Redgrave, #NFDB
1193:Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
1194:Chiropractic works in harmony with the basic healing forces of the body, whereas the allopathic, western medical establishment doesn't have nearly as holistic a vision. ~ John Robbins, #NFDB
1195:He felt that his mind had become a battle-ground for the forces of good and evil and that his task was to strain every nerve to recognize them, but it was not easy. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
1196:If the forces are intense, (..) almost no company earns attractive returns on investment.
If the forces are benign, (..) many companies are profitable. P. 25 ~ Michael E Porter,#NFDB
1197:If there were 10,000 U.S. forces ashore [in Lebanon], authorized to move about, there would be less risk to American lives than there is with an immobile force of 1,300. ~ George Will, #NFDB
1198:I think before 1997 is over, NATO will have taken giant strides in what's called adaptation, the discussions about bringing the French fully into the NATO forces. ~ Warren Christopher, #NFDB
1199:It was a conceit to imagine that they knew the world; that they knew its every detail. Forces ever worked unseen, in elusive patterns no mortal mind could comprehend. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1200:Just because it’s a mild night doesn’t mean that dark forces aren’t abroad. They’re abroad all the time. They’re everywhere. They always are. That’s the whole point. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1201:On one side, the forces of destruction, the forces of the desert, have risen, and on the other hand stand firm the forces of civilization, but we will not be stopped. ~ Chaim Weizmann, #NFDB
1202:...or perhaps about acknowledging that life is a delicate balance of great forces, and that good would lose its potency if there was no evil left to fight in the world. ~ Anne Fortier, #NFDB
1203:Recruiters, for terrorist cells and police forces and armies, relied on this simple truth: if you got people young enough, they could be made to do just about anything. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1204:The body is a cell state in which every cell is a citizen. Disease is merely the conflict of the citizens of the state brought about by the action of external forces. ~ Rudolf Virchow, #NFDB
1205:The Communist Party and the Soviet Government display constant concern to strengthen the country's defensive might and raise the combat readiness of the Armed Forces. ~ Andrei Grechko, #NFDB
1206:The Divine's will is that we should be like channels always open, always more wide, so that His forces may pour their abundance into the mould.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
1207:Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is. ~ Amiri Baraka, #NFDB
1208:What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1209:Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1210:Anyplace market forces have been artificially removed by the government there is a total absence of incentives, competition, effective oversight, cost controls and so on. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1211:Government is the greatest combination for forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined. ~ David Dudley Field II, #NFDB
1212:Horst grinned. ‘Well, look at us. The necromancer and the vampire against the forces of elemental evil. The Brothers Cabal ride again!’ ‘Yeehaw,’ said Cabal evenly. ~ Jonathan L Howard, #NFDB
1213:If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn’t the forces of natural selection that designed fish, it must have been an Italian. I ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1214:In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1215:In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me! ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1216:It's a very difficult age when the forces of time want to destroy us and take us away. They're just snatching people like devils; death comes and grabs each of us. ~ Carolee Schneemann, #NFDB
1217:Religious ecstasy is a madness of thought freed of its bodily bonds, whereas in the ecstasy of love, the forces of twin natures unite, blend and embrace one another. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
1218:The Presence of the demon keeps the chakra from doing its job, but that challenge also forces us to bring more awareness to that job, so eventually we can do it better. ~ Anodea Judith, #NFDB
1219:The use of force, including beatings, undoubtedly has brought about the impact we wanted - strengthening the [occupied] population's fear of the Israeli Defense Forces. ~ Yitzhak Rabin, #NFDB
1220:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #NFDB
1221:But if my forces are not enough, I am hardly the one to relent, I’ll plead for the help I need, wherever it may be - if I cannot sway the heavens, I’ll wake the powers of hell! ~ Virgil, #NFDB
1222:Do not compare your material forces with those of the enemy. Spirit cannot be compared with matter. You are human beings, they are beasts. You are free, they are slaves. ~ Simon Bolivar, #NFDB
1223:I have been pity, leaning over pain
And the tender smile that heals the wounded heart
And sympathy making life less hard to bear. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1224:I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1225:Many rest content to have Jesus around the place for particular ‘spiritual’ purposes, but continue to assign riches, power, glory and the rest to earthly forces and rulers. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1226:Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1227:Osama bin Laden, who is a Saudi, feels himself to be a patriot because the U.S. has forces in Saudi Arabia, which is sacred because it is the land of the prophet Mohammed. ~ Edward Said, #NFDB
1228:Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1229:String theory is based on the simple idea that all the four forces of the universe: gravity, the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces, can be viewed, as music. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1230:The people of Iraq are grateful for what the people of the United States of America and our armed forces and our coalition forces are giving them the opportunity to do. ~ Johnny Isakson, #NFDB
1231:Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is. ~ Amiri Baraka, #NFDB
1232:We will move to a low-carbon world because nature will force us, or because policy will guide us. If we wait until nature forces us, the cost will be astronomical. ~ Christiana Figueres, #NFDB
1233:All mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery over the forces of nature ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1234:Armed forces were no longer primarily feudal levies serving under a vassal’s obligation who went home after forty days; they were recruited bodies who served for pay. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
1235:Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves. ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
1236:Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not destruction, and I could not dance around the fact that my stupid pride had turned me into a misbegotten cockwaffle. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
1237:Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1238:His spirit by spiritual ego sink,
Or his soul dream shut in sainthood’s brilliant cell
Where only a bright shadow of God can come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1239:It would have been easier to fight alone with inadequate forces than to have to accept...responsibility for our ally's lack of fighting qualities and dubious loyalty. ~ Albert Kesselring, #NFDB
1240:The armed forces knew he was a homosexual, that he was certain to fall in love with other fighting men, and the armed forces didn’t want to put up with such love affairs. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1241:The earth is full of adverse forces and of men who respond to these adverse forces; usually, the more one realises the Divine, the more enemies does he have around himself. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
1242:The moment that men began to claim to be Gods – to personalise the divine power as manifested through astral and elemental forces – was the moment that men ceased to be Gods. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1243:The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity. ~ Arthur Henderson, #NFDB
1244:Through the skill and devotion to duty of their armed forces of all branches in the Midway area our citizens can now rejoice that a momentous victory is in the making. ~ Chester W Nimitz, #NFDB
1245:Today, the forces of competition, technology, and globalization have converged to spur innovation and to transform the way business is done in the securities industry. ~ Arthur Levitt Jr, #NFDB
1246:We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone. ~ John Abizaid, #NFDB
1247:With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem. 8. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
1248:Without wisdom power is like a wind,
It can breathe upon the heights and kiss the sky,
It cannot build the extreme eternal things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1249:A hero ventures forth from the world
of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces
are there encountered and a decisive
victory is won. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
1250:I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1251:Just because it’s a mild night doesn’t mean that dark forces aren’t abroad. They’re abroad all the time. They’re everywhere. They always are. That’s the whole point. Two ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1252:Now I have close to a million followers on Twitter, which is crazy because I don't even know how to spell. But it definitely forces me to think more about the "we" factor. ~ Misha Collins, #NFDB
1253:Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1254:We have established a new basis in our country in which economic liberalization would continue to flourish alongside democratic forces and deregulated power structure. ~ Ibrahim Babangida, #NFDB
1255:When the adverse forces are dealt with in the right way, all that is ugly and false disappears to leave place only for what is true and beautiful.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#NFDB
1256:A divine pity on the peaks of the world,
A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives,
She looked out far and saw from inner mind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1257:Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1258:In Yugoslavia, I'd asked for additional forces too. I even went to meet the French prime minister, and I proposed additional forces... Nobody wanted to send troops. ~ Boutros Boutros Ghali, #NFDB
1259:I think that's the great thing about being with, having a dog, is it kind of forces you to be in the present because that's definitely where they're spending their time. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
1260:Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. ~ David Suzuki, #NFDB
1261:RANGER HAD BEEN Special Forces, and he still had the build and the carriage. He was standing close, forcing me to tip my head back ever so slightly to look into his eyes. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
1262:The essence of wealth is the capacity to control the forces of nature, and the extent of wealth depends upon the level of technology and the ability to create new knowledge. ~ Julian Simon, #NFDB
1263:The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
1264:The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves. ~ Charles A Reich, #NFDB
1265:The worst side effect of wealth is the social associations it forces on its victims, as people with big houses end up socializing with other people with big houses. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1266:This is an instrument in the hands of the people for fighting the fascist saboteurs, because the Chilean armed forces are a guarantee of constitutionality and integrity. ~ Salvador Allende, #NFDB
1267:We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
1268:When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open.
Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend." - Dimitri ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
1269:As the daughter of a 25-year veteran of the armed forces, I am incredibly thankful for the sacrifices our women and men have made in Iraq, and continue to make in Afghanistan. ~ Barbara Lee, #NFDB
1270:As the guardian of our rights, the Supreme Court makes decisions every year which either protect the individual or leave him at the mercy of more powerful forces in our society. ~ Herb Kohl, #NFDB
1271:As with democratic politics, the market is a mass of individuals making discrete choices within a framework shaped by larger forces, over which they have limited control. ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
1272:In proportion as architecture degenerated, printing throve and flourished. The capital of forces which human thought had expended in building, it henceforth expended in books. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1273:I often get sent scripts about little men in big situations. There's a comic element to it, which is forces stacked against this little guy, and how is he going to defeat them? ~ Toby Jones, #NFDB
1274:More than a decade of continuous war and tough combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan gave birth to a new generation of leaders in the ranks of America’s fighting forces. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
1275:SOME DAYS YOU WAKE AND IMMEDIATELY START TO WORRY. NOTHING IN PARTICULAR IS WRONG, IT’S JUST THE SUSPICION THAT FORCES ARE ALIGNING QUIETLY AND THERE WILL BE TROUBLE. ~ Stephanie Rosenbloom, #NFDB
1276:Some things are not meant to be, Leighton Atwood had said the night before. But if they were not meant to be, then why did the forces of destiny keep bringing them together? ~ Sherry Thomas, #NFDB
1277:Superorganism, ideas, and the pecking order—these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle. ~ Howard Bloom, #NFDB
1278:The Force which has to be called down from above must be pure and quiet because there are all kinds of forces - it will not do to call them all. And one must have sincerity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1279:There's so many intangible forces that come into play when making a film, I have no idea what the public will ultimately think of something that I do, let alone critics. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
1280:The universe, as we see it, is the result of regularly working forces, having a causal connection with each other and therefore capable of being understood by human reason. ~ Ludwig Buchner, #NFDB
1281:Walking into the night, he was in control of his world. He would shape it with the gods and demons into an understanding of forces, each with its own price, marked in blood. ~ Brian Catling, #NFDB
1282:Don't put the material first, for you have to live with yourself a long, long while! Become acquainted with yourself. Know yourself and the relationship to the Creative Forces. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
1283:Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
1284:Get clear on this one truth: guilt, shame, and self-criticism are some of the most destructive forces in your life, which is why forgiving yourself is one of the most powerful. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
1285:If ever the call comes to them, the young will go straight from the ranks of the neutralists into the ranks of he Majesty's Forces, as they have so often done in the past. ~ Harold MacMillan, #NFDB
1286:is to make them grow tall. For it contributes to height of stature when the vitality is not impeded and hindered by a mass of nourishment which forces it into thickness and width, ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
1287:It is also a terrible trait of men that they should be incapable of understanding the forces of the universe intuitively, otherwise than in terms of a psychology of wrath. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
1288:Let us also reflect on the honorable service of our men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces currently serving our country overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and around the world. ~ John Linder, #NFDB
1289:Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy. ~ Matthew B Crawford, #NFDB
1290:Mystery is a genius teacher: It forces its students to think thoroughly and to ask many questions! The path of mystery gives you much more things than the path of known! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1291:On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1292:The day you realise how fragile your civilisation across the natural forces is, it may be too late to build a sounder one! All realisations must happen today, right now! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1293:The nature of strategy consists of always having, even with a weaker army, more forces at the point of attack or at the point where one is being attacked than the enemy. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
1294:The plan was criticized by some retired military officers embedded in TV studios. But with every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan becomes more apparent. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
1295:The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them. ~ Taylor Hackford, #NFDB
1296:We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1297:When we talk of fate, when we talk of a fatalistic vision of human experience, what we mean is that the most important forces that shape human lives are out of human control. ~ Petina Gappah, #NFDB
1298:You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye. ~ Clement Greenberg, #NFDB
1299:Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces as things are in this world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #NFDB
1300:he heard the siren song of family—how it pulls you despite all sense; how it forces you to discard your convictions, your righteous selfhood, in favor of profound dependence. ~ Chloe Benjamin, #NFDB
1301:I saw you fight last night. You sure have got some fancy moves with those swords of yours. Haven’t seen anyone move like that, well, ever, and I was in the Special Forces. ~ Phillip W Simpson, #NFDB
1302:Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1303:The female need for true love is a fickle bitch. It forces itself into your life and shapes your actions, always driving you to find that one guy who'll love you unconditionally. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
1304:The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1305:The forces you are struggling with, that you feel are holding you back - are illusions. They are not real - they never have been. See only the good that you desire in your mind. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
1306:The process of facing and selecting our possessions can be quite painful. It forces us to confront our imperfections and inadequacies and the foolish choices we made in the past. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1307:[...] vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there. ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
1308:We're one of the forces that causes actors to fasten seat belts before they take off chasing the bad guy in the car... or removes some of the cigarette smoking on television. ~ Gerald McRaney, #NFDB
1309:Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1310:a sense of invisible rays and forces, a sense that beneath the familiar, visible world of colors and appearances there lay a dark, hidden world of mysterious laws and phenomena. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1311:But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
1312:If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you. This is a common error. Even I, your teacher, have made it. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1313:Inequality and hierarchy are natural, but that doesn't mean they are right, that doesn't mean there is isn't a productive tension between those forces and the forces of equality. ~ Chris Hayes, #NFDB
1314:I’ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important. ~ Marissa Mayer, #NFDB
1315:Once they've borne children, mothers can construct virtually any costume using scissors, felt, Elmer's glue, and a leftover pen spring. They're like the Special Forces of crafts. ~ Drew Magary, #NFDB
1316:One of the gifts of parenthood is that it forces you to be a bit more conscious about it, if only because you quickly realize that those kids are learning from your every action. ~ Mark Deklin, #NFDB
1317:Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite’s thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1318:People always went for the romantic interpretation; you couldn’t blame them for that. What they felt most strongly seemed most true. But other forces were operating in the world. ~ Joan Silber, #NFDB
1319:Teach [our girls] that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces. ~ Anna Julia Cooper, #NFDB
1320:The religions of the world must be assessed, not on the basis of their convoluted theologies, but in terms of the extent to which they serve as forces of liberation and empowerment. ~ Agnivesh, #NFDB
1321:The terrorist attacks of September 11th and the courageous actions of our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us that friends of tyranny and enemies of freedom still exist ~ Carl Levin, #NFDB
1322:We pledge to fight the dark forces high in the counsels of the Republican Party which have made political capital out of the techniques of character assassination by innuendo. ~ Emanuel Celler, #NFDB
1323:2.2 billion worth of military equipment had been stripped from U.S. Forces in West Germany and America and shipped to Israel in an unprecedented day and night airlift. ~ George Scratchley Brown, #NFDB
1324:A system is in equilibrium when the forces constituting it are arranged in such a way as to compensate each other, like the two weights pulling at the arms of a pair of scales. ~ Rudolf Arnheim, #NFDB
1325:Before we get to the forces that shape that discussion, let’s take a moment to look at things from the filmmakers’ point of view. To a one, they regard these sessions as essential. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1326:Being in the right has got nothing to do with courage or exceptional bravery. The forces of evil will fight just as enthusiastically or fiercely as the armies of righteousness. ~ Kiran Nagarkar, #NFDB
1327:I have many friends and family members who have served (or are currently serving) in our nation's Armed Forces. I have such a profound respect for what they do day in and day out. ~ Karl Malone, #NFDB
1328:In today's society, the forces against you are heavy against you. The whole goal is to get knowledge of yourself, but people are so far from themselves that they don't believe themselves. ~ RZA, #NFDB
1329:It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1330:I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
1331:Living under that stifling sky forces one to get away or to stay. The important thing is to find out how people get away in the first case and why people stay in the second case. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1332:Photography today appears to be in a state of flight... The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses. ~ Dorothea Lange, #NFDB
1333:she was a different person when she sang. Her singing was a deep, yearning subconscious desire to go back to a time when the Nepali identity wasn't sullied by external forces. ~ Samrat Upadhyay, #NFDB
1334:Thank God we're going to try to continue and effectively defend our frontiers with the Border Patrol, with the Customs Department, with the Coast Guard, with the Armed Forces. ~ Barry McCaffrey, #NFDB
1335:But it is Tolstoy’s understanding of life that the fate of each man and woman is determined by forces beyond their control; these forces include the dictatorship of social demands. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1336:If you’re looking for the heart to start making something, you need to understand what forces hold you back. You need to know how to make the most of life’s inevitable collisions. ~ David Kadavy, #NFDB
1337:Listening to others, especially those with whom we disagree, tests our own ideas and beliefs. It forces us to recognize, with humility, that we don't have a monopoly on the truth. ~ Janet Yellen, #NFDB
1338:Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of. ~ Nicholson Baker, #NFDB
1339:The forces of darkness must be beaten. You seem to be under a misapprehension. The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it. We have been waiting a long time, Aziraphale. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1340:The Q course for Special Forces, the hardest training in the world. Desert Storm in Iraq. Then over a decade on the street, working his way up from beat cop to homicide detective. ~ Jack Kilborn, #NFDB
1341:To have a child when you're older, it wrenches you up out of your nap and makes you look at things, you know, afresh. It forces the world on you. And I think it's a good thing. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB
1342:Trump’s budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant. Donald Trump didn’t invent this desire. He was just its ultimate expression. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1343:When you stay in one, there is a closer connection to nature and to each other. A cabin forces you to live more simply and slowly. To get out. To get together. To enjoy the moment. ~ Meik Wiking, #NFDB
1344:After the armistice, Finland, having failed to gain useful help from Britain and France, turned to Germany for assistance in rearming its forces, which Hitler was happy to provide. ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
1345:Anytime some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1346:But the castration of perception by a court of control that denies it any anticipatory desire, forces it thereby into a pattern of helplessly reiterating what is already known. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
1347:Dollar depreciation leads to higher inflation and ultimately forces foreign creditors to question their rationale and indeed their sanity for continuing purchases of U.S. Treasuries. ~ Bill Gross, #NFDB
1348:Durkheim, who said: “What is moral is everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to … regulate his actions by something other than … his own egoism.”65 ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1349:forcing function is anything that — when put in place — naturally forces a change in perspective, attitude, or behavior. So, schedules are important forcing functions for projects. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
1350:I don’t answer, watching the leaves twirl in the wind across the yard, the hood of the car, wherever the breeze forces them to go. They have no control over their path in life. ~ Jessica Sorensen, #NFDB
1351:If the Internet is worth its salt, it has to help arrest the forces that promote inequality, monopoly, hypercommercialism, corruption, depoliticization and stagnation. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney, #NFDB
1352:Odysseus’ passage is one that moves through the same waters as does our development today, haunted as we are by the interior forces of psyche and destiny. ~ Bud Harris youtube.com/watch?v=XFrQVV…, #NFDB
1353:One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1354:Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
1355:Perhaps death represents the severing of the living organism's connection with the orderly quantum realm, leaving it powerless to resist the randomizing forces of thermodynamics. ~ Jim Al Khalili, #NFDB
1356:She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet. ~ Haven Kimmel, #NFDB
1357:The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
1358:The great task of statesmanship is to apply past lessons to new situations, to draw correct analogies to understand and act upon present forces, to recognise the need for change. ~ Malcolm Fraser, #NFDB
1359:There are certain times when I feel more inspired, filled with a strong power that forces me to listen to my inner voice, and when I feel more need than ever for a Pleyel piano. ~ Frederic Chopin, #NFDB
1360:There is a pressing need to integrate the study of international economics with the study of international politics to deepen our comprehension of the forces at work in the world. ~ Robert Gilpin, #NFDB
1361:Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
1362:we think that all the forces of nature become united at something like the Planck energy, a million billion times larger than the highest energy reached in today's accelerators. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
1363:Any time some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1364:By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
1365:From a certain temperature on, the molecules 'condense' without attractive forces; that is, they accumulate at zero velocity. The theory is pretty, but is there some truth in it. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1366:I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything. ~ Jerry Seinfeld, #NFDB
1367:John Lewis we all know was beaten terribly, almost to an inch of his life, opened doors that will never be closed, although there are forces that are attempting to close those doors. ~ Al Sharpton, #NFDB
1368:Most presidents have been controlled by forces that control money and special interests. When Donald Trump refused their money, he refused their control. This made him dangerous. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
1369:One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from the experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1370:Practice is what tests your resolve, what forces you to hone your abilities long after the spark has faded. Are you committed to the craft, or will you quit when it gets too hard? The ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
1371:So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable. ~ Douglas Haig 1st Earl Haig, #NFDB
1372:SOME DAYS YOU WAKE AND
IMMEDIATELY START TO WORRY.
NOTHING IN PARTICULAR IS WRONG,
IT¹S JUST THE SUSPICION THAT
FORCES ARE ALIGNING QUIETLY
AND THERE WILL BE TROUBLE. ~ Jenny Holzer,#NFDB
1373:The belief in supernatural forces remains to this day a yoke on the neck of humanity, but at least Thales made it possible, for those of us who wish it, to be free of that yoke. ~ Victor J Stenger, #NFDB
1374:The great universe is filled with an abundance of all things, filled to overflowing. All there is, is in her, waiting only for the touch of the right forces to cast them forth. ~ Ralph Waldo Trine, #NFDB
1375:The stage of the development of the productive forces determines the political and ideological superstructure of society which are crystallized into a system of social organization. ~ Earl Browder, #NFDB
1376:Vertical and horizontal lines represented for Mondrian the two opposing life forces: the positive and the negative, the dynamic and the static, the masculine and the feminine. This ~ Eric R Kandel, #NFDB
1377:When you live only once, the value of your life becomes the sum total of your achievements. Hence the need to align or achieve, which are the driving forces of Western thought. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1378:As to the advantages of temperance in the training of the armed forces and of its benefits to the members of the forces themselves, there can be no doubt in the world. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King, #NFDB
1379:Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1380:Every combat is the bloody and destructive measuring of the strength of forces, physical and moral; whoever at the close has the greatest amount of both left is the conqueror. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
1381:For Sun Tzu, victory is not simply the triumph of armed forces. Instead, it is the achievement of the ultimate political objectives that the military clash was intended to secure. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
1382:Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast. ~ Michael Caine, #NFDB
1383:Heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes;
Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1384:If you say "the economy," you show you're stupid. There's no such thing as the economy. There is not a unity between the forces of production and the relations of production. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1385:In the war, most young men were inducted into the armed forces at the age of 17. A group of students was permitted to attend university before taking part in wartime research projects. ~ John Pople, #NFDB
1386:I think it's more about trying to just focus exclusively on writing music and making that a viable, sustainable lifestyle. It's difficult because it forces you to really get creative. ~ Alan Palomo, #NFDB
1387:I was heartened to hear the President say that as we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels. ~ Howard Coble, #NFDB
1388:Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1389:Movements are powerful forces of human nature. But fashion has never been egalitarian. There needs to be a balance between aspiration and accessibility, curation and community. ~ Summer Rayne Oakes, #NFDB
1390:Our life is affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #NFDB
1391:Physical love, so unjustly decried, forces everyone to manifest even the smallest bits of kindness he possesses, of selflessness,that they shine in the eyes of all who surround him. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1392:The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself” ~ Carl Jung, Red Book, #NFDB
1393:There are very real forces that whisper lying innuendos that assault your mind, your will, and your emotions in the hope of causing you to turn on yourself and then to turn on others. ~ Lisa Bevere, #NFDB
1394:there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1395:Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1396:Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1397:YAGNI forces you to wait until you know what the problem really is and how it should be accommodated by the design. It eliminates guesswork, and ensures that the design will be correct. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1398:Advertising ... is a parasitic activity; it forces goods for which there is no real need or demand on a foolish or even a reluctant public, always by appealing to their lower instincts. ~ Ann Bridge, #NFDB
1399:Because the common law was not simply the creature of political power-holders, it became another of the forces for separation of powers and of rights limiting the scope of officials. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1400:Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1401:If your community can provide a legitimate release valve for people’s incredibly frustrated passion, you are unleashing one of the most potent forces in the history of the world. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
1402:I’m thinking: Yes, right—there is a point to sitting around all day with your eyes closed: to gain some control over the mind, to see through the forces that drive us—and drive us nuts. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
1403:Life wears us down. We all die here. Depending upon the way you expose yourself to energies and powers and forces will determine whether you have a lot of energy or you lose energy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1404:Nature gives us a dispersed finality. It is a demonology, full of supranatural forces, not one of which is supernatural. On this terrain of knowledge, one must be polytheist. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
1405:No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
1406:Nuclear power has died of an incurable attack of market forces and is way beyond any hope of revival, because the competitors are several-fold cheaper and are getting rapidly more so. ~ Amory Lovins, #NFDB
1407:The entertainment business forces you to become a gambler whether you like it or not, and the young men were rolling the dice against odds that were decidedly not in their favor. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
1408:The essence of love lies not in communion, but in the fact that each partner forces the other to become something, something infinitely great, the extreme limit of his strength. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1409:There are powers and forces that will seek to block you, to make your life more difficult. But if you are up to the study, then you continue to progress without getting discouraged. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1410:was not merely weak but also evil to throw away your life when so many had their lives or the promise of their future taken from them by cruel people or by the brutal forces of nature. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1411:Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1412:A beautiful country is a dream-like an illusion. It is senseless to cling to it. Unless the inner forces of negative emotions are conquered, strife with outer enemies will never end. ~ Dilgo Khyentse, #NFDB
1413:A desire to succeed in politics is propelled by these two seemingly contradictory forces, which frequently change places and sometimes coexist: to save others and to save oneself. ~ Madeleine M Kunin, #NFDB
1414:As this required a comprehensive defeat, Napoleon had little interest in indirect strategies. When a point of weakness was found, extra forces would be poured in to break through. ~ Lawrence Freedman, #NFDB
1415:Control does not come from strong police forces, does not come from oppression and repression, does not come from violating people's rights or giving the security systems undue powers ~ Hanan Ashrawi, #NFDB
1416:Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
1417:Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science? ~ Stuart Hill, #NFDB
1418:It is a good idea to become involved with sports and athletics. It makes you strong. You need to be strong to deal with this world and the powers and forces that block enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1419:People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1420:Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1421:The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1422:The forces that have worked hard to stoke populist anger against reform are the very ones that benefit from a health system which puts profits ahead of quality care for its patients. ~ Jerrold Nadler, #NFDB
1423:The Halifax area has long played a major role in Canada's military operations, being the port of departure for convoys, naval task forces and army units over the past 100 years or so. ~ Willie Morris, #NFDB
1424:The third-century Persian prophet Mani preached that the visible world is the battleground between the forces of light (absolute goodness) and the forces of darkness (absolute evil). ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1425:The unseizable forces of the cosmic whirl
Bear in their bacchant limbs the fixity
Of an original foresight that is Fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#NFDB
1426:Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain in resistance and durability. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
1427:We have the most skillful, firecest, and certainly the most ethical ground forces in the world... I'm not saying we have to commit right now, but certainly don't pull it off the table. ~ James Mattis, #NFDB
1428:Whatever your circumstances, whatever your past, the forces that determine your future are nowhere but within your own heart and mind. It is here that the star of your destiny shines. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
1429:You must make a counter-culture decision to focus on becoming more like Jesus. Otherwise, other forces like peers, parents, coworkers, and culture will try to mold you into their image. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1430:3. In order to hold off the Forces of Darkness, you will need a number two pencil and a calendar, preferably one without pictures of kitties on it. Keep it near you when you sleep. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
1431:A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if one of the team cannot handle the forces, everybody is going to suffer. A ritual lodge is no place for the well-meaning ineffectual. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
1432:How can we explain such inclinations? They are forces within us that come from a deeper place than conscious words can express.They draw us to certain experiences and away from others. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1433:In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage. ~ Michael Steinhardt, #NFDB
1434:On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1435:[Our children] have been taken away from us by the psychiatric mental-health system. They've been taken away by the educational system, by the government, and by many different forces. ~ Peter Breggin, #NFDB
1436:processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.”84 ~ Mark Dice, #NFDB
1437:Science literacy is being plugged into the forces that power the universe. There is no excuse for thinking that the Sun, which is a million times the size of Earth, orbits Earth. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1438:Their forces equal in a kind of match Shigure had never been in before, the kind of match where your opponent wanted you to win while you wished for nothing other than to die at his hands. ~ H J Brues, #NFDB
1439:The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #NFDB
1440:We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. ~ Carl Rogers, #NFDB
1441:What is justice? Two forces collide. Each may have the right in his own sphere. And here's where an Emperor commands orderly solutions. Those collisions he cannot prevent -- he solves. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1442:A jury’s vote’s supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.” “Tom’s ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1443:As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
1444:As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1445:Express yourself completely. Then keep quiet. Be like the forces of nature; When it blows, there is only wind; When it rains, there is only rain; When the clouds pass, the sun shines through. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1446:I love the way it rains here," he told her. "It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
1447:Non, Thérèse, non, il n’est point de Dieu, la nature se suffit à elle-même ; elle n’a nullement besoin d’un auteur, cet auteur supposé n’est qu’une décomposition de ses propres forces ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
1448:Put on light-coloured clothes and some perfume, take care of your body and do everything you can to fight against the forces of darkness. It is not an easy struggle, but it is worthwhile. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1449:The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents. ~ Alex Michaelides, #NFDB
1450:The enemy will not perish of himself. Neither will the Chinese reactionaries nor the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism in China step down from the stage of history of their own accord. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1451:...the exchange of students...should be vastly expanded...Information and education are powerful forces in support of peace. Just as war begins in the minds of men, so does peace. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1452:The external view [of agency] forces itself on us at the same time that we resist it. One way this occurs is through the gradual erosion of what we do by the subtraction of what happens. ~ Thomas Nagel, #NFDB
1453:There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1454:The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia. ~ Anatoly Chubais, #NFDB
1455:There was one thing the public could say for certain about Churchill: that there was nothing that he was going to ask the British armed forces to do that he would not have done himself. ~ Boris Johnson, #NFDB
1456:The truth is that the angels of anxiety — those overpowering forces for change in politics, economics, science, morals, and social policy — were at the same time agents for self-confidence. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
1457:The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1458:The water plows into the ground, but the bedrock is unyielding. The pressure forces the water sideways, creating a supersonic omnidirectional jet1 that destroys everything in its path. ~ Randall Munroe, #NFDB
1459:This coupling of market forces and the crowd’s demand for publicity means that everyone dreams of monetizing their Instagram feed. And that effectively becomes the ethos of a society. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1460:A keen practical sense told Ranjit Singh that vassalage was less expensive than governing new pieces of territory with his own limited forces, and less productive of lasting hostility. ~ Rajmohan Gandhi, #NFDB
1461:Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
1462:For all healing, mental or material, is attuning each atom of the body, each reflex of the brain forces, to the awareness of the divine that lies within each atom, each cell of the body. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
1463:I couldn't escape him, now or ever. He'd always be there, consuming my every thought, my heart locked in his hands. I was drawn to him by forces I couldn't control, let alone escape. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
1464:If Spirituality is that you're humble in the face of forces greater than you and you believe those forces are more inclined toward being good than being bad, then I'm a spiritual person. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
1465:It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love-this hunger of the heart-as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1466:The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1467:There are forces all around you who wish to exploit division, rob you of your freedom, and tell you what to think. But young folks can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
1468:Whenever faced with a challenge, I dig deep within myself and summon my spiritual and physical forces. This gives me the focus, determination, perseverance, and support I need to succeed. ~ Gail Devers, #NFDB
1469:Yeah, that's right, Lash. Because I'm Chinese I have a deep-seated need to nosh house pets. Now why don't you let him in before my inner Chinaman forces me to kung-fu your bitch ass. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
1470:A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if one of the team cannot handle the forces, everybody is going to suffer. A ritual lodge is no place for the well-meaning ineffectual.
~ Dion Fortune,#NFDB
1471:But I get it; it's a way to mark time. When your life's too busy, it forces you to check in with yourself. Or when it feels all the same all the time, maybe it can make you feel special. ~ Jami Attenberg, #NFDB
1472:[Cesar] Vallejo was at least metaphorically killed by fascist forces, in the sense that he wore himself out raising funds for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and got sick and died. ~ Robert Hass, #NFDB
1473:History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats. ~ Connie Willis, #NFDB
1474:I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
1475:I'm a park ranger. He's a Special Forces veteran, a SWAT sniper, and an ex-con. If he can't shoot this guy, he can beat the shit out of him in a hundred dirty ways you and I can't imagine. ~ Pamela Clare, #NFDB
1476:Know thyself! That was the best joke ever perpetrated. A steaming universe of germ-cells, a maelstrom of animal forces, of which he himself, his personality, was only the collective gleam. ~ Conrad Aiken, #NFDB
1477:The categories of woman and man are too rigid. They're going to give way to new forces. They already have, to a degree, but for most of us, this drama held sway, and we assumed our positions. ~ John Maus, #NFDB
1478:There is a difference between a small community being herded into a park and murdered and all of these communities joining forces to make sure that something like that will not happen again. ~ Yair Lapid, #NFDB
1479:To know the brain...is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will, to discovering the intimate history of life in its perpetual duel with external forces. ~ Santiago Ramon y Cajal, #NFDB
1480:You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1481:From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
1482:I lunged out to grab the fruit from his hand, but with his other hand he caught hold of my wrist and squeezed it hard, as they do in movies, when one man forces another to let go of a knife. ~ Andr Aciman, #NFDB
1483:In the areas which have been disturbed people are living cordially with the Security Forces. In areas like Gulu people are living peacefully. There is scrupulous respect of human rights. ~ Yoweri Museveni, #NFDB
1484:It follows that your advertising should consistently project the same image, year after year. This is difficult to achieve, because there are always forces at work to change the advertising ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
1485:It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love,–this hunger of the heart,–as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1486:It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love--this hunger of the heart--as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1487:It was helpful to have the American troops there in great strength. They knew there'd be consequences if they didn't move back. Now, there has been some removal of the foreign forces. ~ Warren Christopher, #NFDB
1488:Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad. ~ Friedrich A Hayek, #NFDB
1489:the impact of competitive forces that drive the introduction of extra features, often to excess: the cause of the disease dubbed “featuritis,” whose major symptom is “creeping featurism. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
1490:The minute you hear subsidies, I don't care what, if it's health care, buying cars, the minute you hear subsidies, you have to understand, whatever's going on here, it isn't market forces. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1491:The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce. ~ Friedrich List, #NFDB
1492:These are bad days for all of us who remember always that when real world forces come into conflict, the final result is never as dark as we mortals guess it in very difficult days. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1493:They, OLDEFO (Old Established Forces), carry out l'exploitation de l'homme par 'homme (the exploitation of man by man). Do not let them live, so that there's no colonialism anymore in the world. ~ Sukarno, #NFDB
1494:A beautiful country is a dream-like illusion. It is senseless to cling to it. Unless the inner forces of negative emotions are conquered, strife with outer enemies will never end. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #NFDB
1495:Consecutive reading of biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1496:In recent years... forces have developed in our government over which we have no control, and these forces have an authoritarian approach to justice - meaning, they tell you what justice is. ~ Jim Garrison, #NFDB
1497:I seem to be good at speaking the politicians’ language,” Szilard said. “Apparently there’s an advantage around here to being mildly socially retarded, and that’s the Special Forces for sure. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
1498:I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
1499:its like a button in my brain is broken, like i've developed a disease that forces me to apologize for everything, for existing, for wanting more than what i've been given, and i can't stop. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
1500:Judeo-Christians have got to respect the pagan truth shown in the popular culture of sex and violence. It's meaningful about the elemental forces of life, the brutality of life and nature. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
843 Integral Yoga
74 Christianity
66 Occultism
45 Poetry
41 Yoga
33 Psychology
32 Philosophy
29 Science
25 Fiction
13 Integral Theory
11 Theosophy
7 Hinduism
7 Education
6 Mythology
4 Kabbalah
4 Islam
2 Cybernetics
2 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Sufism
1 Philsophy
1 Mysticism
1 Alchemy
504 Sri Aurobindo
461 The Mother
256 Satprem
133 Nolini Kanta Gupta
50 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
33 Aleister Crowley
28 Carl Jung
24 H P Lovecraft
23 Swami Krishnananda
19 A B Purani
18 Rudolf Steiner
13 Plotinus
11 Swami Vivekananda
11 James George Frazer
11 George Van Vrekhem
8 Saint Augustine of Hippo
7 Paul Richard
7 Nirodbaran
7 Lucretius
6 Walt Whitman
6 Sri Ramakrishna
6 Jordan Peterson
5 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Robert Browning
4 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
4 Muhammad
4 Joseph Campbell
4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4 Franz Bardon
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Patanjali
3 John Keats
3 Anonymous
3 Aldous Huxley
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Plato
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Ovid
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Baha u llah
2 Alice Bailey
91 Record of Yoga
84 The Synthesis Of Yoga
42 Letters On Yoga IV
40 The Life Divine
39 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
38 Agenda Vol 01
35 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
34 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
30 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
30 Letters On Yoga II
29 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
27 Prayers And Meditations
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
26 Questions And Answers 1953
24 Lovecraft - Poems
24 Agenda Vol 03
23 The Study and Practice of Yoga
23 Letters On Yoga I
23 Agenda Vol 04
22 Questions And Answers 1956
22 Letters On Yoga III
21 Questions And Answers 1954
21 Agenda Vol 02
20 Agenda Vol 08
19 The Future of Man
19 Questions And Answers 1955
19 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
17 Liber ABA
17 Agenda Vol 12
17 Agenda Vol 10
16 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
16 Essays On The Gita
16 Agenda Vol 09
15 The Human Cycle
15 Savitri
15 Magick Without Tears
15 Essays Divine And Human
15 Agenda Vol 07
14 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
14 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
14 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
14 Agenda Vol 06
13 The Phenomenon of Man
13 Agenda Vol 05
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
11 The Practice of Psycho therapy
11 The Golden Bough
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Some Answers From The Mother
10 Let Me Explain
10 Agenda Vol 11
9 Theosophy
9 Agenda Vol 13
8 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
8 Hymn of the Universe
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
8 City of God
7 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
7 Raja-Yoga
7 Of The Nature Of Things
7 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
7 Isha Upanishad
6 Words Of The Mother II
6 Words Of Long Ago
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 Whitman - Poems
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 On the Way to Supermanhood
5 On Education
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
5 Aion
4 Words Of The Mother III
4 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 Talks
4 Quran
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Mysterium Coniunctionis
4 General Principles of Kabbalah
4 Faust
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
4 Browning - Poems
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 The Perennial Philosophy
3 The Integral Yoga
3 The Bible
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Keats - Poems
3 Collected Poems
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Secret Of The Veda
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 The Essentials of Education
2 Rilke - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 Metamorphoses
2 Liber Null
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Cybernetics
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But what is not recognised in this view of things is that there are secrecies and secrecies. The material secrecies of Nature are of one category, the mystic secrecies are of another. The two are not only disparate but incommensurable. Any man with a mind and understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' Forces, but not the mystic Forces.
A scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit sances: "Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere in the open air, in broad daylight to the wide awake and vigilant intellect!" Well, if the fact is as it is stated, what does it prove? Night alone reveals the stars, during the day they vanish, but that is no proof that stars are not existent. Rather the true scientific spirit should seek to know why (or how) it is so, if it is so, and such a fact would exactly serve as a pointer, a significant starting ground. The attitude of the jesting Pilate is not helpful even to scientific inquiry. This matter of the Spirits we have taken only as an illustration and it must not be understood that this is a domain of high mysticism; rather the contrary. The spiritualists' approach to Mysticism is not the right one and is fraught with not only errors but dangers. For the spiritualists approach their subject with the entire scientific apparatus the only difference being that the scientist does not believe while the spiritualist believes.
--
Furthermore, being so, the mystic domain is of infinitely greater potency than the domain of intra-atomic Forces. If one comes, all on a sudden, into contact with a force here without the necessary preparation to hold and handle it, he may get seriously bruised, morally and physically. The adventure into the mystic domain has its own toll of casualtiesone can lose the mind, one can lose one's body even and it is a very common experience among those who have tried the path. It is not in vain and merely as a poetic metaphor that the ancient seers have said
Kurasya dhr niit duratyay1
--
The mystic Forces are not only of immense potency but of a definite moral disposition and character, that is to say, they are of immense potency either for good or for evil. They are not mechanical and amoral Forces like those that physical sciences deal with; they are Forces of consciousness and they are conscious Forces, they act with an aim and a purpose. The mystic Forces are Forces either of light or of darkness, either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers of darkness that the naturally ignorant consciousness of man contacts when it seeks to cross the borderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental scientific reason.
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right Forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the worlds, the play of Forces, the working of past lives - especially this latter, which was an important factor in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond.
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of Forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They form part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
I. The Several Lights
--
The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to Men and to the Ancestors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure for his life an integral fulfilment. These are the family, society and the world and beyond-world. The Gods are the Powers that rule the world and beyond, they are the forms and Forces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The seconda more circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are its presiding deity and represent the norm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are movements or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other elements in the cosmic play, these also form a quartetcaturvyha and work together for a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
--
The Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another world, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the force of their Realisation, lend a more concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being worked out upon earth. They are Forces and formations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categories, being a divinised humanity or a humanised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, for it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achievements of the sons are more easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the forefa thers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of higher and greater destinies.
III. The Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods
--
Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth Forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
Of the three fires one is the upholderhe who gives the firm foundation, the stable house where the Sacrifice is performed and Truth realised; the second is the Knower, often called in the Veda jtaved, who guides and directs; and the third the Doer, the effective Power, the driving Energyvaivnara.
--
Fire represents the Heart. It is that which gives the inner motive to the Forces of life, it is the secret inspiration and aspiration that drive the movements of life. It is the heat of consciousness, the ardour of our central being that lives in the Truth and accepts nothing, nothing but the Truth. It is the pure and primal energy of our divine essence, driving ever upward and onward life's course of evolution.
Air is Mind, the world of thought, of conscious formation; it is where life-movements are taken up and given a shape or articulate formula for an organised expression. The forms here have not, however, the concrete rigidity of Matter, but are pliant and variable and fluidin fact, they are more in the nature of possibilities, rather than actualities. The Vedic Maruts are thought-gods, and lndra (the Luminous Mind), their king, is called the Fashioner of perfect forms.
--
Now, each one of them in its turn has its own emanations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded emanations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital Forces. The lowest formations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancestor.
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.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The tragedy of civilized man is that he is cut off from awareness of his own instincts. The Qabalah can help him achieve the necessary understanding to effect a reunion with them, so that rather than being driven by Forces he does not understand, he can harness for his conscious use the same power that guides the homing pigeon, teaches the beaver to build a dam and keeps the planets revolving in their appointed orbits about the sun.
I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the format of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil Forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
--
And, indeed, he soon discovered what a strange Goddess he had chosen to serve. He became gradually enmeshed in the web of Her all-pervading presence. To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destruction; but he found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother. Her neck is encircled with a garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of human arms, and two of Her hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire; but, strangely enough, Ramakrishna felt in Her breath the soothing touch of tender love and saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort, Siva; it is because She is the Sakti, the Power, inseparable from the Absolute. She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate Reality above holiness and unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would create this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness? She is the highest symbol of all the Forces of nature, the synthesis of their antinomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woman. She now became to Sri Ramakrishna the only Reality, and the world became an unsubstantial shadow. Into Her worship he poured his soul. Before him She stood as the transparent portal to the shrine of Ineffable Reality.
The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
--
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark Forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two Forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
The Divine Mother asked Sri Ramakrishna not to be lost in the featureless Absolute but to remain, in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness, the border line between the Absolute and the Relative. He was to keep himself at the "sixth centre" of Tantra, from which he could see not only the glory of the seventh, but also the divine manifestations of the Kundalini in the lower centres. He gently oscillated back and forth across the dividing line. Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother alternated with serene absorption in the Ocean of Absolute Unity. He thus bridged the gulf between the Personal and the Impersonal, the immanent and the transcendent aspects of Reality. This is a unique experience in the recorded spiritual history of the world.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
are the Forces that made him and his father and his
father's father before him.
--
and that my natural Forces fail, therefore do I rise
up i my throne and call upon THE END.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Anticipating, cooperating with, and employing the Forces of nature can be accomplished only by the mind. The wisdom manifest in the omni-interorderliness of the family of generalized principles operative in Universe can be employed only by the highest integrity of engagement of the mind's metaphysical intuiting and formulating capabilities.
We are able to assert that this rationally coordinating system bridge has been established between science and the humanities because we have made adequate experimental testing of it in a computerized world-resource-use-exploration system, which by virtue of the proper inclusion of all the parameters-as guaranteed by the synergetic start with Universe and the progressive differentiation out of all the parts-has demonstrated a number of alternate ways in which it is eminently feasible not only to provide full life support for all humans but also to permit all humans' individual enjoyment of all the Earth without anyone profiting at the expense of another and without any individuals interfering with others.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
and Forces ' in the round '. All the animals have reached this point
as well as us. But it is peculiar to man to occupy a position in
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
This period of outer retirement was one of intense Sadhana and of intellectual activity it was also one during which he acted on external events, though he was not dedicated outwardly to a public cause. About his own retirement he writes: "But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he [Sri Aurobindo] had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary Forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other Forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he attained to it, he used at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world Forces."[1]
Twice he found it necessary to go out of his way to make public pronouncements on important world-issues, which shows distinctly that renunciation of life is not a part of his Yoga. "The first was in relation to the Second World War. At the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared as if Hitler would crush all the Forces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the world, he began to intervene."[2]
The second was with regard to Sir Stafford Cripps' proposal for the transfer of power to India.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
which is certainly not unfounded. In their ignorant unconsciousness men set moving Forces they are not even aware of and soon
these Forces get more and more out of their control and bring
about disastrous results. The earth seems to be shaken almost
--
which the most dangerous Forces of destruction do their work.
Even here, in this poor little nook, we have not escaped the
general malady. For three or four days the Forces at work were
ugly and could justifiably cause anxiety, and a great confusion
--
human will there are Forces at work whose origin is not human
and which move consciously towards certain ends. The play of
these Forces is very complex and generally eludes the human
consciousness; but for ease of explanation and understanding,
--
anti-divine Forces they have only too many to choose from, and
always they find wills which they enslave and individuals whom
--
Hitler is a choice instrument for these anti-divine Forces which
want violence, upheaval and war, for they know that these things
retard and hamper the action of the divine Forces. That is why
disaster was very close even though no human government consciously wanted it. But at any cost there was to be no war and
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, Forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital Forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
tempt the adverse Forces.
Series Two - To a Sadhak in the Building Department
--
The exact symptoms of an attack from adverse Forces.
I was imagining that Mother will throw away this book
--
By the way, I don't find that the Hostile Forces have much
imagination; they are always repeating the same old tricks! They
--
When we are in the presence of hostile Forces, only the purity of
an absolute truth can conquer them.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, Forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
annakos.a and pran.akos.a.
--
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital Forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of Forces. The
individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use.
--
the infinite reserve of Forces.
2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the
--
all the divine Forces were to concentrate on you, it would be in
vain - you would refuse to receive them.
--
When the supramental Forces descend into Matter in order
to manifest, this perfect beauty will express itself quite naturally
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of worldexistence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the Forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in humanity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive development of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
--
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the Forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
By its numerous asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital Forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called pran.ayama, the control of the breath or vital power; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital Forces. Pranayama, for the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity are attained.
On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only remedy lies in opening to the higher Forces in
order to let them do in the vital their work of organisation and
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
is the great play, obscure and semi-conscious, of the Forces of
unillumined nature; and as soon as one succeeds in escaping
--
times, especially when it is waged against the hostile Forces.
That is why one must be armed with patience and keep faith in
--
My beloved Mother, can the adverse Forces act effectively
against the terrestrial evolution without using a human
--
But in the matter of the adverse Forces, it is good to be always
vigilant and sincere.
--
This is childish; it is always the same trap of the adverse Forces;
if, instead of expressing their advice under cleverly perverted
--
One must never be afraid, and if the adverse Forces try to lodge
themselves in your lower nature, you have only to dislodge them,
--
If you start feeding the adverse Forces, they will exact more and
more and will never be satisfied.
--
the adverse Forces.
Much of this is his own imagination; if he thought less of
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
through which the Lord passes His Forces freely and pours upon
all His Light, His Consciousness and His Joy, according to each
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the Forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.
The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold storage: it is being worked out even here and now, and it has to be worked out here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be to the normal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of manall other ways or attempts of curing human ills are faint echoes, masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of things. That ideal is a norm and a force that is ever dynamic and has become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the waking human consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that truth and be profited by it.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not that this sovereign power will have anything to do with aggression or over-bearingness. It will not be a power that feels itself only by creating an eternal opponentErbfeindby coming in constant clash with a rival that seeks to gain victory by subjugating. It will not be Nietzschean "will to power," which is, at best, a supreme Asuric power. It will rather be a Divine Power, for the strength it will exert and the victory it will achieve will not come from the egoit is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert hut simply accomplishes; the Forces of the world act not as its opponent but as its instrument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual sovereignty and do so to perfection by expressing through it his unity with the cosmic powers, with the infinite godhead. And by being Swarat, Self-Master, he will become Samrat, world-master.
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad Forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
--
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory Forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and Forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
--
It is not easy, however, nor is it necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like, externallyhis mode of outward being and living, kimsita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queriedor how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the actions and reactions of multitudinous Forces and conditions, known and unknown; the precise configuration of the final outcome cannot be predicted with exactitude. But the Power that is at work is omniscient; it is selecting, rejecting, correcting, fashioning, creating, co-ordinating elements in accordance with and by the drive of the inviolable law of Truth and Harmony that reigns in Light's own homeswe dame the Supermind.
It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical Forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses for the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? For it is the manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines the nature and content of knowledge. Reason is the collecting of available sense-perceptions and a certain mode of working upon them. It has three component elements that have been defined as observation, classification and deduction. Now, the very composition of Reason shows that it cannot be a perfect instrument of knowledge; the limitations are the inherent limitations of the component elements. As regards observation there is a two-fold limitation. First, observation is a relative term and variable quantity. One observes through the prism of one's own observing faculty, through the bias of one's own personality and no two persons can have absolutely the same manner of observation. So Science has recognised the necessity of personal equation and has created an imaginary observer, a "mean man" as the standard of reference. And this already takes us far away from the truth, from the reality. Secondly, observation is limited by its scope. All the facts of the world, all sense-perceptions possible and actual cannot be included within any observation however large, however collective it may be. We have to go always upon a limited amount of data, we are able to construct only a partial and sketchy view of the surface of existence. And then it is these few and doubtful facts that Reason seeks to arrange and classify. That classification may hold good for certain immediate ends, for a temporary understanding of the world and its Forces, either in order to satisfy our curiosity or to gain some practical utility. For when we want to consider the world only in its immediate relation to us, a few and even doubtful facts are sufficient the more immediate the relation, the more immaterial the doubtfulness and insufficiency of facts. We may quite confidently go a step in darkness, but to walk a mile we do require light and certainty. Our scientific classification has a background of uncertainty, if not, of falsity; and our deduction also, even while correct within a very narrow range of space and time, cannot escape the fundamental vices of observation and classification upon which it is based.
It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life- Forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal Forces, the Forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the Forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
Sri Aurobindo does not preach flight from life and a retreat into the silent and passive Infinite; the goal of life is not, in his view, the extinction of life. Neither is he satisfied on that account to hold that life is best lived in the ordinary round of its unregenerate dharma. If the first is a blind alley, the second is a vicious circle,both lead nowhere.
Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. For what is required first is the discovery and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retirement only from the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent actualities, not from the true Forces and action of life. It is the retreat necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of creative power,an entrance right into the world of basic Forces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are born and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly life.
And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand for recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer workers.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The clash of Forces struggling to prevail
In the tremendous shock that lights a star
--
A spirit hid in Forces and in forms
Was the spectator of the mobile scene:
--
He saw the cosmic Forces at their work
And felt the occult impulse behind man's will.
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 redistribution and new-marshalling of Forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
--
This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the Forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of Forces and the Superman therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ignoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Against the Forces of the universe.
The soul and cosmos faced as equal powers.
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on Forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet sacrifice his ego, that the soul of man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ignoring the fact and denying the truth to say that man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of Forces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. Struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular form at a particular stage, a temporary manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the demand of the individual soul to unite with the individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. The individual is not so self-centred as the individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil for him, nor coerce and exploit him for its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson for us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism demands that the individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should work for the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recent science of Psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with a mode of viewing the entire psychical life of man which will be fruitful for our present enquiry. Mind, it has been found, is a house divided, against itself, that is to say it is an arena where different and divergent Forces continually battle against one another. There must be, however, at the same time, some sort of a resolution of these Forces, some equation that holds them in balance, otherwise the mind the human being itselfwould cease to exist as an entity. What is the mechanism of this balance of power in the human mind? In order to ascertain that we must first of all know the fundamental nature of the struggle and also the character of the more elemental Forces that are engaged in it.
There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other factors and Forces. As a matter of fact, man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appropriate whatever portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
--
The human mind naturally, without any effort on its part, takes to one or more of these devices to control and conceal the aboriginal impulses. But this spontaneous process can be organised and consciously regulated and made to serve better the purpose and urge of Nature. And this is the beginning of yoga the conscious fulfilment of Nature. The Psycho-analysts have given us the first and elementary stage of this process of yoga. It is, we may say, the fourth line of control. With this man enters a new level of being, develops a new mode of life. It is when the automatism of Nature is replaced by the power of Conscious Control. Man is not here, a blind instrument of Forces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided according to an ignorant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the aboriginal insistences, but allows them to come up freely, meets them squarely, recognises them and establishes an easy mastery over them.
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether Forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
In conscious control, the mind is for the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and normally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy for the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transform them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the human vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
--
This is the real meaning and sense of the moral struggle in man, the continuous endeavour towards a transvaluation of the primary and aboriginal instincts and impulses. Looked at from one end, from below up the ascending line, man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a dissimulation and sublimation of the animal impulsions. But this is becauseas we see, if we look from the other end, from above down the descending lineman is not all instinct, he is not a mere blind instrument in the hands of Nature Forces. He has in him another source, an opposite pole of being from which other impulsions flow and continually modify the structure of the lower levels. If the animal is the foundation of his nature, the divine is its summit. If the bodily demands form his manifest reality, the demands of the spirit enshrine his higher reality. And if as regards the former he is a slave, as regards the latter he is the Master. It is by the interaction of these double Forces that his whole nature has been and is being fashioned. Man does not and cannot give carte blanche to his vital, inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher Forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life.
Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the Forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
***
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
deceptive appearance of a great play of universal Forces which
one does not understand.
--
Because of the rhythm of the universal Forces, a person is supposed to have a special receptivity on his birthday each year.
He can therefore take advantage of this receptivity by making good resolutions and fresh progress on the path of his
--
The descent of the forerunners of the supramental Forces is a
fact (not a prediction). The incapacity of the vast majority of
--
no way affect the fact of the advent of these Forces and powers
in the physical world.
--
of hostile Forces in revolt against this descent? And what
place does India occupy in all this?
--
Fear is an invention of the hostile Forces who have created it as
the best means of dominating living beings, animals and men.
--
This element acts as a defence against the hostile Forces
which can quite easily take possession of one who has disregarded the advice of his conscience.
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of Forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
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.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by Forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedienceobedience to the chief the patriarch or pater familiasobedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferior formulation. In reality it was more of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate choice, which is the very soul of the conception of duty.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is because material wealth is controlled by the adverse Forces
- and because they have not yet been converted to the Divine
--
Is immunity to the attack of adverse Forces possible
without transformation?
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
divine, even the adverse Forces, and if everything has been
created by Him and He can do everything, then how is
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The remedy lies in union with the divine Forces that are at
work and a receptivity full of trust and peace which makes the
--
because the transformation begins with the opening of the consciousness to the action of the new Forces; thus individuals have
a unique and wonderful opportunity to open themselves to the
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Well, I am only telling you all this because I thought someone might ask me about it, but otherwise I dont have that kind of relationship with Her. You see, if you consider this body, this poor body, it is very innocent: it in no way tries to draw attention to itself nor to attract Forces nor to do anything at all except its workas best it can. And thats how it stands: its importance is proportionate to its usefulness and to the significance the world attri butes to itsince its action is for the world.
But in and of itself, it is only one body among countless others. Thats all.
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my Forces are fruitlessly consumed.
In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewsters place in Almora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge forth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic retreat, as it were.
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
If only I could see a distinct error blocking my path which I could clearly attack But I feel that I am not responsible, that it is not my personal fault if I remain without aspiration, stagnating. I feel like a battlefield of contending Forces that are beyond me and against which I can do NOTHING. Oh Mother, it is not an excuse for a lack of will, or at least I dont think so I profoundly feel like a helpless toy, totally helpless.
If the divine force, if your grace, does not intervene to shatter this obscure resistance that is drawing me downwards in spite of myself, I dont know what will become of me Mother, I am not blackmailing you, I am only expressing my helplessness, my anguish.
During the day, I live more or less calmly in my little morass, but as evening and the moment to meet you draw near, then the Forces pinning me to the ground begin raging beneath your pressure, and I feel at times an unbearable tearing that burns and constricts in my throat like tears that cannot be shed. Afterwards, Truth regains possession of me but the following day it all begins again.
Mother, it is an impossible, absurd, unlivable life. I feel as though I have no hand in this cruel little game. Oh Mother, why doesnt your grace trust that deep part in me which knows so well that you are the Truth? Deliver me from these evil Forces since, profoundly, it is you and you alone I want. Give me the aspiration and strength I do not have. If you do not do this Yoga for me, I feel I shall never have the strength to go on.
There is something that must be SHATTERED: can it not be done once and for all without lingering on indefinitely? Mother, I am your child.
--
Your case is not unique; there are others (and among the best and the most faithful) who are likewise a veritable battlefield for the Forces opposing the advent of the truth. They feel powerless in this battle, sorrowful witnesses, victims without the strength to fight, for this is taking place in that part of the physical consciousness where the supramental Forces are not yet fully active, although I am confident they soon will be. Meanwhile, the only remedy is to endure, to go through this suffering and to await patiently the hour of liberation.
While reading your prayer, I too prayed that it be heard.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Those who are ready within, who are open and in touch with the higher Forces, those who have had a more or less direct personal contact with the Supramental Light and Consciousness, are capable of feeling the difference in the earth atmosphere.
But for this only like can know like. Only the Supramental Consciousness in an individual can perceive the Supramental acting in the earth atmosphere. Those who, for whatever reason, have developed this perception can see it. But those who are not even remotely conscious of their inner beings, who would be quite at a loss to say what their souls look like, are certainly not ready to perceive the difference in the earth atmosphere. They still have quite a way to go for that. Because, for those whose consciousness is more or less exclusively centered in the outer beingmental, vital and physicalthings need to have an absurd or unexpected appearance to be noticeable. And then they call it a miracle.
But we do not call a miracle the constant miracle of the Forces that intervene to change circumstances and human natures and which have very far-reaching consequences, for we see only the appearance, and this appearance seems quite natural. But in truth, if you were to reflect upon the least thing that happens, you would be forced to acknowledge that it is miraculous.
It is simply because you do not reflect upon it and assume things to be as they are, what they are, unquestioningly; otherwise you would have quite a number of opportunities everyday to say to yourself, But look! That is absolutely amazing! How did it happen?
0 1956-08-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My Lord, through me thou hast challenged the world and all the adverse Forces have risen in protest.1
But Thy Grace is winning the victory.
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But perhaps you have felt this way because you had left your work in the Ashram for an entirely personal, that is, necessarily egoistical reason, and egoism always isolates one from the great current of universal Forces. That is why, too, you no longer clearly perceive my love and my help which nevertheless are always with you.
You asked me what I see and whether your difficulties will not reappear upon your return to the Ashram. It may well be. If you return as you still are at present, it may be that after a very short period it will all begin again. That is why I am going to propose something to you but to accept it you will have to be heroic and very determined in your consecration to my work.
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is no question of my abandoning the path and I remain convinced that the only goal in life is spiritual. But I need things to help me along the way: I am not yet ripe enough to depend upon inner strength alone. And when I speak of the forest or a boat, it is not only for the sake of adventure or the feeling of space, but also because they mean a discipline. Outer constraints and difficulties help me, they force me to remain concentrated around that which is best in me. In a sense, life here is too easy. Yet it is also too hard, for one must depend on ones own discipline I do not yet have that strength, I need to be helped by outer circumstances. The very difficulty of life in the outside world helps me to be disciplined, for it Forces me to concentrate all my vital strength in effort. Here, this vital part is unemployed, so it acts foolishly, it strains at the leash.
I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external Forces, we dont know by whom or what, nor where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supramental manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
During the flu epidemic, for example, I spent every day in the midst of people who were germ carriers. And one day, I clearly felt that the body had decided not to catch this flu. It asserted its autonomy. You see, it was not a question of the higher Will deciding, no. It didnt take place in the highest consciousness: the body itself decided. When you are way above in your consciousness, you see things, you know things; but in actual fact, once you descend again into matter, it is like water running through sand. In this respect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very important result.
--
Naturally, all this is a gradual process, but I am hopeful that little by little this new consciousness will grow, gain ground and victoriously resist the old Forces of destruction and annihilation, and this Fatality we believed to be so inexorable.
***
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
These three categories of tests are: those conducted by the Forces of Nature, those conducted by the spiritual and divine Forces, and those conducted by the hostile Forces. This latter category is the most deceptive in its appearance, and a constant state of vigilance, sincerity and humility is required so as not to be caught by surprise or unprepared.
The most commonplace circumstances, people, the everyday events of life, the most seemingly insignificant things, all belong to one or another of these three categories of examiners. In this considerably complex organization of tests, those events generally considered the most important in life are really the easiest of all examinations to pass, for they find you prepared and on your guard. One stumbles more easily over the little pebbles on the path, for they attract no attention.
--
For the tests stemming from the hostile Forces: vigilance, sincerity and humility.
But do not imagine that those who are tested are on one side and those who test on the other; depending upon the times and circumstances, we are both examiners and examined, and it may even happen that simultaneously, at the very same moment, we are the examined and the examiner. And whatever benefits we derive depend, in both quality and quantity, upon the intensity of our aspiration and the alertness of our consciousness.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of Forces the newly manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the world than a spectacular change in earthly events.
I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.
0 1958-01-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The diamond light of Bliss has the power to melt all hostile Forces. Nothing can resist it. No consciousness, no being, no hostile will can draw near it without immediately being dissolved, for it is the Divine light in its pure creative power.
***
0 1958-05-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(On Hostile Forces)
I have noticed that in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is an excuse people give to themselves. I have seen that practically, in the case of almost all the people who write to me saying, I am being violently attacked by hostile Forces, its an excuse they are giving. It means that certain things in their nature do not want to yield, so they put all the blame on the hostile Forces.
As a matter of fact, my tendency is more and more towards something in which the role of these hostile Forces will be reduced to that of an examinerwhich means that they are there to test the sincerity of your spiritual quest. These elements have a reality in their action and for the workthis is their great reality but when you go beyond a certain region, it all grows dim to such a degree that it is no longer so well defined, so distinct. In the occult world, or rather if you look at the world from the occult point of view, these hostile Forces are very real, their action is very real, quite concrete, and their attitude towards the divine realization is positively hostile; but as soon as you go beyond this region and enter into the spiritual world where there is no longer anything but the Divine in all things, and where there is nothing undivine, then these hostile Forces become part of the total play and can no longer be called hostile Forces: it is only an attitude that they have adoptedor more precisely, it is only an attitude adopted by the Divine in his play.
This again belongs to the dualities that Sri Aurobindo speaks of in (The Synthesis of Yoga, these dualities that are being reabsorbed. I dont know if he spoke of this particular one; I dont think so, but its the same thing. Its again a certain way of seeing. He has written of the Personal-Impersonal duality, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti but there is still one more: Divine and anti-divine.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its action will be somewhat similar to what is described in the Last Judgment, which is an entirely symbolic expression of something that makes us discern between what belongs to the world of falsehood which is destined to disappear and what belongs to this same world of ignorance and inertia but is transformable. One will go to one side and the other to the other side. All that is transformable will be permeated more and more with this new substance and this new consciousness to such an extent that it will rise towards it and serve as a link between the two but all that belongs incorrigibly to falsehood and ignorance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita: among what we call the hostile or anti-divine Forces, those capable of being transformed will be uplifted and go off towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole part of humanity that has responded to these Forces rather too zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment.
May 1, 1958.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For the last, for money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other words, these Forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile Forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
It has been fulfilled to a certain extent but its negligible. It is conditional, limited: in one case, it works; in another, it doesnt. It is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I dont say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations.
Therefore, its an affair between the asuras and the human species. To transform itself is the only solution left to the human speciesin other words, to tear from the asuric Forces the power of ruling over the human species.
You see, the human species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Natures secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquiredthis is a fac the has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile Forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital Forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supramental power (Mother brings down her hands) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all overincluding Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you for some proofdo it for me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
--
There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the divine Forces which emanated for the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other words. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were told to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic instrument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extraordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradictory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had for more than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its words. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another world, it could apparently act normal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!
--
Asuras: the demons or dark Forces of the mental plane.
The experience of Nature's collaboration (November 8, 1957).
In effect, according to tradition, the first divine Forces that emanated for the creation were the Asuras, who turned into demons. The gods were created later to repair the disorder engendered by the demons.
So'ham, the traditional mantra of the Vedantic path, which declares that the world is an illusion.
0 1958-08-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the Thursday evening meditation, he appeared as the Guru of Tantric Initiation, magnified and seated upon a symbolic representation of the Forces and riches of material Nature (in the middle of the playground, to my left), and he put into my hand something sufficiently material for me to feel the vibrations physically, and it had a great realizing power. It was a kind of luminous and very vibrant globe which I held in my hands during the whole meditation.
S, who was sitting in front of me, spontaneously asked me afterwards what I had been holding in my hands during the meditation, and she described it thus: It was round, very soft and luminous like the moon.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call teach is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. Its a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless thingsmerely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental Forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewedinstead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.
We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illuminesa radiant glory.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For example, this question of PowerTHE Powerover Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, Let it be thus for it to be thus. This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things?Because they have indeed united with certain higher Forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
'If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect Forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature to forbid the turning away of our feet from less ordinary pastures.'
Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, p. 79
0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
They do pujas to all these Forces or divinities, but it is not it is not the highest Truth. What Sri Aurobindo called the true surrender, the surrender to the Supreme, is a truth higher than that of relying solely upon oneself.
And that is what always brings in complications, conflicts. I was surprised that the atmosphere [of the Ashram] is filled with conflict when he is here but that is the reason.2
--
The occult atmosphere of tantric pujas invokes Forces that do not coincide with the completely different atmosphere and the completely different attitude of the supramental yoga.
***
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was only a film story, but anyway, the goddesses, the three wives of the Trimurti that is, the consort of Brahma, the consort of Vishnu and the consort of Shivajoined Forces (!) and tried all kinds of things to foil Narada. I no longer recall the details of the story Oh yes, the story begins like this: one of the three I believe it was Shivas consort, Parvati (she was the worst one, by the way!)was doing her puja. Shiva was in meditation, and she began doing her puja in front of him; she was using an oil lamp for the puja, and the lamp fell down and burned her foot. She cried out because she had burned her foot. So Shiva at once came out of his meditation and said to her, What is it, Devi? (laughter) She answered, I burned my foot! Then Narada said, Arent you ashamed of what you have done?to make Shiva come out of his meditation simply because you have a little burn on your foot, which cannot even hurt you since you are immortal! She became furious and snapped at him, Show me that it can be otherwise! Narada replied, I am going to show you what it is to really love ones husbandyou dont know anything about it!
Then comes the story of Anusuya and her husb and (who is truly a husb and a very good man, but well, not a god, after all!), who was sleeping with his head resting upon Anusuyas knees. They had finished their puja (both of them were worshippers of Shiva), and after their puja he was resting, sleeping, with his head on Anusuyas knees. Meanwhile, the gods had descended upon earth, particularly this Parvati, and they saw Anusuya like that. Then Parvati exclaimed, This is a good occasion! Not very far away a cooking fire was burning. With her power, she sent the fire rolling down onto Anusuyas feetwhich startled her because it hurt. It began to burn; not one cry, not one movement, nothing because she didnt want to awaken her husband. But she began invoking Shiva (Shiva was there). And because she invoked Shiva (it is lovely in the story), because she invoked Shiva, Shivas foot began burning! (Mother laughs) Then Narada showed Shiva to Parvati: Look what you are doing; you are burning your husbands foot! So Parvati made the opposite gesture and the fire was put out.
--
There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both that split into two branches. Well, all these occult experiences have been the same. Only the description differs depending upon the country and the language. The story of creation is not told from a metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this story is as real as our stories of historical periods. Of course, its not the only way of seeing, but it is just as legitimate a way as the others, and in any event, it recognizes the concrete reality of all these divine beings. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists exhibit great similarities. The only difference is in the way they are expressed, but the manipulation of the Forces is the same.
I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was I dont know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age nor anything.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Truly speaking, perhaps one is never rid of the hostile Forces as long as one has not permanently emerged into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. There, the term hostile Forces loses its meaning; they become only Forces of progress, they force you to progress. But to see things in this way, you have to get out of the lower hemisphere, for below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.
It was said in the ancient traditions that one could not live for more than twenty days in this higher state without leaving ones body and returning to the supreme Origin. Now this is no longer true.
It is precisely this state of perfect Harmony beyond all attacks that will become possible with the supramental realization. It is what all those who are destined for the supramental transformation will realize. The hostile Forces know it well; in the supramental world, they will automatically disappear. Having no more utility, they will be dissolved without our having to do anything, simply through the presence of the supramental force. So now they are being unleashed with a fury in a negation of everything, everything.
The link between the two worlds has not yet been built, but it is in the process of being built; this was the meaning of the experience of February 3 1958, 1: to build a link between the two worlds. For both worlds are indeed therenot one above the other, but within each other, in two different dimensions. Only, there is no communication between them; they overlap, as it were, without being connected. In the experience of February 3, I saw certain people from here (and from elsewhere) who already belong to the supramental world in a part of their being, but there is no connection, no link. But now the hour has come in universal history for this link to be built.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult Forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its history, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
One day I had mentioned this to X1 when he was showing me or describing to me the different movements of the pujas, the procedure, the process of the puja. I said to him, Oh, I see! For the action to be immediate, for the result to be immediate, one must acknowledge, for example, the role or the participation of certain spirits or certain Forces and enter into a friendly relationship or collaboration with these Forces in order to obtain an immediate result, is it not so? Then he told me, Yes, otherwise it leaves an indefinite time to the play of the Forces, and you dont know when you will get the result of your puja.
That interested me very much. Because one of the obstacles I had felt was that although the Force was acting well, there was a time lag that appeared inevitable, a time element in the work which seemed unavoidablea play left to the Forces of Nature. But with their knowledge of the processes, the tantrics can dispense with all that. So I understood why those who have studied, who are initiated and follow the prescribed methods are apparently more powerfulmore powerful even than those who are conscious in the highest consciousness.
What interested me is that in their case (those who follow tantric or other initiations), what is doubtful is whether or not they can succeed in receiving the response of the true Power, the divine power, the supreme power; they do everything they can, but this question still remains. Whereas for me, it is the opposite situation: the Power is there, I have it, but how can I make it act here in matter? The process for making it act immediately was missingthough not totally; I know from the psychological standpoint, but there is something other than the psychological power, there is the whole play of conscious, individualized Forces that are everywhere in Nature and that have the right to exist. Since it was created this way, it must express something of the supreme Will, otherwise He wouldnt have made use of intermediaries but in His plan, it is obvious that the intermediary has a legitimate place.
It is like the story X told me of his guru2 who could comm and the coming of Kali (something which seems quite natural to me when one is sufficiently developed); well, not only could he commend the coming of Kali, but Kali with I dont know how many crores of her warriors! For me, Kali was Kali, after all, and she did her work; but in the universal organization, her action, the innumerable multiplicity of her action, is expressed by an innumerable multitude of conscious entities at work. It is this individualization, as it were, that gives to these Forces a consciousness and a certain play of freedom, and this is what makes all the difference in action. It is in this respect that the occult system is an absolutely indispensable complement to spiritual action.
The spiritual action is direct, but it may not be immediate (anyway, thats my experience). Sri Aurobindo said that with the supramental presence, it becomes immediate and I have experienced this. But this would then mean that the supramental Power automatically commands all these intermediaries, whereas if its not present, even the highest spiritual power would need a specialized knowledge to act in this realm, a knowledge equivalent to an occult or initiatory knowledge of all these realms. This is why I told X, Well, you taught me many things while you were here. There is always something to learn.
--
It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered before there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the manifestation. That is the great difference. For example, those with the power to materialize Forces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, for these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical world where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extraphysical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Swami told me that the mantra to Durga is intended to pierce through into the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the High Priest of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a very powerful mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark Forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While reciting his mantra, he holds a glass of water in his hand, then he makes me drink it. It seems that on the eighth day, if the enemy has been trapped, this water turns yellow then the operation is over and the poisoned water is thrown out. (I tell you all this because I prefer that you know.) In any event, I like X very much, he is a very luminous, very good man. If I am not delivered after all this!
In truth, I believe only in the Grace. My mantra and all the rest seem to me only little tricks to try to win over your Grace.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the mantra strictly according to his instructions, but he again told me that the hostile Forces would do all they could to prevent me from saying my mantra: mental suggestions and even illness. X has understood that I have work at the Ashram, and he has exempted me from the outer forms (pujas and other rituals), but nevertheless I must repeat my mantra very accurately every day (3,333 times, that is, a little more than 3 hours uninterrupted in the mornings, and more than 2 hours in the evening). I must therefore organize myself in such a way as to get up very early in the morning in Pondicherry, for in no case will your work suffer.
Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
--
My body would also like to have a mantra to repeat. Those it has are not enough for it anymore. It would like to have one to hasten its transformation. It is ready to repeat it as many times as needed, provided that it does not have to be out loud, for it is very rarely alone and does not want to speak of this to anyone. Truly, the Ashram atmosphere is not very favorable for this kind of thing. You will have to take precautions so as not to be disturbed or interrupted in an inopportune way. Domestic servants, curious people, so-called friends can all serve as instruments of the hostile Forces to put a spoke in the wheels. I will do my best to protect you, but you will have a lot to do yourself and will have to be as firm as an iron rod.
I am not writing you all this to discourage you from coming. But I want you to succeed; for me that is more important than anything else, no matter what the price. So, know for certain that I am with you all the time and more so especially when you repeat your mantra
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is a spiritual destiny in me, but there are three other destinies so intimately bound up with it that I cannot cut off any one without mutilating something of my living soulwhich is why, periodically, these suppressed destinies awaken and call to meand the dark Forces seize upon these occasions to sow chaos within and drive me to ruin everything since I cannot really fulfill myself. And the problem is insoluble.
1) There is the destiny of the adventurer: it is the one in me that needs the sea or the forest and wide open spaces and struggles. This was the best part of my childhood. I can sit on it and tell myself that the adventure is within, and it might work for a while. But this untamed child in me continues to live all the same, and it is something very valuable in me. I cannot kill it through reasoning, even spiritual reasoning. And if I tell it that everything lies within, not without, it replies, Then why was I born, why this manifestation in the outer world? In the end, it is not a question of reasoning. It is a fact, like the wind upon the heaths.
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
These last days I have come to realize that to blame all my crises on the hostile Forces is perhaps to oversimplify things. I understand better and better, for in my suffering, my soul is all I have and I rely on that alone; otherwise I could never bear all that I have borne, all that I still bear. I understand, too, that there was also a truth in the force which periodically impelled me to leave, the truth of that destiny in me which is not fulfilled in the Ashram.
Mother, I have suffered so much and prayed so much this last while that I am sure my soul cannot but arrange circumstances in such a way that somehow I may live at last that somehow EVERYTHING may truly become reconciled: not later on or one of these days, but soon for it cannot go on any longer; I am at my end.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile Forces
author class:The Mother
--
At times, I feel that Ill never get over the difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile Forcesoceans of Forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas,1 then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the difficulty. Precisely so! (And its the hostile Forces who help you to see this, its their role.) You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.
***
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the Forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.
And all this was absolutely egoless, without any personal reaction, nothing; there was nothing but the consciousness of the Supreme Action. It was the only thing existing.
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its form was elongated, slanting downwards (it always has this form). At the top it looked like a head, then the lines disappeared down below. It had no openings. And then, it was surrounded by various dark sheaths, a very dark purple which is the color of protection. A sparkling light was entering into itit kept entering, but without making any holes. It passed right through everything, through the purplethrough everything. It passed through and entered inside, where there were sparklings of every color, like a cascade. There are always these cascades of Forcesimilar to a cascading stream whose waters neither flow on nor disappear, but accumulate: an accumulation of energies, a condensation. And they accumulate without taking up any more space through a kind of compression. And inside, its moving, vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, it keeps coming and comingyou dont know where it comes from, but it keeps coming and accumulating.
It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colorsvibrations of every color Like a materialization these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. Thats really the impression it gave.)
It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how Forces are systematically separated by themeach vibration, each color. Its very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or its the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. Im not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja succeeding, it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really knowfrom afar Im not so sure. Its merely an impression.
This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, Mothers Force is with you. When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hournothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. Its as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special formits a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were Forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly
The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the Forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was firmly grounded there [in the square], enough power to help others.
These were universal Forces. I cant say it means war. Ive foreseen many warswidespread wars, local wars, so many warsand up to now they have never been presented to me in that form. Theyve always come as a fireflames, flames, the home burning. Not as an inundation.
A cataclysm?
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was in the beginning of February 56it was formidable. It was really formidable. All the asuric Forces of destruction descended upon me They tried their best.
And naturally, they make use of all those around me!Its the only way of getting at my body.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both thingswhat he had been doing as well as what I was doingit became rather complicated and I realized there were many what we could call gapsthings which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental Forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactionswas absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.
Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rather quickly, I didnt stay there long). So when I went inside X, I saw It was rather curious, for its the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness (physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless, in communication with all the universal Forces. In the physical mind, silence, immobility. But in the speculative mind, the one there at the very top of the head what an organization, phew! All the tradition in its most superb organization, but such a ri-gi-dity! And it had a pretty quality of light, a silver blueVERY pretty. Oh, it was very calm, wonderfully calm and quiet and still. But what a ceiling it had!the outer form resembled rigid cubes. Everything inside was beautiful, but that There was a very large cube right at the top, I recall, bordered by a purple line, which is a line of powerall this was quite luminous. It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in other words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yieldingeven inflexible, you could say. The others were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very blurred. But up at the top!thats where I wanted to go, right to the top.
When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
--
I didnt speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought It was then repaired, and again it broke downthree times. Then the following night, just before ten oclock I should mention that during the day I had thought, But why not attract these Forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them? I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didnt bother any further. At ten oclock that evening, they came upon mein a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforwardhonest Forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, Id had enough: Listen, this is quite fine, youre very nice, but I cant spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, thats enough for today At 10:30, the machine broke down!
I found out, of course, because they log everything at the factory, so when they came to inform me of the breakdown the next morning, I asked them what time it had happenedexactly 10:30.
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It always gives me the feeling that I am shrinking a little, but its interesting. And its useful, for I am constantly moving about and doing things with people; it indicates to me what I have to say and do with each one. Its useful. But all the same, I miss the fullness and joy of the more impersonal Movement of Forces.
Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force(because there is a way to do it). And then I think, Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl! So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesntwhen theres something important to do, it doesnt happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these very far from here, very far I cant say very far from the earth, for surely its in an intermediate zone between the Forces from above and the earths atmosphere. Thats what it mainly is, in any case. Its a great universal current as well, but mainly its what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earths atmosphere all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall visionit makes for wonderful nights I no longer bother about people at allat least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.
(silence)
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The experience I havewhat I mean by I is this aggregate here (Mother indicates her body), this particular individualityis that the more quiet and calm it is, the more work it can do and the faster the work can be done. What is most disturbing and time consuming are all these agitated vibrations that fall on me (truly speaking, each person who comes throws them on me). And this is what makes the work difficultit stirs up a whirlwind. And you cant do anything in this whirlwind, its impossible. If you try to do something material, your fingers stumble; if you try to do something intellectual, your thoughts get all entangled and you no longer see clearly. Ive had the experience, for example, of wanting to look up a word in the dictionary while this agitation was in the atmosphere, and everything jumps up and down (yet the lighting is the same and Im using the same magnifying glass), I no longer see a thing, its all jumping! I go page by page, but the word simply doesnt exist in the dictionary! Then I remain quiet, I do this (Mother makes a gesture of bringing down the Peace) and after half a minute I open the dictionary: the very spot, and the word leaps out at me! And I see clearly and distinctly. Consequently I have now the indisputable proof that if you want to do anything properly, you must FIRST be calm but not only be calm yourself; you must either isolate yourself or be capable of imposing a calm on this whirlwind of Forces that comes upon you all the time from all around.
All the teachers are wanting to quit the schoolweary! Which means theyll begin the year with half the teachers gone. They live in constant tension, they dont know how to relax thats really what it is. They dont know how to act without agitation.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was just before Durga Puja,3 or just after I cant remember (dates and I dont go together)no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous rakshasic4 power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light the lance of light that destroys the hostile Forcesand She struck into a black swarming mass of men.
But then there came a frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sicknot quiteas two years ago5 (they must have used the same mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit terrible vomitingeverything inside came out! Only now Im a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didnt see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from therea backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So Im trying to come to an understanding, to reach an agreement these are very complicated matters (!). For its a whole totality You see, we are trying something here which really is contrary to all those laws and practices, something which disturbs everything. So they propose things that have me advancing like this (sinuous motion), without disturbing things too much, and without having to call in Forces (Mother makes a gesture of a lance thrust into the pack) Forces a bit too great, which may disturb things too much. Like that, we can keep tacking back and forth.
A while ago You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, Its your affair; if you want us to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means. But this upsets some of them, so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me from having to to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all kinds of things; some time ago they said, What about a good cyclone, or a good earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal that would bring in some funds! (Mother laughs) Yes, its of this order! And its all quite clear and definitewe have veritable conversations!
--
But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile Forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then theres the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, Thats fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that. As he told me (its even one of the first things he told me), We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.
--
On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the Forces, this is the strongest. And its the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only for the world to change, it must manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it
Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst. So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easyat least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And Ive experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mothers room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, burst and be done with. But Sri Aurobindo always intervenedall three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its the very point where Nature (I mean the passive side of the force of manifestation) is a slave to the hostile Forces. There is a point where She is dominated by them. And this must be cured before the Power from above, the Power of the Shakti, can pass through everything, dominate everything, and be infallible
I saw the thing, the experience took place, but sometimes it takes long for all the consequences to be worked out.2
--
That was the wonderful thing when we were together and all these hostile Forces were fighting (they tried to kill me any number of times. He always saved me in an absolutely miraculous and marvelous way). But you see, this seemed to create very great BODILY difficulties for him. We discussed this a great deal, and I told him, If one of us must go, I want that it should be me.
It cant be you, he replied, because you alone can do the material thing.3
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Put this way, there is no need to bring the principle of love into our explanation. But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integralintegral in that it applies to all cases. Its even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse Forces, but which doesnt have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesnt need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesnt destroy: it transforms.
Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Lovepure, essential, suprememelts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But they are furious! There is evidently a whole alignment of Forces (they must be vital Forces) between here and my domain. Theyre furious! They set up explosions, demolitions. And I could see all the settings they were quite artificial, nothing real, but dangerous nonetheless.
All in all, it was rather amusing.
--
Evidently all the vital Forces who have taken the habit of ruling the earth (last night it had the proportions of the earth, it wasnt universal) are the very ones who refuse to listen; they dont at all like what I am doing.
You see, personal surrender and devotion is an excellent solution for the individual, but it doesnt work for the collectivity. For example, as soon as I am alone and lying on my bedpeace! (Ah, I forgot! They had invented yet another thing: making my heartbeats irregular. Every three or four beats it would stop; then it would start up again, pounding as if I had been struck. Three, four beats, a faint little beat, then stop then, bang! Blow after blow. One more of their extraordinary inventions!) But, as soon as I stretch out and make a total surrender of all the cellsno more activity, nothingeverything goes well. But I am well aware that this surrender has an effect on the action only to the extent that the Supreme Lord has decided upon the action, and those movements stretch over long periods of time5: all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terrestrial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale. These Forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, many things can happen.
Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution its a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true comm and here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
--
These seem to be the Forces ruling the subconscious mechanisms or reactions of the body: all the automatism produced by evolution and atavismwhat might be termed evolutionary habits. This is the 'descending path,' which started forty years earlier, as Mother said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mother's mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body.
Later, Mother specified: 'These are elements in the material substance entirely possessed by adverse Forces and opposed to the transformation.'
On the previous day, January 21, Saraswati Puja, Mother had given a message and photos to each disciple.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We think these people are the way they are because the environment is bad, the education is poor, the conditions are difficultits not true! In the universal economy of things they REPRESENT something, a certain type of force and vibration. It will have to be either dissolved or transformed. Transformed? But perhaps that is. It may disappear along with the hostile Forces. Perhaps once everything has been transformed it will disappear I dont know when.
In any case, I really tried my best, with all the power I had, all the knowledge I had, because I liked this girl a lot, it wasnt at all a question of charity, I found her very interesting. But I watchedwith a kind of horror, reallyas this past repossessed her more and more, more and more each day, until we were finally obliged to dismiss her, to tell her, Go. Yes, I understand, she replied, I cant stay here.
--
In the Vedas, the panis and dasyus represent beings or Forces hidden in subterranean caves who have stolen the 'Riches' or the 'Lights', symbolized by herds of cows. With the help of the gods, the Aryan warrior must recover these lost riches, the 'sun in the darkness,' by igniting the flame of sacrifice. It is the path of subterranean descent.
Indra represents the king of the gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To illustrate this, an interesting thing came upyesterday, I think. (All these experiences come to show me the difference, as if to give proof of the change.) Someone had had a dream about me whispered to him by the adverse Forces for specific reasons (I wont go into the details). He was much affected by it, so he wrote down the dream and gave it to me. I was carrying his letter along with all the others, as I usually do, but suddenly I knew I had to read it right away: I read it. Then I saw the whole thing with such clarity, precision, accuracy: how it had come about, how the dream had been produced, its effect the whole functioning of all the Forces. As I read along and it went on unfolding, I did what was necessary for him (he was present at the time) in order to undo what the adverse Forces had done. Then at the end, when I had finished, said everything, explained what it was all about and what had to be done, something SO CATEGORICAL came into me (I cannot verbalize this kind of experience, it is what I call the difference in power: something categorical). I took the letter, uttered a few words (which I wont repeat) and said, You see, its like this: so much for that, and I ripped the letter a first time. Then, thats for that, I tore it a second time and so on. I ripped it up five times and the fifth time I saw that their power was destroyed.
I have done these things beforeits a knowledge I already hadand it always had its effect when I did them; its not that I am passing from powerlessness to power, not at all. But its this kind of yes, something definite, absolutea kind of absolute in vision, in knowledge, in action and ABOVE ALL in powera kind of absolute that doesnt need to conquer obstacles and resistances, but ANNULS the resistance automatically. Then I saw that something had truly changed.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now I have begun reading those hymns2. Oh, now I understand! All those obstacles were a preparation straight from Sri Aurobindo. Now I understand! (What I mean by understand is that its a help for making progress.) I understand the nature of certain obstructions and certain difficulties, and what allows certain Forces to oppose each other I understand it quite clearly.
I have read only two hymns so far. By the time I reach the end I will probably have found something.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Asura: demon of the mental plane embodying the Forces of division and darkness.
Tlemcen: a town in northern Algeria.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother remains silent for a long while, then replies.) Quite evidently, the adverse Forces are not only trying to convince everyone but me too, that this is how its going to turn out.
But I have as yet had no indications.
--
(After a long silence) This would rather indicate those who disapprove of my non-asceticism. It would seem to originate from those particular Forces.
You see, theres a curious fluctuation possibly indicating that your dream is part of the present attack which continues with such violence. The night before last, between midnight and half-past, there was a formidable attack. When I emerged from it, I felt that something had lifted, a victory had been won and that the bodys condition had improved. It happens like that, the horizon clears and this Certainty comes with. (The presence is always hereSri Aurobindo and I are together almost every night but the night when I saw that formation, the illness spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was quite sick in his bed, just as I saw him in 1950.) So when it lifts, all is well: once again there is harmony, there is joy, there is force and again the whole thing continues, the effort continues, consciously. Yet there is a kind of fluctuation: it will go on like that for a few moments or a few hours and then suddenly everything becomes muddled again and I am beset by a fatigue. A fatigue which is I cant say almost unbearable, because nothing in the consciousness feels it to be unbearable but it makes me like this (Mother clenches her fist tightly in a tension to hold on).
--
The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile Forces but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, Ah! Your legs havent had any trouble for a long time! Its the turn of the lower centers! I swept it all away, of course, but.
Taken this way, it could be an indication that all this needs a somewhat brutal preparation in order to be put in the necessary condition.
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, I dont claim to be totally universal, but in any case I am open enough to receive. You see, given the quantity of material I have taken into my consciousness, its quite natural that the body bears the consequences. There is nothing, not one wrong movement, that my body doesnt feel5; generally, though, things are automatically set in order (gesture indicating that Mother automatically purifies and masters the vibrations coming to her). But there are timesespecially when it coincides with a revolt of adverse Forces who dont want to give up their domain and enter into battle with all their mightwhen I must admit its hard. If I had some hours of solitude it would be easier. But particularly during the period of my Playground activities, I was badgered, harassed; I would rush from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, I had no nights to speak ofnights of two and a half or three hours rest, which isnt enough, theres no time to put things in order.
Under those conditions I could only hold the thing like this (same gesture of muzzling the illness or holding it in abeyance).
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Up to that point, all his modes of being are naturally natural! But with the minds intrusion, evolution was, if not falsified, then deformed, because by its very nature the mind was open to perversion and it became perverted almost from the start (or to be more exact, it was perverted by the asuric Forces). And what appears unnatural to us now is this state of perversion. At any rate, its a deformation.
You ask why man questions himself, but this is the nature of the mind!
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It would be like thatwithout the adverse Forces.
The universe would be like that, if it had not been for the deviation of the adverse Forces I see it very clearly. The perversion, the cold-blooded and cruel perversion of sheer malevolent will keeps it from being like that. Thats what intervenes. They all call it an accident, but a lot of good that does us! The fact is there.
The adverse force is what keeps the Divine from blossoming miraculously whenever He appears. Because I know that wherever Matter is not under the influence of this adverse will to any degree, it blossoms immediately. And everything in the human heart, in human consciousness, in human thought, all that is slightly sheltered from this adverse influencesheltered by the psychic, the divine Presenceblossoms, becomes immediately becomes marvelous, without any obstacleall the obstacles come from that source. So its all very well to call it an accident, but.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Cats are vital Forces, incarnations of vital Forces. The King of the Cats that is, the spirit of the speciesis a being of the vital world.
For instance, cats can very easily incarnate the vital force of a dead person. I have had two absolutely astounding experiences of this.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only just towards the end of the night, after 2 a.m., does all this subconscient rise up to be relived. And with such a new and unexpected perception, oh! Its incredible! It changes all values and relationships and reactions (Mother shapes great movements of shifting Forces); its like a chessboard absolutely unexpected!
And I see a very steady, insistent and regular action to eliminate moral values. How I have been plagued all my life by these moral values! Everything is immediately placed on a scale of moral values (not ordinary moralityfar from it! But a sense of what has to be encouraged or discouraged, what helps me towards progress or what hampers it); instantly everything was seen from the angle of this will to progresseverything, all circumstances, reactions, movements, absolutely everything was translated by that. Now, the subconscient is mounting upwards and, knee-deep in it, you see it as a lesson to tell you: so much for all your notions of progress! They are all based on illusionsa general lie. Things are not at all what they seem, they dont have the effects they appear to have, nor the results that are perceivedall, all, all, oh Lord!
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When these promised things are achieved, then something like a Power will comepersonally I dont consider that I have power. For the moment its nothing. It is NOTHING. My conception of Power is that when this must be comes into the consciousness, well, it MUST be. But its not like that now. All the other Forces, the other movements of consciousness, enter and interfere,4 and the usual mess results; there is a little bit of that, a bit of this, a bit of the otherin short, an approximation. Sometimes it works, but then it is.
The movement of initiating the action always proceeds in the same wayas something imperatively SEEN. Consequently, it should ALWAYS have an effect; but all kinds of things enter and cause a disturbance. So I dont call that Powerits too haphazard. But dont worry yourself over all this chatter.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like asking if certain elements will disappear from the universe. What can it mean, the destruction of a universe? Once we are out of our stupidity, what can we call destruction? Only the form is destroyed, the appearance (that, yesall appearances are destroyed, one after the other). It is also said (its written everywhere) that the adverse Forces will either be converted that is, become aware of their own divinity and become divineor be destroyed. But what does destroyed mean? Their form? Their form of consciousness can be dissolved, but what about the something which brings itand everything elseinto existence? How can that something be destroyed? This, mon petit, is difficult to comprehend. The universe is a conscious objectification of That which exists from all eternity. Well, how can the All cease to be? The infinite and eternal All, without limits of any kindhow can anything be thrown out of it? There is nowhere to go! (You can rack your brains over it, you know!) Go where? There is only THAT.
And even when we say there is only that we are situating it somewherewhich is perfectly idiotic. It is everywhereso how can anything be thrown out of it?
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse Forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, material substance as it has been organized by the mind the initial mentalization of matter, the first stirrings of mind in life making the passage from animal to human. (The same complications would probably exist in animals, but as there is no question of trying to supramentalize animals, all goes well for them.) Well, something in there protests, and naturally this protest creates disorder. These past few days I have been seeing. No one has ever followed this path! Sri Aurobindo was the first, and he left without telling us what he was doing. I am literally hewing a path through a virgin forestits worse than a virgin forest.
For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. Its nothing. But this transformation of Matter! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?
--
But are these merely material resistances or are they rather hostile Forces?
No; outside Matter, the hostile Forces dont have even a BIT of power: NONE.
Their power is in Matter?
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What would it be like, for instance, to have a small supramental creation as a nucleus of action and influence radiating upon earth (to limit it to the earth)? Is it possible? Its easy to conceive of a superhuman nucleusa creation of supermen, that is, of men who by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in manifesting the supramental Forces; yet since their origin is human, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of human coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret of direct, supramental creation, bypassing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I dont know.
Of course, we know that such a thing will require a considerable amount of time to be done, and it will probably go by stages, by degrees, with faculties appearing that at the moment we cant know or imagine, and which will change the conditions of the earththis is looking ahead a few thousand years.
--
No, the only solution is occult power. But that. Before anything at all can be done, it already demands a certain number of individuals who have reached a great perfection of realization. Granting this, a place is conceivable (set apart from the outside worldno actual contacts) where each thing is exactly in its place, setting an example. Each thing exactly in its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement in its place, and all in its place in an ascending, progressive movement without relapse (that is, the very opposite of what goes on in ordinary life). Naturally, this also means a sort of perfection, it means a sort of unity; it means that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and, necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony; and a power sufficient to keep the Forces of Nature obedient: even if this place were encircled by destructive Forces, for example, these Forces would be powerless to act the protection would be sufficient.
It would all require the utmost perfection in the individuals organizing such a thing.
--
This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mother brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didnt pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldnt know anything had happened (its the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew italthough from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. Its not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effectsfar from it. Sometimes its an altogether INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reasonwhat is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse Forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theon was the first one to give me the idea that the earth is symbolic, representativesymbolic of concentrated universal action allowing divine Forces to incarnate and work concretely. I learned all this from him.
In this respect, you say somewhere that the gods too must incarnate to become fully conscious.
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has tried very hard to understand. But his spiritual conception has remained like this: one canone MUSTmaster life, and in life, to some extent, a certain adaptation to the higher Forces can be achieved; but there is no question of transformation: the physical world remains the physical world. It can be a little better organized, more harmonious, but there is no question of something else, of divinizationno question at all.
And this is probably why there are things he cant make out in his contact with me, because he simply doesnt understand. For example, these physical disorders baffle him, they seem incompatible with my realization. As long as the question of transformation does not come into play, the realization I had was sufficient to establish a kind of very stable orderreaction against the transformative will is what causes these disorders. And this he does not understandto him something seems not to be functioning properly. He must feel a contradiction between certain things he perceives in my consciousness and my contact with the material world. This being this, he thinks, that ought to be like that; so why? He doesnt understand.1
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have to face a similar difficulty, mind you, although its on another level. There is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolvedeverything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packedso compact! Too compact for the life for the hours, the time, the Forcesof an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, there is a sort of constant active immobility, in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility. If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The secret lies in matter. Because Agni is imprisoned in matter and we ourselves are imprisoned there. It is said that Agni is without head or feet, that it conceals its two extremities: above, it disappears into the great heaven of the supraconscient (which the Rishis also called the great ocean), and below, it sinks into the formless ocean of the inconscient (which they also called the rock). We are truncated. But the Rishis were men of a solid realism, a true realism resting upon the Spirit; and since the summits of mind opened out upon a lacuna of lightecstatic, to be sure, but with no hold over the worldthey set upon the downward way.6 Thus begins the quest for the lost sun, the long pilgrimage of descent into the inconscient and the merciless fight against the dark Forces, the thieves of the sun, the panis and vritras, pythons and giants, hidden in the dark lair with the whole cohort of usurpers: the dualizers, the confiners, the tearers, the COVERERS. But the divine worker, Agni, is helped by the gods, and in his quest he is led by the intuitive ray, Sarama, the heavenly hound with the subtle sense of smell who sets Agni on the track of the stolen herds (strange, shining herds). Now and again there comes the sudden glimmer of a fugitive dawn then all grows dim. One must advance step by step, digging, digging, fighting every inch of the way against the wolves whose savage fury increases the nearer one draws to their denAgni is a warrior. Agni grows through his difficulties, his flame burns more brilliantly with each blow from the Adversary; for, as the Rishis said, Night and Day both suckled the divine Child; they even said that Night and Day are the two sisters, Immortal, with a common lover [the sun] common they, though different their forms (I.113.2,3). These alternations of night and brightness accelerate until Day breaks at last and the herds of Dawn7 surge upward awakening someone who was dead (I.113.8). The infinite rock of the inconscient is shattered, the seeker uncovers the Sun dwelling in the darkness (III.39.5), the divine consciousness in the heart of Matter. In the very depths of Matter, that is to say, in the body, on earth, the Rishis found themselves cast up into Light that same Light which others sought on the heights, without their bodies and without the earth, in ecstasy. And this is what the Rishis would call the Great Passage. Without abandoning the earth they found the vast dwelling place, that dwelling place of the gods, Swar, the original Sun-world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental World: Human beings [the Rishis emphasize that they are indeed men] slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven [matter and mind] and made the wide world their dwelling place (I.36.8). They have entered the True, the Right, the Vast, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the unbroken light, the fearless light, where there is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
***
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All things are attracted to the Divine. Are the hostile Forces also attracted to the Divine?
You know, I can say one thing about this. Theres a type of woman I have met more or less periodically throughout my life. These beings are under the influence, or are incarnations of, or in any case are responsive to Forces which Theon called passivenot exactly feminine Forces, but on the Prakriti2 side of the universe: the dark Prakriti side (there is an active dark side, the asuric Forces, and a passive dark side). And these are terrible beings, terrible! They have wreaked havoc in life. They represent one of the creations biggest difficulties. And they are attracted to me! Mon petit, they adore me, they detest me, they would like to destroy meand individually they CANNOT do without me! They come to me like like fireflies to light. And they hate me! They would like to crush me. Thats how it is.
I have met five women like that, the last two here (they were the most terrible). Its a phenomenon of hate and rage mixed with loves greatest power of attractionno sweetness, of course, no tenderness, nothing like that but NEED, loves greatest power of attraction, mixed with hate. And they cling, you know, and then what fun!
--
And it has always been said that That and That alone could bring the adverse Forces to a halt.
(Music)
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These past few days Ive had some interesting experiences from this standpoint. I had what is commonly called fever, but it wasnt feverit was a resurfacing from the subconscient of all the struggles, all the tensions this body has had for what will soon be eighty-three years. I went through a period in my life when the tension was tremendous, because it was psychological and vital as well as physical: a perpetual struggle against adverse Forces; and during my stay in Japan, particularly oh, it was terrible! So at night, everything that had been part of that life in Japanpeople, things, movements, circumstancesall of it seemed to be surrounding my body in the form of vital3 vibrations, and to be taking the place of my present state, which had completely vanished. For hours during the night, the body was reliving all the terrible tensions it had during those four years in Japan. And I realized how much (because at the time you pay no attention; the consciousness is busy with something else and not concentrated on the body), how much the body resists and is tense. And just as I was realizing this, I had a communication with Sri Aurobindo: But youre keeping it up! he told me. Your body still has the habit of being tense. (Its much less now, of course; its quite different since the inner consciousness is in perfect peace, but the BODY keeps the habit of being tense.) For instance, in the short interval between the time I get up and the time I come down to the balcony,4 when I am getting ready (I have to get this body ready to come down) well, the body is tense about being ready in time. And thats why accidents happen at that moment. So the following morning I said, All right, no more tension, and I was exclusively concerned with keeping my body perfectly tranquil I was no later than usual! So its obviously just one of the bodys bad habits. Everything went off the same as usual, and since then things are better. But its a nasty habit.
And so I looked. Is it something particular to this body? I wondered. To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things: a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And thats probably why. But I dont want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is a CELLULAR will, and a cellular endurance toowhich is quite intriguing. Its not a central will and central endurance (thats something else altogether)its cellular. Thats why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Workbecause of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will. But thats no reason to exercise this ability uselessly! So I am making sure it relaxes now; I tell it constantly, Now, now! Just let go! Relax, have some fun, wheres the harm in it? I have to tell it to be quiet, very quiet. And its very surprised to hear that: Ah! Can I live that way? I dont have to hurry? I can live that way?
--
It gets much less winded, of course, when you have the inner equality of the divine Presence. So much fatigue is due to excess tension produced by desire or effort or struggle, by the constant battle against all opposing Forces. All that can go.
We tire ourselves out quite needlessly.
0 1962-01-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Asura: demon of the mental plane embodying the Forces of division and darkness.
The reader will remember the formation of the Kuo-min-tang and the troubles in the Yangtze Valley which took place in October 1911 and led to the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. Thus it was in October 1906, at Tlemcen, that Mother had the encounter she relates here. It was also in 1906 that Mao Tse-tung, at the age of fourteen, came into conflict with his father, a prelude to his revolutionary career.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse Forces the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse Forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish ones own transformation thats what we must pray for, what we must work outrather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse Forces.
And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, its quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness andeven worseall the ill will in the earths consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse Forces and beings and offered them up in a great it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse Forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
The adverse Forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse Forces might disappear.
The experience was very intense. It crystallized around a small nucleus of experiences too personal to mention (because I wasnt the only one involved), which translated into this: Take all my wrongdoings, take them all, accept them, obliterate them, and may those Forces disappear.
Thats essentially what this aphorism says, seen from the other end. So long as a single human consciousness carries the possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse Forces, which are kept in the creation as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go.
(silence)
--
It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.2 Since this world is progressive, I was wondering, since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, wont there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Wont there always be what we call adverse Forces, in other words, things that dont harmoniously follow the movement? Then came the answer, the vision of That: No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.
It was very concrete.
0 1962-01-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In connection with the preceding conversation on antidivine Forces:)
I read a passage in Savitri which seems to link up exactly with what you were saying.
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, its like trying to alter the functioning of the organs. What is the process? Already the two are beginning to exist simultaneously. What does it take for one to disappear and the other to remain on its own, changed? Changed, because as it is now it wouldnt be enough to make the body function; the body wouldnt perform all the things it must perform, it would stay in a blissful state, delighting in its condition, but not for longit still has a lot of needs! Thats the trouble. It will be very easy for those who come in one or two hundred years; they will only have to choose: not to belong to the old system any more or else to belong to the new.2 But now. A stomach has got to digest, after all! Well, that will mean a new way of adapting to the Forces of Nature, a new functioning.
But for that to happen, some beings would have to prepare this new functioning.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The same goes for all those beings the Tantrics deal withtheir origin is not vital, they belong to Nature. They are personified natural Forces obedient to the laws of Nature. In other words, they originate from below, not from the vital but the physical world. They are vital Forces in the physical, but not of vital origin.
The other day, didnt I tell you the story of those entities working for me? (It wasnt you? Id had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the subtle physical and work there (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are Forces, generally feminine in appearance, that do some work and have a great deal of power. They are usually the ones that respond to Tantric invocations (I dont mean the Tantrics who call on Kali or Durga, thats something else altogether, those belong to a totally different world). Most of the time these Nature Forces are very willing to helpat any rate, they are wonderfully obliging with me! But they are limited beings, with their own ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified Forces of physical Nature, in the subtle physical.
A world of things could be said.
0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just between eleven and twelve [last night] I had an experience by which I discovered that there is a group of peoplepurposely their identity was not revealed to mewanting to create a kind of religion based on the revelation of Sri Aurobindo. But they have taken only the side of power and force, a certain kind of knowledge and all which could be utilized by Asuric Forces. There is a big Asuric being that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo. It is only an appearance. This appearance of Sri Aurobindo has declared to me that the work I am doing is not his. It has declared that I have been a traitor to him and to his work and has refused to have anything to do with me.
There is in that group a man whom I must have seen once or twice, who is not with them in spirit, but only in appearance, but without knowledge. He does not know what kind of being it is. And he always hopes to make him accept me, believing it is truly Sri Aurobindo. I saw this being last night. I wont tell you all the details of the vision. It is not necessary. But I must say that I was fully conscious, aware of everything, knowing that there was an Asuric Force there, but not rejecting it, because of the infinity of Sri Aurobindo. I knew that everything is part of him and I do not want to reject anything. I met this being last night three times, even apologized for sins that I have not committed, and in full love and surrender.
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And each gust of this essence of Love was dividing and spreading out but they werent Forces, it was far beyond the realm of Forces. The universe as we know it no longer existed; it was a sort of bizarre illusion, bearing no relation to THAT. There was only the truth of the universe, with those great gusts of colorthey were coloredgreat gusts colored with something that is the essence of color.
It was stupendous. I lived more than two hours like that, consciously.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was, in fact, a whole group of Ashram people (they might be called the Ashram "intelligentsia") who, influenced by Subhas Bose, were strongly in favor of the Nazis and the Japanese against the British. (It should be recalled that the British were the invaders of India, and thus many people considered Britain's enemies to be automatically India's friends.) It reached the point where Sri Aurobindo had to intervene forcefully and write: "I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war.... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary Forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.... The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical.... That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but...." (July 29, 1942 and Sept. 3, 1943, Cent. Ed., Vol. XXVI.394 ff.) And on her side also, Mother had to publicly declare: "It has become necessary to state emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura.... Those, therefore, who wish for the victory of the Nazis and their associates should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo." (May 6, 1941, original English.)
See note at the end of this conversation
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13], the body used to feel the struggle against the Forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). Thats what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none that simply didnt exist. But in actual material fact, there was some difficulty. And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesnt feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the worldthis world of ignorance and isnt being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I dont know about that yet) but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (whats the word for it?) an unwillingnessa bodily unwillingnessto do things in the old way.
There is another way to be found.
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I had an experience I hadnt had for perhaps more than a year. A sort of concentration and accumulation of divine Energy in the cells of the body. During a certain period (I dont remember when), every night I had a kind of recharging of batteries through contact with universal Forces; I had it again two nights ago, spontaneously. Then last night, when I wanted to look, to study, to understand how it worked, I was given a lavish demonstration of the inadequacy and utter uselessness of all processes of consciousness working through the mind. They are useless, they simply spoil the experience.
Previously, when I had an experience, I took great care to keep everything quiet and still so that it wouldnt be interrupted; but afterwards it was always made use of by the mind in its typical way (not exactly typical, but typical to the mind), and this appeared to be inevitable. But now it doesnt work in the same way: its limited to a few inevitable interventions; I mean people speak to me or I to them (I keep as silent as I can, but they still chatter away about every possible subject and I am obliged to answer), and its limited to that. But as it is, even that as soon as I am a bit concentrated, even that seems so not wrong or distorted, not that, but INADEQUATE. It expresses absolutely nothing, thats all I can say.
--
Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the daya mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri), whatever is more or less bound up with Her wants to take part, thats quite natural. And its particularly true for the vital: there has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital Forces, and controlling them. So theres a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in history and now return.
But this one [the tall white Being] is not of human origin; it was not formed in a human life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power. Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of Sri Aurobindos plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think its in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of its an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, its in Perseuswhen she appears to the Sea-God and Forces him to retreat to his own domain. Theres a description there that fits this Being quite well.3
Besides, all the Greek gods are various aspects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way (turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4
--
Did I ever tell you? Last time I went down for the pujas (was it last year or the year before? I remember nothing any more, you know: it all gets swept away, brrt!). Yes, it was the year before last, in 60, after that anniversary.6 (Durga used to come every year, two or three days before the Durga puja.) I was walking as usual and she came; that was when she made her surrender to the Supreme. Those divinities dont have the sense of surrender. Divinities such as Durga and the Greek gods (although the Greek gods are a bit dated now; but the gods of India are still very much alive!). Well, they are embodimentswhat you might almost call localizationsof something eternal, but they lack the sense of surrender to the Supreme. And while I was walking, Durga was therereally, it was beautiful! Durga, with that awesome power of hers, forever bringing the adverse Forces to heel and she surrendered to the Supreme, to the point of no longer even recognizing the adverse Forces: ALL is the Supreme. It was like a widening of her consciousness.
Some interesting things have been happening in that world [since the supramental descent]. How can I explain? Those beings have an independence, an absolute freedom of movement (although at the same time, they are all a single Being), but they had the true sense of perfect Unity only with the supreme Consciousness. And now with this present intervention [Mothers], with this incarnation and the establishment of the Consciousness here, like this (Mother makes a fist in a gesture of immutable solidity), in such an absolute way (I mean there are no fluctuations) HERE, on earth, in the terrestrial atmosphere, this incarnation has a radiating action throughout all those worlds, all those universes, all those Entities. And it results in small events,7 incidents scaled to the size of the earthwhich in themselves are quite interesting.
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, I wasnt sleeping, I was concentrating; and in this concentration, while I was fully enveloped in those Forces, THROUGH THAT you came to me. It was truly fine!
Good. It will come; its a good sign. I was very pleased: Ah, something is happening!
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its plain to see that, left to itself in its full power of transformation and progress, this flame of aspiration, this flame of Agni would have scant consideration for the result of the process the result of the process is that fire burns. And there could be mishaps in the functioning of the organs. All the organs must undergo a transformation, but were it too rapid and too sudden, well, everything would go out of whack. The machine would simply explode. But this Wisdom doesnt come from the universal consciousness (which I dont really think is so wise!), its infinitely higher: the Supreme Wisdom. Something so wonderful! It foresees things the universal Forces in their universal play would overlooka wonder!
(silence)
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse Forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the karma is being exhausted.
The same goes for these little physical movements. Things dont seem to be initiated any more, I mean theyre no longer being generated. But everything thats already present in the world has to be exhausted.
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The feeling is rather one of vibrations gathered together and coagulated somewhere and even at that, theres a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mother makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or etherization. And its limitlesshow could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture)these same vibrations are everywhere, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed concentration organized in a specific way; thats how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that its observing itself, but if something Forces it to observe itself, thats what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body? Havent the cells changed? I dont know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among other separate things thats all gone.
I have tried several times, telling myself, Ah, lets have a good lookis there anything, anywhere, that feels that separation? (I am looking at the body from above.) Theres nothingtruly? Are you one hundred percent spontaneously sincere? Nothing at all? Its impossible to find a thing. Impossible.
0 1962-09-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the middle of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo noted with prophetic force: The defeat of Germany could not of itself kill the spirit then incarnate in Germany; it may well lead merely to a new incarnation of it, perhaps in some other race or empire, and the whole battle would then have to be fought over again. So long as the old gods are alive, the breaking or depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.2 Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked Indias partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each others throats when the question of distribution of power arises. Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the Forces of evil have come to the surface. For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil.
Ahimsa: nonviolence.
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same when I look at people: I dont see them as they see themselves, I see them with the vibration of all the Forces that are in them and pass through them, and quite frequently with the supreme Vibration of the Presence. And thats why my physical sight is not exactly failing, but changing in character, for the physical precision that normal physical sight gives is its false for me. Instinctively (not because I think of it that way), thats how it Is. So I no longer have the precision of a vision designed to see just the superficial crust of things.
But this doesnt keep me from seeing physicallyalthough, yes, it does at times make me unsure of whos in front of me, because I see a vibration that is sometimes very similar, almost identical, in three or four people (who arent all necessarily present, but anyway). So theres a slight external difference theres a very great external difference in the way the form looks, of course, but in the combination of vibrations theres only a slight external difference. And so sometimes I am not sure, I dont know whether its this person or that one; thats why I often ask, Whos there? Its not that I dont see anything, but I dont see in the same way.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Higher up, there is a fourth zone, a zone of colored lights, plays of colored lights. Thats the order: first form, then sound, then ideas, then colored lights. But that zone is already more distant from humanity; it is a zone of Forces, a zone which appears as colored lights. No formscolored lights representing Forces. And one can combine these Forces so that they work in the terrestrial atmosphere and bring about certain events. Its a zone of action, independent of form, sound and thought; it is above all that. A zone of active power and might you can use for a particular purposeif you have the capacity to do so.
Thats the highest zone.
Thus we have form, expressed in painting, sculpture or architecture; sound, expressed in musical themes; and thought, expressed in books, plays, novels, or even in philosophical and other kinds of intellectual theories (thats where you can send out ideas that will affect the whole world, because they influence receptive brains in any land, and are expressed by corresponding thoughts in the appropriate language). And above this zone, free of form, sound and though, is the play of Forces appearing as colored lights. And when you go there and have the power, you can combine those Forces so that they eventually materialize as creations on earth (it takes some time, its rarely immediate).
But those great waves of music you hear, which you said were beyond soundsare they part of that domain of luminous vibrations?
Yes. But its the higher level of the musical zone. Each of these zones contains several levels, and the top of the musical zone is already starting to be waves, waves of vibration. But its still directly related to music, while those colored Forces I am speaking of have to do with terrestrial transformations and actionsgreat actions. They are powers of action. This zone where you hear no sound eventually becomes sounds and music. It is the summit. Each zone contains several levels.
In short, when one rises to that Origin, one finds a single vibration, which can be expressed as music or thought or architectural or pictorial formsis that right?
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day (for me now, everything is part of an extremely precise play of Forces) and one day I had a sort of sensation of one of those profound upheavals something very widespread and full of GREAT pain. So something in me spontaneously sprang up from the individual soul, the deep psychic being, and said, Oh! Lord, is it Your will that we have this experience again? Then everything stabilized, stopped, and there was a splendor of Light. But I received no response. Except for that splendor of Light something triumphant, you know. But it may just as well mean that no matter what happens, this will always be therewhich is obvious.
(silence)
--
Somewhere, in a place which is not here [physically], some place (Mother gestures into the distance behind her being), there is something that keeps very still, somewhere, very still and beyond all the movements of Forces; something seated, as it were, established somewhere, very still and beyond public observation (by public I dont necessarily mean terrestrial, I mean the whole world), something that keeps like this (gesture backwards, eyes closed, motionless as a statue), and DOES NOT WANT IT.
I perceive that very distinctly.
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont forget what Sri Aurobindo saiddeclared (in writing): that in 1967 the supramental Power will be behind all the earths governments. Whether its these people or those or whoever, they will be directly, maybe not consciously, but directly under the influence of the supramental Forces, which will make them do what has to be done. And so, of course, the first result will be a kind of worldwide collaborationhe explicitly told me that, and he wrote it down. Thats what he had seen. But he didnt say we would get there without without catastrophe. He never said that.
Well, mon petit.
0 1962-11-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what I am experiencing in my body nowexactly what you say: each step forward Forces you to make not a step backward, but a step into the Shadow. And on the physical level its terrible.
(silence)
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In order to be discernible, the cube was enveloped in something that looked like a kind of tulle, a tulle made of a pale gray substance, which expressed the individual nonexistence, the perfect humility that completely abolishes the ego: because of that there wasnt the least possibility of egoif you ask me why, I cant say, but thats how it was. And I was seeing that tulle all the time something extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible, yet maintaining the cubes form. It was perfect humility (in the divine sense) and total absence of egothere wasnt even the memory or idea of it, nothing whatever: the abolition of the ego. And it served to receive that immobile immensity which manifested through an action of the Power. And then, the action of the Power. I was conscious (I was consciouswhere was I? I dont know; the cube represented my physical being: I had been TOLD it was my physical being), and I was watching it without being situated I myself had no precise place but could see and understand the whole thing. And I could discern all the action being done through the cube: this action for that thing, this for that, this for that the whole earth (gesture expressing Forces radiating outward, each for a special purpose), things from the past and things FAR into the future.
And it was so imperative!
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A question of aura. The idea is that the Forces accumulate. And she even used to say it was preferable not to wash the robe!
Ideas.
0 1962-12-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious. The supramental light was coming down before November,2 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped.3 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, thats the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary. And the battle seems endless; one digs and digs, said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: I have been digging, digging. Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation. But Agastya doesnt lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: Not in vain is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting Forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings.
(Rig-Veda I.179)
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, Sri Aurobindo was explaining something to me, but the explanation wasn't like a theory: it's immediately translated into movements of matter, that is, movements of forms and Forces. So I was listening (I was listening to him, we were talking), and I turned my head away to follow the demonstration of Forces, of what he said; naturally it led to another movement which was the consequence, and then I described what I was seeing. When I began describing the consequence, I received a reply (it was a sort of dialogue between us, but without different voices and all the things we know physically), but the quality of the vibration was different, it had become ... instead of being supramental, if you like, it had become sattvic [moral], the reply was sattvic. In other words, a diminution, a limitation. I was surprised so I turned back again, and instead of finding Sri Aurobindo, I saw the doctor, with his hair very neatoh, a super-doctor, you know! But it was he, I mean at his best. So immediately I thought, "Here we are! Here is how things get more and more diminishedyes, diminished, altered, altering also physical appearanceshere is how the Lord changes all His physical appearances." Oh, it was really funny, because it was a practical and precise little illustration. But then there was immediately the feeling that everything, the whole universe is like this! That's how all forms are changed.
So now you see!
0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yantram: a ritual drawing used to "capture" Forces.
Showing flowers, landscapes, symbolic photographs, etc.
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday evening (was it yesterday? No, the day before), when I went out on the balcony-terrace,3 the difference in perception between the consciousness I have now and the one I had before felt enormous! Before, as I have always said, I would stay there, call the Lord, be in His presence, and only when He withdrew would I come in again thats how it was. And I had a certain relationship with people, things, the outside world (outside, well, not outsideanyway, the world). The day before yesterday, when I went to the balcony, I wasnt thinking of anything or observing anything, I simply went I didnt want to know what was going on, it didnt interest me, I wasnt observing. The other experience [of the previous balcony, one year ago] seemed to go back centuries! It was so much OTHER! And so spontaneous, so natural, and so immense too! The earth was tiny. Yet it was very much here: I wasnt over there, the BODY itself was feeling that way. And at the same time (I was two floors above people), every time I looked, I recognized scores and scores of people, they seemed to leap to my eyesa crystal clear vision, much sharper (the vision I had before was always a bit hazy because what I saw wasnt entirely physical: I saw the movement of Forces), and yesterday, it was as if as if I had risen above the very possibility of haziness! It was far less physicalFAR MORE accurate.4
Formerly too, I used to sense the Force, the Consciousness, the Power concentrated in a particular point and then spreading out. While here, there was an IMMENSITY of Power, of Light, of Consciousness, of perception, concentrated in a tiny point: the people gathered there.
0 1963-03-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it happened the same way every time.1 But it may take years to turn into a conscious power. And IN THE PRESENT CASE, the conscious power would mean the power to give or prevent death equally; to effect the necessary movement of Forcesalmost almost an action on the cells, a mechanical action on the cells. With that power, you can give death, you can prevent death.
But there is NO LONGER any of that sensation people have of a brutal clash between life and its opposite, deathdeath is not the opposite of life! At that moment I understood, and I never forgot: death is NOT the opposite of life, it is not the opposite of life.2
Its a sort of change in the cells functioning,3 or in their organization. When I say all this now, I try to pull back a deep-buried memory. But thats the point. Once you have understood that (all that you understand, you can do), once youve understood that, you can do it. Then its very simple: you can easily stop the thing from going this way or that way; you can go like that or like this or like that (Mother seems to handle Forces or shift the position of the consciousness). Then it almost becomes childs play to make someone die or make someone live! But that is better left unsaid.
But it will surely come! In how many years, I dont know, but the thing has become plain. And to me (as I said the other day), to me it seemed quite a central secretnot the most central of all, no, but fairly central with regard to life on earth.
0 1963-03-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I thought: now, Sri Aurobindo, its quite clear; for him, the goal was Perfection. Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would comemust comein stages. He announced something the realization of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages. And I saw that what I find essential, indispensable (everything is there, everything finds a place, yet there is a kind of anguishnot a personal anguish but a terrestrial anguish), is Security. A need for Securitywhatever you attempt, whatever you seek, even Love, even Perfection, it needs Security. Nothing can be achieved with the feeling that all opposing Forces can come and sweep everything away. We must find the point where nothing can be touched or destroyed or halted. Therefore, its Security, the very essence of Security. So I wrote:
Sri Aurobindo promised Perfection
0 1963-03-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a sort of review going on of all the elements of the body consciousness, with a sample of the circumstances of their various manifestations or expressions. All this is passed before me as if to show me all the points in the bodys cells that were contrary to or unprepared for the reception of the divine Forces. All that comes up in the form of lived memoriesthings I had more than forgotten (I could have sworn they no longer existed), but which come back. Un-be-liev-able. And its not an egos or a persons memory, but the memory of a force in motion in the general vibrations. So I see fantastic things!
But its erased immediately; as soon as I wake up, my first movement (gesture of offering) is to present it all to the Lord: the cause, the effect, the image, the sensationeverything. When its all seen, I tell Him, Now its Yours. And then I forgetfortunately, thank God!
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am conscious of the body, but it isnt the consciousness of this body (Mother touches her body): its the consciousness of THE Body it may be anyones body. I am conscious, for instance, of vibrations of disorder (most often they come in the form of suggestions of disorder) in order to see whether they are accepted and have an effect. Lets take the example of a suggestion of hemorrhage, or some such suggestion (I mention hemorrhage because it will soon come into the picture). Under the higher Influence, the body consciousness rejects it. Then begins the battle (all this takes place all the way down in the cells, in the material consciousness) between what we could call the will for hemorrhage, for example, and the reaction of the bodys cells. But its very like a real battle, a real confrontation. And all of a sudden, theres something like a general issuing a comm and and saying, Whats this! You understand, that general is conscious of the higher Forces, the higher realities and the divine intervention in Matter; and after trying to use the will, this reaction, that feeling of peace and so on, suddenly he is SEIZED by a very strong determination and issues a commandin no time the effect begins to make itself felt, and little by little everything returns to order.
All this takes place in the material consciousness. Physically, the body has all the sensations but not the hemorrhage, you understand. But it does have the sensations, that is, the effects: all the sensory effects. It goes on for a while and then follows a whole curve. All right. Once the battle is over, I take a look and wonder (I observe the whole thing, I see my body, which has been fairly shaken, mind you), I say to myself, What in the world is all this? But just for a second, then I forget about it.
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is evidently a twofold movement: on one hand, something that tries to draw less and less the attention and concentration of others, that is, to lessen the sense of intermediary necessary for Forces and thoughts to spread (more and more there is an attempt to undo that1), and on the other hand, an increaseat times prodigious, staggeringof power. Now and then (seldom, and I must say I dont at all try to make it happen more often), now and then, for a minutenot even a minute: a few secondscomes a sense of absolute Power; but immediately it is covered over, veiled. The effect at a distance is becoming greater and greater, but that is not the result of a conscious will I mean there is no attempt to have more power, none at all. Now and then, theres the observation (a very amusing observation, sometimes) that for a moment (but its a matter of seconds), the Power is absolute, and then the usual hodgepodge takes over again.
The effect on others is increasing considerably, though it too isnt the result of an attempt in that direction, not at all: those things are automatic. Yet, as I said, at certain seconds, there rises something that wills. Wills, but not in the ordinary way: something that its between knowing, seeing and willing. A little something that has something of all three and is as hard as diamond (oh, how can I explain it? I dont know, there are no words for it), it has something of the emotive vibration, but thats not it; it has nothing to do with anything intellectual, nothing at all; its neither intellectual vision nor supramental knowledge, thats not it, its something else. It is a diamondlike, live forcelive, living. And thats all-powerful. But extremely fleetingit immediately gets covered over by a heap of things, like visions, supramental vision, understanding, discernmentall this has become a constant mass, you understand.
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Mother means the perception of herself as a radiating center for the higher Forces. Mother commented on this passage later, on May 29 (see under that date).
In the next conversation, Mother clarified: "It isn't a movement or a vibration.... To put it accurately, one should say 'this something.'"
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You suffer from, say, a physical trouble, purely physical (morally speaking, it goes without saying, the thing is quite clear; I mean something purely material). Something is disorganized in the working or the structure of the organs. The result is pain. At first you endure, then out of endurance comes perfect equality, and out of perfect equality comes ecstasyits perfectly possible; its not only possible, it has been proved. But the experiment should be carried through TO THE END to know whether ecstasy has the power to restore the bodys order, or whether it ends in dissolution: you are in ecstasy and die in ecstasy. That is, you leave your body while in ecstasy. Is that so? Its not only possible, its perfectly obvious. But thats not what we want! We want to restore order, to eliminate disorder IN MATTERdoes ecstasy have the power to restore order in the physical working and triumph over the Forces of dissolution?
The only way to find out is to make the experiment!
0 1963-05-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like a clarification on a passage from a previous conversation [of May 3], in which you said: Something tries to draw less and less the attention and concentration of others. And you added: That is, to lessen the SENSE OF INTERMEDIARY necessary for Forces and thoughts to spread. What is this sense of intermediary? Do you mean your role of intermediary in the diffusion of Forces? Do you want to lessen that roleto withdraw?
It isnt role! The role is a fact, a sort of ineluctable fact, absolutely independent of the individual will and consciousness I am more and more convinced of it, fantastically so. The Work is done through a certain number of elementswhe ther they are aware of it or not, whether they collaborate or not makes little difference. It has been decided that way, it has been chosen that way and it is done that way. Whether you like it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you collaborate or notvery little difference. Its more a question of personal satisfaction!
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was yesterday, I think, in the night (not last night, the night before, the 6th of June, that is), for more than three hours without stop, there was no consciousness of anything any morenot a thought, not a will, not an action, not an observation, nothing. Everything was at a standstill. For instance, all that happens when you have experiences and you work in the subconscientall that, everything, everything was at a standstill. It was like the action of a Force. Without any thought or idea, only the sensation and a sort of perception (awareness is the right word) of a Force, but a stupendous Force, you know, like the Force of the earthall the combinations of the Forces along with an action that came from above and worked on them. It was going through me (especially around the head down to the chest, but it was going on in the whole body, and it was spherical), it went through me and out, and out, and out in this direction, that direction, another direction, innumerable directions, and nothing but movements of Force (there was something like a perception of colors, but not in the ordinary way: like a knowledge that certain vibrations corresponded to a particular color), but it was an incalculable MASS, almost indefinite, at any rate, and simultaneous. At first I said to myself (laughing), Whats going on? Then I thought, All right, it doesnt matter, Ill just let it happen. And it went on and on and onthree hours without letup.
I didnt know I didnt know anything any more, didnt understand anything any more, had no bearings any more; there was only a Force on the move, and what Force! It was a Force that came from beyond and acted upon all the Forces of the earth: on big things, on small things, on small, precise points, on enormous things, and it was going on and on and on, on this point, that point, all points together and everywhere. I suppose that if the mind had been associated with the experience, it would have gone a bit mad! It gave that impression, you see, because it was so overwhelming that And all the time, all the time in the physical center (the physical center, that is, in the corporeal base), with something in an ecstatic state; it was very interesting how that ecstasyan ecstasy that sparkled like a diamondwas there, so sweet, so sweet, so peaceful, as though it were there all the while, telling the body, Dont be afraid, (laughing) dont worry, dont be afraid, all is well. As though the supreme Power were saying all the while, Dont worry, dont worry, leave it to me, leave it to me. It lasted more than three hours.
I wondered, What will my condition be like when I get up? Completely dazed, or what?Very quiet, nothing different, with only a sort of something that was smiling and saying, Oh, so things CAN be that way.
The mind was absolutely silent, absolutely: all the connections with all that people keep sending from everywhere were cutall of it was completely gone. There were only the universal Forces in action, with something that came from above and impregnated them all, sent them all out. And with it, a pointit was like a point in that immensitya sparkling point, absolutely ecstatic, in such a peace! An extraordinary ecstasy, which was deliberately saying, Dont worry; you can see whats going on, cant you, so dont worry, dont worry, because certainly the thing had gone beyond all possible individual proportions.
Its the first time. Ive had currents of force, Ive had actions on the earth, Ive had Forces coming to me, all sorts of things; but this was different: it was all of that together. It was everywhere at the same time, everything at the same time, with that Inrush, and it was There was certainly something that wanted me to be very quiet and not to worry. It was necessary that I should keep very quiet.
I had a feeling that I was given the awareness of something thats taking place right now. Because at night, generally, I disconnect myself from everything and universalize myselfno, universalize isnt the word: I identify myself with the Lord. Thats my way of resting. I do it every night, it is the time when I have my deep rest. But now Ive been made aware of this Force at work. Often experiences come (there have been a number of them lately), but its the first time this one has come, because It was certainly something happening FOR the earth; but it didnt come from the center of Forces that generally acts on the earth. It wasnt the usual working of Forces on the earth. It was something happening. And it gave the sense that the earth was very small the movement was towards the earth, it was for the earth, but the earth was very small.
Very small.
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But are they new Forces, or is it something going on habitually? Is it a new work on the earth, or is it that you have seen something that goes on habitually but of which you were unaware previously?
I wondered. But the question isnt put correctly. It is something eternal which, because of what happened at that time (not at that minute, because, as I said, it must have been going on long before and long afterwards) it has become something new, for that reason, BECAUSE of what happened.1 Coming back to all the things we know, we could say (but thats the usual idle talk) that it is something newly manifested.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But those who do not have that experience (its not a question of words, its a question of experience), those who do not have that experience, were they to have that half-knowledge, the knowledge that we live in Ignorance, that we live in Ignorance with a sort of incapacity to get outThere is no way out, no way to get outand that human wisdom is like that little old man who comes and tells you, But why should you want to get out? Why should you thats the way things are, just the way things are. Its appalling. I felt, you know, like when you concentrate Forces to the bursting point, as they do with their bombs; it was exactly like that: so concentrated, so overwhelming that I felt as if everything were about to burst. So much so that it would be utterly impossible for humanity to live with the awareness of the state it is in, if, at the same time, there werent the key to get out (the key hasnt been found yet), or the assurance that we will get out.
Im not speaking of things of the higher mind, because there the key to the way out was found long ago, a long time ago: I mean down below, in the material world the material world. Thats why all those people, like the old man last night, go somewhere elseits all the same to them, why should they bother! Why do you want to change that? And dont try to give light here, its no use and in addition its a nuisance. Leave this Ignorance in peace.
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But maybe The very fact that I met him (he may have been already thinking of becoming Pope, I dont know), but anyway, long before anyone except him thought of it, the fact that I met him while seeing to certain terrestrial arrangements shows that, probably unconsciously (I told you right away: I dont think he is conscious in his body), he is nevertheless under the influence, if not the control, of the higher Forces.
Why is my attention drawn all of a sudden in that direction? Generally, I am not interested in all those things. For the action, I am concerned only with the little field of experience I have been given, and my terrestrial action is of quite another nature; its on a higher plane, very independent of individuals.
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Some people (or if you like, some beings, or Forces, or consciousnesses) in order to progress need to give themselves, to merge, and in total self-annihilation, they attain Realization; for others the path is diametrically opposite: its a growth, a domination, an expansion which assumes fantastic proportions until the separation disappearsit can no longer exist.
Some prefer this path, others prefer that one but when we reach the end, it will all meet.
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Fear is not a negative thing: its a very positive thing, its a special form of power that has always been used by the Asuric Forcesits their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is fear.
I can see: whenever people are defeated, its ALWAYS through fear, always.
0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive seen thousands of cases, you know, but its the first time Ive seen that! And he had a remarkable knowledge, because in order not to risk any hitch, he clung to his son and urged him to come to me so as to make sure of reaching me without mishap, without any interference from the adverse Forces, from currents and all sorts of things. He clung to his son, who was quite unaware of it, except that something in him WANTED him to come to me. And the poor son was crying; I told him, Dont worry, he is very happy! (Mother laughs)
And lovely! A lovely thing. The sight of it filled me with joyso happy, so happy, he seemed to be saying, At last I am with you! I wont budge now, no one can take me away. This small.
0 1963-07-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And now the body KNOWS (in the beginning it didnt, it thought it was attacks from the outside, adverse Forces; and it can always be explained like that, it was true in a certain way, but it wasnt the true truth, the deepest truth), now the body KNOWS where it all comes from, and its so marvelous! A marvel of wisdom. It puts everything in its place, it makes you REALIZE that all that play of the adverse Forces is a way of seeing things (a necessary way at a given time, maybeby necessary, I mean practical), but its still an illusion; illnesses are a necessary way of seeing things to enable you to resist properly, to fight properly, but its still an illusion. And now, the BODY itself knows all thisas long as it was only the mind that knew it, it was a remote notion in the realm of ideas, but now the body itself knows it. And it is full not only of goodwill but also of an infinite gratitudeit always wonders (thats its first movement), Do I have the capacity? And it always gets the same answer, It isnt YOUR capacity. Will I have the strength?It isnt YOUR strength. Even that sense of infirmity disappears in the joy of infinite gratitude the thing is done with such goodness, such insight, such thoughtfulness, such care to maintain, as far as possible, a progressive balance.
It came with a certitude, an OBVIOUSNESS: this is the process of transformation.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last experience (which Ive had these last few days), in which apparently there was a hitch (it wasnt really one) was a sort of demonstration. I told you what it was, you remember: its like a purge of all the vibrations that are false vibrations, that arent the pure and simple response to the supreme Influence (all that in the cells still responds to the vibrations of falsehood, either from habit or from the people around or the food takenfifty thousand things). Then, with an aspiration or a decision, almost a prayer for purification coming from the body, something happens which, naturally, upsets the balance; the imbalance in turn brings about a general discomfort. The form discomfort takes is habitually the same: first, pains and all kinds of sensations I need not describe; if that state goes on developing, if it is allowed to assume its full proportions, it results in the past it resulted in a faint. But this time, I followed the process for about two hours from the moment I got up: the struggle between the new balance, the new Influence that was getting established, and the resistance of all the existing elements forced to go away. That created a sort of conflict. The consciousness remained very clear the consciousness of the BODY remained very clear, very quiet, perfectly trusting. So for two hours I was able to follow the process (while going on with all my usual activities, without changing anything), until I felt, or rather was told sufficiently clearly that the Lord wanted my body to be completely immobile for a while so that He might complete His work. But I am not all alone: there are other people here to help me and watch over everything (but I dont say or explain anything to them, those are things I dont talk about I dont say what goes on, I dont say anything), so I sat there wondering, Is it really and truly indispensable? (Mother laughs) Then I felt the Lord exert a little more pressure, which heightened the intensity of the conflict, so that I had all the signs of fainting I understood (!) I stood up, let my body moan a little to make it plain it didnt feel too well (!) and I stretched out. Then I was immobile, and in that immobility, I saw the work that was being donea work that cannot be done if you go on moving about. I saw the work. It took nearly half an hour; in half an hour it was over. Which means there is really there is a fact I cannot doubt, even if all the surrounding thoughts and Forces contradict it: I cannot doubt that the consciousness is increasing more and more the consciousness in the body. It is growing more and more precise, luminous, exactQUIETvery peaceful. Yet very conscious of a TREMENDOUS battle against millennial habits. Do you follow?
When it was over, I saw that even physically, bodily, there is a strength: the result is an increased strength. A very clearly increased strength.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As though the entanglement of Forces, of consciousnesses and movements grew clearer and clearer, more and more complete, very, very precise. And very simple too.
Very simple.
0 1963-09-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the standpoint of a higher receptivity, it has a very, very considerable importance I mean receptivity to the new Forces, a preparation to receive the new Forces.
(silence)
0 1963-09-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, the adverse Forces always make all sorts of suggestions. I was told that I will lose the use of speech(laughing) thatll be all the better for everyone!
(Satprem does not seem too appreciative)
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time a new truth has attempted to manifest upon earth, it has been immediately attacked, corrupted and diverted by pseudo-spiritual Forceswhich did represent a certain spirituality at a given time, but precisely the one that the new truth wants to go beyond. To give but one example of those sad spiritual diversions which clutter History, Buddhism was largely corrupted in a sizable part of Asia by a whole Tantric and magic Buddhism. The falsity lies not in the old spirituality which the new truth seeks to go beyond, but in the eternal fact that the Past clings to its powers, its means and its rule. As Mother said in her simple language, Whats wrong is to remain stuck there. And Sri Aurobindo with his ever-present humor: The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past. We could expect the phenomenon to recur today. In India, Tantrism represents a powerful discipline from the Past and it was inevitable that Mother should experience the better and the worse of that system in her attempt to transform all the means and elements of the old earththis Agenda has made abundant mention of a certain X, symbol of Tantrism. Now, as it happens, we are witnessing the same phenomenon of diversion, and today this same Tantrism is seeking to divert the new truth by convincing as many adepts as possible not to say Mothers Mantra, which is too advanced for ordinary mortals, and to say Tantric mantras in its stead. This is purely and simply an attempt to take Mothers place. One has to be quite ignorant of the mechanism of Forces not to understand that saying a mantra of the old gods puts you under the influence and into the orbit of precisely that which resists the new truth. Mother had foreseen the phenomenon and forewarned me in the following conversation. Unfortunately, until recently, I always wanted to believe that Tantrism would be converted. Nothing of the sort. It is attempting to take Mothers place and lead astray those who are not sincere enough to want ONE SINGLE THING: the new world.
***
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You see, what I do is this: the thing comes, its taken up, presented (gesture to the Heights) as though it were mine: But look, see how I am (but its the Ithe great I), its presented to the Lord, very humbly, with the sense and feeling of complete helplessness I simply say, Here, change it. The feeling that only He can do it, that everything that people have tried everywhere appears childisheverything appears to be childish. The most sublime intelligence seems to me childish. All the attempts that are made to enlighten, organize, educate mankind, to awaken it to a higher consciousness, to give it mastery over Nature and its Forces, all of itall of it, which for a human vision is sometimes utterly sublime, seems absolutely like children playing and having fun in a nursery. And children who love dangerous games, who believe TERRIBLY in what they do (as do children, naturally). I have never met more serious and stern a justice than the justice children have in their games. They really take life seriously. Well, thats exactly the impression it makes on me: the impression of a mankind in infancy which takes what it does with ferocious seriousness. And which will never get out of itit will never get out of it, it lacks the little something (which may be really nothing at all), a very little something thanks to which ah, everything becomes clear and organizedall that comes from mankind always BORDERS on Truth.
So the only thing I can do is this (gesture of presenting): Look, Lord, see how ignorant and powerless we are, how utterly stupid we areits up to You to change it. How do you change it? You cant even imagine the change, you cant even do that. So all my time (same gesture)not from time to time: constantly, day and night, without letup, day and night without letup. If for an interval of one or two minutes this isnt done, there is something that catches up: Oh, all that time wasted! And if I take a close look at what happened, then I see; I see that for these few minutes, I was blissful in the Lord, letting myself live blissfully in the Lord; so I no longer presented things to Himit happens two or three times a day. A relaxation, you know, you let yourself flow blissfully in the Lord. And its so natural and spontaneous that I dont even notice it; I notice it when I resume my attitude (same gesture to the Heights) of transferring everything to the Lord every minute.
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Things are increasingly AS THEY ARE: exact, without complications. I have noticed that with people, even the most sincere and straightforward, there is always a kind of coating, an emotive coating (even with the coldest and driest), something that belongs to the vital; an emotive coating that makes things fuzzy, uncertain and allows a game that gives them a feeling of all sorts of mysterious Forces at playthings are very clear, very simple, very, oh, very simple, and that coating brings along a sort of confusion. Its not sentiment, not emotion either, its something something that LOVES uncertainty, the unknown, the unexpectednot positively chance (its not so strong), but which loves to live in that, in in fact, in Ignorance! Which loves not to know whats going to happen. Even the simplest things, the most obvious, have all that coating over them.
Look, for instance, how many people, even the most serious, love to have their fortune told: reading the hand, reading the handwriting (I am pestered with people who ask me things like that), but anyway, even regardless of any spiritual idea, that sort of interest people find in being told, See, your life line will last up to here. People love it! They love it, they love to remain in their uncertainty. They love their ignorance. They love that unknown the unknown full of mysteries. They love the prophet who comes and tell them, This is what you will do. This is what is going to happen to you. It seems so childish! Its the same as the taste for theater, its the same thing (not the playwright, but the spectator who watches the play without knowing how it will end), or again the taste for novels the taste for the unknown. But then thats very close to the taste for the marvelous.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So how many HOW MANY consciousnesses must there be, what quantity, if we may say (intensity, there is: off and on it shines like stars), what is the mass of consciousnesses necessary to enable this new world to come down on earth? Otherwise, what would happen to it? It would be swallowed up. Like in 60, when I saw the supramental Forces descend (mon petit, what a sight it was! They were descending, it was stupendous, marvelous; they were like torrents, you felt as though they were going to inundate everything), and then, from below, there rose up great, dark blue masses like this, and they went vroof! (gesture of engulfing) And everything was swallowed up.
So it would be the same thing PHYSICALLY, you understand.
0 1963-12-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was in the Subconscient a frightful battle in the night from the 8th to the 9thoh! It was like a return of the attack on me when you went to Rameswaram (long ago1); X said it was a Tantric who had made that formation (it happened on December 9 too and I was very sick, I didnt go out). Well, it was an attack of that kind. I dont know if it comes from the same I cant say person, but from the same origin of Forces. And very violent, during the night. It went on during the meditation on the 9th: for the first time during those meditations, there was a tremendous battle, in the Subconscient. And the body was in a state a not too happy state. It stops the heart, you see, so it was unpleasant.
But afterwards, I saw that it did dislodge something, it wasnt useless. It dislodged something. But its Forces with a radical ill will: they are not merely ignoranta radical ill will.
But it didnt have a human origin, did it? It wasnt from a human individual?
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that toy that makes images when it is turned? A kaleidoscope. All the little pieces arrange themselves to form patterns theres a lot of that in the way Forces organize themselves and play.
What I told you last time is still going on and intensifying. But sometimes, at a given moment, a movement comes to me, some reaction, for instance, and something complains (all this is in the BODYs consciousness), the body says, Oh, I havent got beyond that, what a wretched shame! So immediately, there is an answer, and an answer which Its odd, it doesnt come from one place, it comes from everywhere; and the bodys protest also doesnt come from one place: it isnt ONE thing or ONE body that protests, its a way of being; a terrestrial way of being which is expressed by: Oh, I am still like that! And the immediate answer: But dont you see, dont you see the usefulness of it? Then I am shown a whole tangled web of movements, vibrations, reactions, actions, all of it; and on one small spot there is a need for a small force: there is a small, slightly inert thing which serves as a support for something else and then everything becomes clear, everything falls into place! You see so clearly it is egoism; egoism which wants personal, individual perfection: instead of wanting overall progress, it wants personal progress, it still makes breaks where there are none, separations where they do not exist. And you see how a movement going through [Mother] should be accepted when that is its place and when it is the right time for it to be useful, so that the WHOLE may follow its roadits very, very interesting.
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The way the world is now physically organized, with the difference and specialization in the forms, in sexes, encourages a kind of opposition between the two poles, the union of which results in creation. So, naturally, each pole has enormous difficulty understanding the other (although it thinks and believes it does), especially understanding the pole I place underneath (gesture signifying the basis of the world), which is the effectively creative pole, that is to say, what is expressed by woman. She feels very well that without this (gesture above) the full understanding isnt there; but this, which is above, doesnt AT ALL understand the creative power of that which is belowit knows it in principle, but doesnt understand it. And there is a lack of adaptation, a sort of conflict, which shouldnt exist. It never existedneverbetween Sri Aurobindo and me, but I could see it didnt exist because he had adopted the attitude of complete surrender to the eternal Mother (the stage, in the creation, of complete surrender). I would see it, and it embarrassed me! It embarrassed me, I thought, But why does he think he has to do that (laughing), as if I couldnt understand! On the contrary, I thirst for the other attitude for identifying myself this way instead of that way (Mother presses her fist upward against her hand above): for identifying myself from below upward instead of from above downward. It was an aspiration, which has been there almost for eternities for the universal creative Force to identify itself with the Creator. And to identify itself not through the descent of the Creator, but through the ascent of the Force the conscious ascent. But Sri Aurobindo willed it that way, so it was that way and then I was very busy with my work. For the thirty years we lived together, it went on that way, perfectly smoothly; and I kept my aspiration quiet because I knew that it was his will. But since he left and I was obliged to do his work, so to speak, things have changed. But I didnt in the least want the Creator, because of my taking up the work, to be obliged to adapt himself to the creative Force (that wont do at all!), and my whole aspiration has been for the creative Force to consciously BECOME the Creator. Its becoming increasingly that way. And at the last meeting [with Sri Aurobindo], for a time (not the whole time, but some time), it was that way. Then I understood; it made me understand the play of all the Forces in the two elements the two polesand how they could be joined, through what process that opposition could disappear so that the total Being might exist.
Were on the way. And its growing clearer and clearer. It will be tremendously interesting. But thats for later on.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I simply found a sentence and I thought, This is just right for Satprem. You understand, I feel it, I know those things, because I feel which Force or Power is actingwhen I am with one person or another, there is always something that is the witness and watches the play of Forces, and it is this observation that lets me know. If I am asked, Who is it?I know because of this.
***
--
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mothers eternal Forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha6 and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
Ganapati, or Ganesh: the son of the supreme Mother, god of material knowledge and wealth. He is represented with an elephant's head.
0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a curious transitional state in the most material consciousness, the body consciousness. A transition from the state of subjugation, of helplessness, in which one is constantly at the mercy of Forces, vibrations, unexpected movements, all sorts of impulsesto the Power. The Power that asserts and realizes itself. Its the transition between the two; and there is almost a swarm of experiences of all types, from the most mental part of that consciousness down to the darkest, most material part.
And when I want to say something, there immediately comes from all corners a swarm of things that want to be said and rush in all at the same timewhich, naturally, prevents me from speaking.
0 1964-01-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The solution is, of course, the change of consciousness. I know those other people [in Pakistan] behaved badly, like animalseven animals are better than human beings but if people here also do the same, they would be playing in the hands of the Forces that make people do evil and would only streng then the hold of these Forces. Retaliation like this is no remedy.
(B.) People there feel frustrated, they see no remedy, do not know which way to go, whom to look up to. They are going the wrong way, following the wrong lead. Isnt the division of the country responsible for much of these troubles?
0 1964-04-08, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On top of this, there are lots of adverse Forces, of adverse suggestions (some made of ignorance, others of ill will) that come and harass. I dont believe themit doesnt believe them, but it doesnt have the assurance that would allow it to laugh in their face. It doesnt believe them, but
Theres one thing, you know, which is so difficult (Mother has a spasm in her throat), so difficult, its that Sri Aurobindo left. Thats at the root of everything. Before, my body wasnt like this; before, nothing in me was like this: there was an absolute certitude. That, you know, it was a collapse.
It clearly came to teach something that could never had been learned before. But its always on this that the adverse Forces base themselvesalways. All the adverse suggestions, all the adverse Forces, all the ill will, all the disbeliefits all based on this: Yes, but HE left.
And I know I know in my deeper consciousness that he left because he WILLED to leave. He left because he decided that it should be so, that it was the thing that had to be done.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the method exactly: to broaden your receptivity indefinitely and depend on the Forces that circulate constantly in the world, so that only the most physical materiality is dependent on food and sleep. Because even what you eat feeds you differently according to your receptivity, your inner attitude; there is a capacity for extracting the Force from things, which can be gained from a broadening of the receptivity.
He CAN do that, he can.
--
Its extremely interesting, because its becoming absolutely concrete. It isnt a thought, it isnt an idea, its absolutely concrete: all, but all the contacts with people are simply vibrations. There isnt this person or that person, thats not it: its nothing but vibrations, with places or moments of concentration, others of broadening and diffusion. And whats extremely interesting is that constant mass, in constant motion, of vibrations of all kinds: of falsehood, disorder, violence, complication. Then, within that mass, there is a rain, as it were, but a very consciously directed rain, of vibrations of Light, Order, Harmony, which enter that (Mother draws movements of Forces), and it all resists, it all works. Its something that lives untrammeled, constantly, everywhere, every second, and in a consciousness if I use the word love, it wont be understood, because Thats what is everywhere, constantly, eternally and immutably; nothing exists but by That and in Thatin fact, only That exists essentially. And within that mass, there is a sort of strugglewhich isnt a struggle because theres no sense of struggle, but an effort against a resistance, an effort so that Order and Harmony and, naturally, eventually Love (but thats for later) overcome the disorder and confusion. And in that Order (that essentially true Order), the greatest contradiction is precisely Falsehood. But those are all vibrations. Theyre not individual wills or individual consciousnesses: within one individual aggregate, you find the whole range, and not only the whole range, but it changes constantly: the proportion of the vibrations changes; only the appearance remains what it was, but thats very superficial.
This experience is becoming so constant, so constant thats its difficult for me to adapt myself to the ordinary perception.
0 1964-07-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When things happen in that way, I always take them as organized by the Divine for the general progress. Rarely does there come a precise indication: No. When its no, its categorical. But I always see (Mother draws in the air movements of Forces) that things move with a very supple movement: they seem to be heading here (gesture to the left), but its in order to go there (gesture to the right); they seem to be going this way (curve to the right), but its in order to get there (gesture to the left)all the time.
***
0 1964-07-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But from the beginning, Ive seen that he couldnt be cured, because he doesnt really have faith. He has a sort of diluted knowledge that there are Forces behind the material Forces, but still, for him, the concrete reality is Matter and its mechanism, and so remedies must be mechanical. Because I tried to cure him several times, but there was no receptivity, nonelike a stone, you know.
Maybe it will be better now?
0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has sent me his usual message: its a sort of picture with all the colors. You know that Tantrism attributes a value to each color; they make a sort of play of Forces with all those colors, depending on what they want to say or express theyre lights, very brightly colored lights. Its very particular; the first time I saw that, it was connected with Tantrism. And the other day there came to me (in a slightly ironical tone) a very beautiful picture, this big (gesture: about six inches by twelve). So I knew it was coming from him and that he was happy!
***
0 1964-08-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had the experience (I knew what it was, but I didnt know the consequences or how to express it), I had the experience of my body consciousness going completely out of the body (that must be what happens when one dies, mustnt it?), and for apparently for ten or fifteen minutes, I dont know, it was over, the physical world no longer existed, the body no longer existed. But I was very conscious of a movement of Forces and of an action; that corporeal consciousness was even repeating its mantra, that was very interesting: it was repeating its mantra and watching the effect of the mantra on the vibrations of Forces. But the consciousness left the body over there (gesture to the bathroom) and came back into it here (on the bed). I was carried.. and what happened between the two, I dont know. But when you reenter your body (that is, when the most material part of the consciousness has left the body, when you faint or go into a state of cataleptic trance, and then reenter your body), its very painful, very painfulall the nerves hurt. So then, suddenly, I felt a lot of pain like that (it lasts two seconds, thats nothing), and then I felt that I was lying on cushions! (Laughing) My last impression was of standing over there!
Its the first time in my life that has happened. Always, whenever I fainted, I would remain conscious of what was happening to my body; often, I would even see it I would see it lying on the floor, for instance; but I would remain conscious. This is the first time.
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a domain in which disease and cure no longer exist, but only disorder, confusion, and harmony, organization. A domain in which everything, but everything that takes place in the body works in that way, and necessarily, first of all, everything that involves the functioning of the organs themselves (disorder in the organs themselves). And there, there is a whole way of seeing things that leads you very close to the Truth. There remain only the diseases that come from outside, like diseases that are contagious through germs, microbes, bacilli, all that business, viruses thats still under the aspect of attacks from adverse Forces, its another plane of action. But there is a point where it all meets. I would like, oh, I would very much like to discuss certain things or certain details of the bodys functioning and organization with a man who thoroughly knows anatomy, biology, physical and bodily chemistryall those things thoroughly and who UNDERSTANDS, who is ready to understand that all those things are a projection of other Forces, subtler Forces; who is able to feel things as I feel them in my own body. That would be very interesting.2
(silence)
--
Mother is led to carry out all kinds of experiments in her body for the work of Transformation. One of them consists in receiving or taking upon oneself every possible disorder for several hours, several days or several minutes, in one's body, in order to act on them, and, consequently, to act on disorders of the same nature in the worldor on THE Disorder. Mother is thus constantly led to work on the meeting point between the subtle Forces behind and the bodily or material mechanisms. In her body it is an uncommon chemistry that takes place, the subtle elements of which she knows better than the gross ones.
***
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
W has come back from his Tantric courseafter having fallen ill! It seems X gave him a new mantra, which must be repeated in three periods of several lakhs each, and he told him, So far, none of those to whom I have given this mantra have been able to reach the end. And he warned him, You will be attacked in your thought, your feelings and your body. Sure enough, W got a fever, a sort of discomfort all over, and all kinds of suggestions that sprang up from below. I must say it left me pensive. To go and do battle with the adverse Forces in their own domain, to provoke them, is indeed a peculiar method. I told W (and in any case Ill see to it that the other two periods dont go the same way) that I would keep those gentlemen at a distance.
To go and seek them out in their own place, on their own ground, and fight them seems to me
--
It had rather seemed to me that they should be kept at a distance. With Thon, the adverse Forces and hostile beings were often mentioned, they occupied a big place in self-development and in action. As for Sri Aurobindo, he used to say that that notion was useful mostly from the psychological and personal standpoint, because struggling with difficulties is easier when you see them as coming from outside, as an attack from outside, than if you think they are part of your own nature. Not that he denied their existence, far from it, but the path depends a lot on the attitude you take and on the mental construction you have, naturally.
Sri Aurobindo insisted rather on Oneness: he used to say that even what we consider to be the worst adversaries are still a form of the Supreme, which, deliberately or not, consciously or not, helps in the general transformation. This seems to me vaster, deeper, more comprehensive.
And I tried to base action on this rather than on constant battle with opposing Forces. Because, granted this idea, it makes sense that if you make the necessary progress, if you have the divine knowledge and consciousness, the very purpose of those Forces disappears, and consequently they cant stay.
On the practical level, I have seen obvious examples of this; it was even my great argument with Durga (I told you, didnt I, that she used to come at the time of the pujas and that, two years ago, she surrendered), that was my great argument, I said to her, But the purpose of your existence in this formin this form of combative actionwould disappear if through identification you obtained the powers that render those Forces unnecessary. And its after I told her these things that she surrendered to the supreme Will; she said, I shall do what the Supreme wants me to do.
It was a very interesting result indeed.
0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And whats almost fantastic is that a whole ARMY OF ADVERSE Forces WERE REDUCED TO SILENCEimmediately. And the atmosphere was clarified, relieved.
Then, taking a good look, I understood that it is that mixture in peoples thoughts, in peoples feelings, in their approach to spiritual life, which is catastrophic they always want something, they always demand something, they always expect something. In fact, its a perpetual bargaining. Its not the need to give yourself, not the need to melt into the Divine, to disappear into the Divineno: they try to take, to obtain what they want.
--
But how is your renouncing or your having no powers sufficient to sweep the adverse Forces away?
No, its the fact that I ANNOUNCED it.
--
But there was a whole mass of adverse Forces (I saw all sorts of things, I dont want to go into details) that were trying to PREVENT me from declaring it. And I had to make an effort (Mother makes a gesture of driving back an obstructing mass) not an effort to fight, but an effort to overcome something, as when you are hemmed in, an effort to break a shell so as to be able to proclaim it. And the minute I did that, the minute I took my paper and started writingpfft! it all went, as if swept away! That, yes, that I understand! Thats the Lords Power. No intermediate power can do thatit was a splendor, you know! As if all of a sudden the physical world had become a solar world, splendid and radiant, and so light, so harmonious! It was a marvel. For hours.
And it made me understand that one of the most considerable obstacles is that deviation of aspiration into a thirst for something. But who doesnt deviate? You see, I always start by looking at myself and at all that I know of this beings conscious life (thats my first observation), and all the images come; well, the self-offering, the perfectly pure aspiration that doesnt expect any resultabsolutely free from the slightest idea of result the aspiration in its essential purity thats not frequent. Its not frequent.
0 1964-11-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the vital contained in Matterits like the phenomenon of radiation. Its a violent liberation of something contained in Matter. Like radiation. And it spreads out. They have indeed noticed it, but they dont want to know: when they exploded the bomb in Japan, the consequences went much, much farther than they expected, they were infinitely more serious and long-lasting than expected, because the sudden liberation of those Forces They only perceive a certain quantity, but there is all that is behind, which spreads out and has its action. You see, they observe, for instance, that cows are poisoned and their milk isnt drinkable for a certain time (it happened in England), but thats the most crude and outer phenomenon there is another, deeper one, which is FAR more serious.
So when I said that [the twisted face of a Chinese], it seems to be beside the point, but thats because when those two things coincided,2 Kali suddenly became furious I saw Kali furious, as when she decides that it will be paid for. So V.s vision adds a few landmarks.
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There has been lately (especially since January 1st) a sort of bombardment by the adverse Forcesa rage, you know. So we have to keep like this (Mother becomes still like a statue), thats all. And when one has been shaken physically, one shouldnt ask too much of the body, one should give it a lot of peace and quiet, a lot of rest.
My difficulty is that Im very absorbed by this body. It absorbs me, it absorbs a lot of my consciousness. The physical mind, for instance, invades me completely.
0 1965-02-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, if you want to be amused, I have received a letter from Alexandra David-Neel. You know that we had been corresponding and that she was the great protector of Tibetan lames (one of them was her son and he died there, so she was feeling quite lonely). I told her that we had been put in contact with all those Tibetans2 and I suggested she might take another one with her (because she had written to me about this). And I added that they would certainly be very glad to serve her in gratitude for the great intellectual progress they would be making with hershe never forgave me! Never forgave me. Because I wrote intellectual instead of spiritual (I consider she is quite incapable of making anyone progress spiritually, while intellectually, she is first-rate). And since that time, no more letters, nothing. The other day, I got a letter in which she writes (Mother imitates the supercilious tone of the letter), Dear friend of the past, I have heard about the attack on the Ashram (you should have read the letter, it was marvelous!), and I hope that nothing untoward has happened to you. But now that the Ashrams invulnerability has been destroyed, attacks may recur, so I presume you will leave Pondicherry.3 (Mother laughs) I simply answered her, Dear friend of always (laughing), do not worry, all is well. Above the Forces of destruction, there is the divine Grace, which protects and mends, and I simply put, Yours very affectionately. And I enclosed in the letter the message4 of the 21st.
That woman is eating herself away. Every time I had the opportunity, I spoke to her about Buddhas love; I told her, But Buddha was full of love! And that makes her blood boil!
--
Those who wish to help the Light of Truth to prevail over the Forces of darkness and falsehood, can do so by carefully observing the initiating impulses of their movements and actions, and discriminating between those that come from the Truth and those that come from the falsehood, in order to obey the first and to refuse or reject the others.
This power of discrimination is one of the first effects of the Advent of the Truths Light in the earths atmosphere.
0 1965-03-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has left me with an absolutely unforgettable impression because it was a revelation of the play of Forcesof what things TRULY are in spite of their appearances, which are deceptive.
(silence)
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because if we rely on what Sri Aurobindo said, time is clearly very short; if the supramental Forces have to effectively dominate (maybe not outwardly, but effectively) life on earth in 1967, that doesnt leave much time.
And probably, the nearer we draw to the appointed hour, the tighter its going to become.
--
The body follows the action very well and does all that it has to do, but when around it there are consciousnesses that feel or think otherwise, that still has a considerable action; although the consciousness isnt affected: its perfectly lucid, it sees the whole play all the time, and it is conscious of the Forces that come and of the whole play. So how is it that, the consciousness being conscious of the Forces that come, those Forces still have the power to act on the cells directly? Thats a problem.
It means a cellular interdependence that makes the program very, very, VERY difficult.
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this to tell you that the thought is absolutely still, everything takes place directly: questions of vibrations. Well, thats the only way to know what has to be done. If it goes through the mindespecially through that physical thought, which is absolutely idiotic, absolutelyyou cant know; as long as that works, you are always driven to do what you shouldnt do, particularly to have the wrong reaction: the reaction that helps the Forces of disorder and darkness instead of contradicting them. And I am not talking about anxiety because its a long, a very long time since my body stopped having any anxietya long time, years but anxiety is like swallowing a cup of poison.
This is what is called physical yoga.
0 1965-04-17, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So the transition: a conscious and willed utilization by a supramentalized consciousness of a body prepared in that way. This body must be brought to the peak of its development and of the utilization of the cells in order to be yes, consciously impregnated with the supreme Forces (which is being done here [in Mother] at the moment), and this to the utmost of its capacities. And if the consciousness that inhabits that body, that animates that body, has the required qualities in sufficient amount, it should normally be able to utilize that body to the utmost of its capacity of transformation, with the result that the waste caused by the death of decomposing cells should be reduced to a minimumto what extent? Thats precisely what still belongs to the unknown.
That would correspond to what Sri Aurobindo called the prolongation of life at will, for an indefinite length of time.
--
The conditions for the almost indefinite prolongation of the life of the body are known, or almost known (they are more than sensed they are known), and they are learned through the work that must be done to counteract the EXTREME FRAGILITY of the physical balance of the body undergoing the transformation. Its a study every minute, as it were, almost every second. This is the extremely difficult part. It is difficult because of all the reasons I have already explained, because of the intrusion of Forces that are in a state of imbalance and have to be, as they come along, brought back to the new state of balance.1 Thats where you find the sign of the unknown.
Voil. Its there.
0 1965-04-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I meant by an improved physical body is that sort of mastery over the body thats being gained nowadays through physical training. I have seen lately magazines showing how it had started: the results in the beginning and todays results; and from the standpoint of the harmony of forms (I am not talking about excesses there are excesses everywhere I am talking about what can be done in the best possible conditions), from the standpoint of the harmony of forms, of strength and a certain sense of beauty, of the development of certain capacities of endurance and skill, of precision in the execution combined with strength, its quite remarkable if you think of how recent physical training is. And its spreading very quickly nowadays, which means that the proportion of the human population that is interested in it and practices it is snowballing. So when I saw all those photos (for me, its especially through pictures that I see), it occurred to me that through those qualities, the cells, the cellular aggregates acquire a plasticity, a receptivity, a force that make the substance more supple for the permeation of the supramental Forces.
Lets take the sense of form, for example (I am giving one example among many others). Evolution is openly moving towards diminishing the difference between the female and the male forms: the ideal thats being created makes female forms more masculine and gives male forms a certain grace and suppleness, with the result that they increasingly resemble what I had seen all the way up, beyond the worlds of the creation, on the threshold, if I can call it that, of the world of form. At the beginning of the century, I had seen, before even knowing of Sri Aurobindos existence and without having ever heard the word supramental or the idea of it or anything, I had seen there, all the way up, on the threshold of the Formless, at the extreme limit, an ideal form that resembled the human form, which was an idealized human form: neither man nor woman. A luminous form, a form of golden light. When I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote, I said, But what I saw was the supramental form! Without having the faintest idea that it might exist. Well, the ideal of form we are now moving towards resembles what I saw. Thats why I said: since there is an evolutionary concentration on this point, on the physical, bodily form, it must mean that Nature is preparing something for that Descent and that embodimentit seems logical to me. Thats what I meant by an improved physical form.
0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why certain minds have postulated that the creation was the result of an error. But we find all the possible conceptions: the perfect creation, then a fault that introduced the error; the creation itself as a lower movement, which must end since it began; then the conception of the Vedas according to what Sri Aurobindo told us about it, which was a progressive and infinite unfolding or discoveryindefinite and infiniteof the All by Himself. Naturally, all these are human translations. For the moment, as long as we express ourselves humanly, its a human translation; but depending on the initial stand of the human translator (that is, a stand that accepts the primordial error, or the accident in the creation, or the conscious supreme Will since the beginning, in a progressive unfolding), the conclusions or the descents in the yogic attitude are different. There are the nihilists, the Nirvanists and the illusionists, there are all the religions (like Christianity) that accept the devils intervention in one form or another; and then pure Vedism, which is the Supremes eternal unfolding in a progressive objectification. And depending on your taste, you are here or there or here, and there are nuances. But according to what Sri Aurobindo felt to be the most total truth, according to that conception of a progressive universe, you are led to say that, every minute, what takes place is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. The logic of it is absolute. And I think that all the contradictions can only stem from a more or less pronounced tendency for this or that position, that other position; all the minds that accept the intrusion of a fault or an error and the resulting conflict between Forces pulling backward and Forces pulling forward, can naturally dispute the possibility. But you are forced to say that for someone who is spiritually attuned to the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, what happens is necessarily, every instant, the best for his personal realizationthis is true in all cases. The unconditioned best can only be accepted by one who sees the universe as an unfolding, the Supreme growing more and more conscious of Himself.
(silence)
--
Now that the body knows a little, when something is wrong or goes awry for some reason or other (it may be because of transformation, it may be because of attacks there are innumerable reasons), my cells are beginning to say, Oh, no doctor, no doctor, no doctor! They feel the doctor will crystallize the disorder, harden it and take away the plasticity necessary to respond to the deeper Forces; and then the disorder will follow an outward, material course which takes ages I dont have the time to wait.
I never say this to people who ask me, never; I always tell them, Go and see the doctor and do as he tells you. Because unless the body itself (some people have that, but not many, very few), if the body itself says, No, no, no! I dont want, then its ready; but if the body keeps telling you, Maybe the doctor will help me out, maybe he will findgo ahead, go ahead! Do as he says.
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an experiment that can be done very easily: a scientist may explain all the phenomena before our eyes, he may even use physical Forces and make them do whatever he likes (they have obtained amazing results from the material point of view), but if you just ask them this question, this simple question, What is death?, in reality, they have no idea. They will describe the phenomenon as it occurs materially, but if they are sincere, they are compelled to say that it doesnt explain anything.
There always comes a point when it no longer explains anything. Because to know to know is to have power.
--
Even if in front of them a kind of miracle takes place, they will find a material explanation for it; to them, it wont be a miracle in the sense of the intervention of a force and power different from material Forces and powers. They will find their own material explanation for it, it wont be convincing.
You can understand only if you have yourself touched that domain in your experience.
--
It is really when you have the experience the experience and knowledge and identity with the higher Forces that you see the relativity of external knowledge; but before that, no, you cannot see, you deny the other realities.
I think this is what Sri Aurobindo meant; its only once the other consciousness is developed that the scientist will smile; he will say, Yes, this is all very nice, but
--
It seems that the only method capable of overcoming all resistances is the method of Love; but in fact, the adverse Forces have perverted it in such a way that a large quantity of sincere people, of sincere seekers, seem to be armor-plated against this method, because of its distortion. Thats the difficulty. Thats why it takes time. Anyway
Purohit: priest.
0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wait, Ill show you (Mother gets up and goes to get a photo of General Chaudhuri.) A little over a month ago (I dont remember, it was about one week before S.M. came4) I was looking for a man, I felt the need of a man in India, and then they proposed sending me the photo of the army chief. I said yes (he happens to be a cousin of K. here). The photo isnt good, but I see what I wanted to see; I saw it perhaps a month or a month and a half ago, and I have kept it under the accumulation of Forces, here (the photo is placed on a small table not far from Mother). He is the one who is now leading the armies.
The photo isnt good, but the man is good!
0 1965-09-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The world situation is critical today. Indias fate too is hanging in the balance. There was a time when India was absolutely secure, there was no danger whatever of her being a victim to Asuric aggression. But things have changed. People and Forces in India have acted in such a way as to invite Asuric influences upon her; these have worked insidiously and undermined the security that was there.
May 25, 1941
0 1965-11-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The army is completely with us. Besides, it seems (I have been receiving a great many letters, Ive again received some these last few days), it seems they had truly miraculous instances of Forces intervening, of people suddenly turning into extraordinary heroes. There were marvelous things.
If, at that point,1 they hadnt stopped, it would have been easy.
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was the whole humanity that isnt quite animal anymore, that has benefited from mental development and created a certain harmony in its lifea vital, artistic, literary harmony and the vast majority of which live satisfied with life. They have caught a sort of harmony and live in it a life as it exists in a civilized milieu, that is to say, somewhat cultured, with refinement in taste, refinement in habits. And this whole life has a sort of harmony in which they find themselves at ease, and unless something catastrophic happens to them, they live happy and content, satisfied with life. Those may be attracted (because they have taste, they are intellectually developed), they may be attracted to the new Forces, the new things, the future life; for instance, they may mentally, intellectually become disciples of Sri Aurobindo. But they dont at all feel the need to change materially, and if they were to be forced to, it would be first of all premature and unjust, and it would quite simply create a great disorder and would upset their lives quite unnecessarily.
It was very clear.
Then there were the few the rare individualswho are ready to make the necessary effort to prepare themselves for the transformation and to attract the new Forces, try to adapt Matter, seek the means of expression and so forth. Those are ready for Sri Aurobindos yoga. They are very few. There are even those who have the sense of sacrifice and are ready to have a hard and difficult life, as long as it leads them or helps them towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should in no way try to influence others and make them share their own effort: that would be quite unjustnot only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universalor at least terrestrialrhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.
But it was so living, so real, that my whole attitude (how can I explain? A passive attitude, which isnt the result of an active will), the whole position taken in the work has changed. And this has brought a peacean absolutely decisive peace and tranquillity and trust. A decisive change. And even, all that in the previous position seemed to be obstinacy, clumsiness, unconsciousness, all sorts of deplorable things, all that has disappeared. It was like a vision of a great universal Rhythm in which each thing takes its own place and everything is just fine. And the effort of transformation limited to a small number becomes something FAR MORE precious and FAR MORE powerful for the realization. Its as if a choice had been made of those who will be the pioneers of the new creation. And all those ideas of spreading [the ideal], of preparing or churning Matterchildishness. Its human agitation.
0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, all the outward events come and belie this. In spite of the inner transformation (which is a sure fact, one has proof of it every second), yet the body keeps its habit of deterioration. And just when you think that things are improving (to give you, as you say, proof that you are making progress), something comes along as if to prove to you that its all an illusion! And its growing more and more acute, more and more acute. There is always a Voice (which I know very well, its the voice of the adverse Forces tempting you), which comes and tells you (same hammering gesture), See, see how mistaken you are, see how you delude yourself, see what a mirage it all is, see And then if you listen, youre done for. Its very simple: everything is done for.
You just have to put your fingers in your ears, shut your eyes and keep holding tight up above.
0 1966-01-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The resistance of the Forces of Falsehood has reached a climax, they are in a state of acute violenceacute.
Yes, its glaring.
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like an artist, but an artist shaping himself, and who makes one attempt, two attempts, three attempts, as many attempts as necessary, then ends up with something complete enough in itself and receptive enough to be able to adapt to new manifestations, to the needs of new manifestations, so that it wouldnt be necessary to draw everything back in order to mix it all together again and put it all out again. But now its now more than that, and, as I said, a question of choice. In other words, the manifestation was made for the delight of objectification (the delight or interest, or anyway), and once what has been shaped has become plastic enough, receptive enough, supple enough and vast enough to be constantly molded by the new Forces that manifest, theres no longer any need to undo everything in order to redo everything.
The curve showed itself along with an adage: What begins must end. That seems to be one of those human mental constructions that arent necessarily true.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But during the day, there are perpetual lessons, all the time, all the time, for everything, all the time. The lesson is least pronounced when I have to write something or see people; but there, too, the exact quality of peoples vibration (not their permanent vibration but the vibration in them at that minute), the quality of their consciousness is immediately made known to me through certain reactions in my body (gesture on different levels of the body). The nerves began only a few months ago their work of transfer of power. (What I call transfer of power is that instead of the nerves being moved by and obeying complex and organized Forces of Nature, of the character, of the material consciousness in the body, they attune themselves to and directly obey the divine Will.) Its the transfer from one to the other thats difficult: there is the entire old habit, and then the new habit to be formed. It was a rather difficult moment. But now there remain enough old vibrations to be able to gauge exactly (and this has nothing to do with thought, it isnt expressed in words or thoughts or anything like all that: just vibrations), to know exactly the state people near me are in. From that point of view the lesson is going on, its very interesting. And whats wonderful is that more often than not the most receptive vibration, conforming the most to what it should be, is in children, but the very small ones, the tiny tots. I see lots of people, but now I understand why: I learn enormously that way, through that contact (with people whom I dont know, sometimes whom I see for the first time, or whom I havent seen for years). Its very interesting.
But when nobody is there or I am alone, or when I dont speak or I am not busy with other people, its the inner lesson: the whole change in the vibration and how the world is organized. This morning, it was really extraordinarily amusing to see the mass of things that lie behind this appearance, an appearance that seems complicated enough as it is, but its nothing! Its thin, flimsy, without complexity in comparison with the MASS of things behind, which (drilling gesture) which bore their way through to reach the surface. Its amusing. But certainly ninety-nine people in a hundred would be seized with panic if they knew, if they saw. I had always been told (I read it, Sri Aurobindo often said it to me, Thon too often said it to me, so did Madame Thon) that its the Grace that keeps people from knowing. Because if they knew, they would be terrified! All, but all the things that are constantly there, moving behindbehind the appearancesall the complexities that are the true causes of or the instruments for all those small events, which to us are absolutely unimportant, but because of which one day you feel everything is harmonious, and another day you feel it takes a labor to do anything at all. And thats how it is. And naturally, when you know, you have the key. But if you know before you have the key, its a little frightening. I think that when people take leave of their senses, its because they are put in contact with the vibrations before having the knowledge, the sufficient knowledge, the sufficient state of consciousness.
0 1966-04-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting Forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and Forces attempting to achieve some thing with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is, however, certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of the human intelligencemystically-rationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You dont want me to start prophesying, I suppose? As a rationalist, you cant.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-04-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all that is accumulated in the subconscient, and it comes back in the form of dreams. And naturally (thats quite a common experience, which is known to all those who are even slightly familiar with the play of occult Forces), when someone in your dream comes and gives you blows and attacks you, its absolutely sure that youve had bad thoughts for himbad thoughts or bad feelings. Thats what comes back to you in that form. But they will say on the contrary: See, I was right to have bad thoughts for him: he comes and attacks me!
Just like children, completely ignorant.
0 1966-05-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In ordinary life, when one doesnt know, with people who dont know, there is a tremendous wastage of vital Forces, for no reason. Well, we no longer have the right to do that because all that vital force is there, as I said, concentrated to keep the bodys balance.
Its a very, very widespread state in all those who not who do the yoga, but for whom the yoga is done. And its done (how can I put it?) almost without their knowledgeall that puts them in a fit state to do it is, first, aspiration, and then, trust. Those are the two things: the faith, the trust that the divine Consciousness is at work, and then the aspiration for transformation. Thats all thats needed. And the work is done. But that work implies, in fact, not a loss of equilibrium but a change of equilibrium. A change of balance. And in order to go from one equilibrium to the other, well, one must stay very calm.
0 1966-05-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The consolation is that the Supremes action is growing increasingly clear and evident. You know, I am like a speck of ([Mother makes a gesture in the hollow of a Hand] how can I explain it?) of dust, but a dust that suffers, thats the trouble. Very sensitive. But the play of Forces is growing increasingly clear and powerful, and over an increasingly extensive field. And directly HERE [in matter], with extraordinary precision and force. Its a consolation.
Lets just not bother about it.
0 1966-06-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The slightest pretence is an alliance with the Forces of dissolution and death.
So its like a chant in the cells but they mustnt even have the insincerity to watch themselves the chant of the cells: Your Will, Lord, Your Will
0 1966-09-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That too is a habit. Its nothing but habits: Forces playing in Nature. So it takes an inner movement (Mother makes a tiny gesture of disjunction) to break the habit.
At times you feel as if a small force is following you.
0 1966-09-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Besides, even quite outwardly, that fight between India and Pakistan1 was clearly (how can I put it? The words that come to me are English) initiated and driven, that is to say, set in motion by and under the impulsion of the Forces of Truth that wanted to create a great Asian Federation with the power to counterbalance Red China and its movement. It was a federation that, as a matter of fact, needed the return of Pakistan and all those regions, and which includes Nepal, Tibet, also Burma, and in the south, Ceylon. A great federation with each country having its autonomous development, perfectly free, but which would be united in a common single aspiration for peace and fight against the invasion of Forces of dissolution. That was very clear, it was willed and its the intervention of this United Nations that stopped everything.2
I am not saying anything officially; because I have said and always repeat that politics is in complete Falsehood, based on Falsehood, and I am not dealing with it, meaning that I am not in politics, I dont want to be but that doesnt stop me from seeing clearly! People have come and asked me (from every side, by the way) for my opinion, view or advice; I said, No, I dont deal in politics. You see, all diplomacy is absolutely based on a DELIBERATE Falsehood. As long as it is like that, theres no hope: the inspirations will always come from the wrong side; inspirations, impulsions, ideas, everything will always come from the wrong sidewhich means the inescapable blunder, for everyone. A few rare individuals feel that and are aware of it, and they are half desperate because nobody listens to them.
--
Now I know, I remember, this whole experience came after I saw a book that was published quite recently in India, in English, which they entitled The Roll of Honour, and in which there is a photo and a short biography of all those who died in the fight against the British, for Indias freedom. There were photos everywhere, lots of them (some were only photos the police took after they had just been killed and were lying on the ground). And it all brought a certain atmosphere: the atmosphere of those disinterested goodwilled people who meet with a tragic fate. It had the same impression on me as the horrors of the Germans during the war over there. These things are obviously under the direct influence of certain adverse Forces, but we know that the adverse Forces are, so to say, permitted to workthrough the sense of horror, in factin order to hasten the awakening of consciousness. So then, that experience, which was very strong and was very like the one I had when I saw the photographs of German atrocities in France, put me in contact with the vision of the human, terrestrial, modern error (its modern: it began these last one thousand years and has become more and more acute in the last hundred years), with the aspiration to counterbalance that: How to do it? What is to be done? And the answer: Thats why you have created Auroville.
There is a perception of Forces the Forces that act directly in events, material events, which are illusory and deceptive. For instance, the man who fought for his countrys freedom, who has just been assassinated because he is a rebel, and who looks defeated, lying there on the edge of the roadhe is the real victor. Thats how it is, it clearly shows the kind of relationship between the truth and the expression. Then, if you enter the consciousness in which you perceive the play of Forces and see the world in that light, its very interesting. And thats how, when I was in that state, I was told, clearly shown (its inexpressible because it isnt with words, but these are facts): Thats why you have created Auroville. Its the same thing as with that photo.3
There, youll keep this.
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can very well conceive of a being who could, through spiritual power, the power of his inner being, absorb the necessary Forces, renew himself and remain ever young; thats quite easily conceivable; even providing for a certain suppleness so as to be able to change the form if necessary. But the complete disappearance of this system of construction right awayfrom one to the other right away, that seems It appears to require stages.
Obviously, unless something happens (which we are forced to call a miracle because we cant understand how it could happen), how can a body like ours become a body entirely built and driven by a higher force, and without a material support? How can this (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), how can this change into that other thing? It appears impossible.
0 1966-10-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Sri Aurobindo was here, every year at the time of Durgas battle, I used to receive from him the very clear indication of the aspect of the adverse Forces that had to be vanquished and subdued. (It was very interesting, and I generally noted it down, but I dont know where all that has gone.) It went on like that for thirty years. And after his departure there only remained the Supreme.
She would come, she was absolutely present during the six days of pranam downstairs. But now, since I dont know (I dont remember because for me time isnt quite clear anymore, it no longer has the same value), but I remember it happened while I was walking for my japa. I told her there was something more important than that semireligious recollection people have, that what was more important was the deeper nature of the Work and the choice of the adverse aspect (represented by a universal difficulty, or, at any rate, if we only consider the earth, a human difficulty), the aspect that had to be vanquished, dominated in order to lead it to the transformation. And its in this connection that I told her that receiving the indication from the Supreme was the true thing; that He saw better than we did what had to be done and the order in which it had to be done. And I felt (she was very concrete [Mother makes a gesture as if Durga was in her]), I felt she was immensely interested. Then I told her, Well, you see, hasnt the time come (I am putting it into words, but there werent any words), hasnt the time come to receive from Him the direct impulsion for your action? And she responded joyfully and spontaneously.
0 1966-11-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother nods her head) And it was amusing, because it wasnt just here, it wasnt just the earth, but it was a displeasure even at the way of acting of Natures Forces. See this irony: yesterday morning I got a telegraman S.O.S. from Bihar, telling me that they have no drinking water, they are in a dreadful condition of drought and deprivation, and calling for help. At the same time, here the waters are rising again and there is a threat of flood! The irony of it is ridiculous. Thereupon she began saying her view of things. She said rather amusing things (it was in the afternoon).
Then, when she had left, I started laughing and I said, Dont worry! I, for one, am laughing. (Mother laughs) So hearts were comforted.
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I tell you last time that in Bihar, the rain started that very evening? I found out how it occurred. Its P. who flew over Bihar, and he saw a desert, devastation: dry, dry, dry, nothing growing, cracked earth. Then he remembered certain experiences here.3 When he reached the airport, he was received officially and said, I would like to see the Chief Minister in private, without anyone else. He saw him and told him an experience he had had and had witnessed here [at Pondicherry]. And he said, Why dont you ask Mother? The other answered quite spontaneously, It would be better if you asked for us! Then he sent his telegram. The same evening it started raining. He wrote, saying, This first rain has been like divine nectar to me. He said that people there were entirely trusting and as well-disposed as could be. And he saw a relation between those droughts, those natural catastrophes, and the Forces that stop money from coming; he saw they were affected by that experience of unexpected rain. For example, at the same time (a day or two later), he met some people who arent rich (the husb and has a good position, but they arent rich: they have a family, children). For some reason or other the husb and had been given a compensation of 10,000 rupees by the government, and quite spontaneously and naturally they went and saw P. and said to him, You must give this to Mother. He asked the lady, But why do you give all this? She spontaneously answered, But what would I do with this money? I dont need it. In other words, the true attitude. So it immediately made P. think that something is on the move.
And I saw this note of yesterday as indicative of the key (I mean inwardly, in the universal attitudes). It was all clearly seen: men always believe that the guilty must be punished, that its the way out of the difficulty, but the true way is compassion and mercy. Its not that you are ignorant of the true movement and the false one, but you have SPONTANEOUS mercy, effortlessly and at all times. The vision was very clear that this is how progress is possibleif the fault were always punished, there wouldnt be anyone left to progress!
0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can see that with the bodys cells: at times, for a few seconds or a few minutes (at the most a few hours, but not with physical things; with physical things, its always seconds and minutes), all of a sudden a sort of perfection manifestsand then it disappears. And you see very clearly that it cannot stay on because of a ceaseless invasion of everything around, which is imperfect. So then, its engulfed. Like the first day when the supramental Forces descended [in 1956]: I saw them descend, you know, and I saw those great billows of earth Forces going brrf! brrf! (gesture of rising and engulfing), and then it was all swallowed up. It was descending in awesome masses, but those billows were still more awesome, rising, brrf! and swallowing and That disappeared.
It still remains like that.
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The mind will be transformed quite naturally, effortlessly; its not the same as with this body. But for the moment, it cant be used. It can be used only through aspiration, like this (gesture open to the above), a constant aspiration the constancy of aspiration and receptivity to let the Forces and the light come through.
There. So well meet again on Saturday.
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thon, for his part, insisted very much on adverse Forces, while Sri Aurobindo didnt talk about them. So when I came here I asked him, But do hostile beings and adverse Forces exist? He said to me, Yes, they exist, but in order to master them its easier to regard them as being outside, rather than inside as a part of your nature. He insisted on the One: everything is the One distorted to a greater or lesser extent, even the adverse Forces. What we call adverse Forces are, at bottom, distortions of consciousness. When those distortions predominate in a being, that is to say, when his nature obeys distorted influences and no longer responds to the divine influence, we may call it a hostile being (they do exist, God knows!). But here in India, they have insisted above all on the notion of Oneness. Of course, at the origin of the worlds a separation took place, but its mainly the Tantrics who have insisted on that; they say that in order to re-form Godhead, the two poles must be reunited. All this is words, a manner of speaking that fills the gaps and complements each other. And depending on the individuals, the times and countries, there were manners of speaking more or less pure, some closer than others. But all said and done We could say that the Lord enjoys narrating Himself in all possible ways.
And when you are on the very lowest rung of the ladder of consciousness, those manners of speaking become increasingly concrete, absolute, hard, and exclusive of all that isnt themselves: those are religions. Oh, by the way, it seems the Pope was approached about Auroville and he asked if there would be a Catholic church! They put the question to me. I said, No. No churches, no temples.
0 1967-03-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I am forced to conclude that its a highly superior consciousness which sees things with reasons that completely elude us, sees how things must be done and sets them in motion (global gesture to indicate the play of Forces) until they are done as they must be done. And where there was a person, it no longer exists there are no more persons: there are Forces in movement that bring about certain material actions, but no more persons.
Since then, there has been an observation: I have noticed that everything concerning this body has become like that. So the body itself has barely the sense of its limits (gesture as if the delimiting form had melted). Its fairly new. I can see it has come about rather progressively, but its fairly new, so its hard to express. But its this same body that no longer feels those limits (same gesture): it feels spread out in everything it does, in everything around it, in all things, people, movements, sensations, in all that. Its spread out like that.
0 1967-03-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was yesterday evening. I was asked questions on levitation (questions a modern little child might ask), I was asked, How is it that one who escapes from this law doesnt just go up into the atmosphere? I replied from my experience that thats not the way levitation works, its not because one escapes from the law of gravity: its because physical bodies are supported by materialized vital Forces (slightly materialized). So then, it put me back in contact with those Forces and beings, and last night they said that to me; they told me, Why arent you using us any longer? We were quite happy! I said, Come along and do some work! And there you are (the grapes).
When you sleep (that is, when the body is in a state of trance), you can eat. You sense the taste when you have gone outside the body. And its very nourishing, it gives strength. I have eaten I dont know how many times like that, mostly grapesand what grapes!
0 1967-03-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a question of terminology. I would like to put a note at the beginning of the third volume of Questions and Answers, in which I say: We found it fitting to begin this new volume with the Talk of February 29, 1956, because on that day, during the meditation that followed the class, there took place What? The first descent of the supramental Forces into the Inconscient?
(Mother shakes her head) It was: Light-Force and Power. And it wasnt into the Inconscient, it was into the earth atmosphere.
0 1967-03-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In that immobility there is perfect transparency and the problem does not exist: the solution precedes the problem. That is to say, things organize themselves (gesture showing the movement of universal Forces) in such a way that they can change positions or take a different place in order to express the new thing that must be expressed: something new constantly enters the manifestation (as if emerging from the Un-manifest), it enters the manifestation and transforms. And it takes place automatically. A vast, immense Movement (Mother smiles with her eyes closed) in which one can participate only if one is per-fect-ly peaceful and calm and translucent.
(Mother takes Satprems hands and remains looking at him for a long time)
0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One could say thanks to all this (not even because ofTHANKS TO all this), I have had these last days, these last three days, the vision the concrete vision, showing how at every second, the supreme Consciousness (which I personally find convenient to call the supreme Lord), how at EVERY SECOND, it makes you do or say or see or know ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move like this (round gesture expressing the innumerably ramified movement of universal Forces), to move forward. Its not yet the direct, all-powerful, crushing Movement of direct Forces (gesture from above downward, like a sword of light): its a movement like this (same round gesture), but marvellousmarvellously subtle, ingenious, respectful of everything, but everything; you know, a movement that makes use of everything to lead towards the Goal, even errorswhich are not errors because when the Consciousness is there, the error isnt an error committed by ignorance: a thing is said or done because thats what needs to be said or needs to be doneit may in appearance be even a blunder, yet its ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move forward (same innumerable round gesture), move forward luminously towards the desired goal. Its absolutely marvellous! And seen in tiny little details and in the whole. Its this marvel of a Consciousness that makes each one do what must be done, puts each thing in its place, arranges everything, and its our idiocy, an absolutely ignorant and stupid vision, that would have us believe in faults, in errors, in Each one is a problem to be resolved, so all those problems interpenetrate, and it is the WHOLE that must be led, precisely towards this famous Truth (the true one). But Ive spent, you know, hours in admirationa blissful admirationbefore this marvel of order, with all the little things around you, all the little people around you, all the little circumstances. Its wonderful! Wonderful!
And then, this presumptuous mind which understands nothing and asserts itself in its all-powerful knowledge, oh its so comical!
0 1967-04-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There has been for some time a deliberate will not to leave the body. In the mornings, when I emerged from my nocturnal activities, I would often notice that there was a whole work of readjustment to be done in the body, as though the concentration of Forces had been disturbed and even undone in the night and everything had to be started up again. It was a sheer waste of time, a waste. Previously, in the evening when I would lay down on my bed, I would go limp, a complete relaxation (one should always do that), that is, surrender, and the consciousness would rise above. There was a concentration of Forces, but it wouldnt last: after two or three hours, everything was taken up by the nights activities. But now, instead of that, there is a will to keep the whole consciousness in the body, to concentrate and to keep all the energies so that the work in the cells may go on undisturbed. And I see the effect lasts much longer; even when I wake up (or rather when I get into external activity), I can see it goes on, it doesnt cease, and it resumes as soon as I am outwardly awake. A sort of concentration of energy, of consciousness, force, light, which starts working in the cells at night. And then theres nothing, no activity, theres a contemplative silence.
I had only one instance of activity these last four days, one morning between two and four, that I spent absolutely conscious and active with Sri Aurobindo, who had made changes in his activities and his organization of the subtle physical; he had made changes and wanted to show them to me, to let me know about them. And he showed it all to me for two hours. But that was the only thing, and as for the resteverything, going to see people, going here or there, doing this or that I have stopped it all. And things are better.
0 1967-04-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"The sense of touch alone is fully developed (in the newborn). That allows it to remain in intimate contact with its mother and prolong the time of gestation, which is a period of intense development in the security of oneness. The least separation may cause an irreparable trauma, that 'fall on the head' which is the usual but abnormal condition of the newborn in civilized peoples. This is well-known to primitive peoples, where the mother keeps the naked child on her naked skin and never parts with it.... Until the other senses are specialized, it is chiefly through the surface of the skin that the child receives its education.... If one wants it to incarnate really, to be friends with matter, its body to become as intimate as its soul, one must invent for it a yoga of caresses and play." (It is worth noting that an attempt to put these alluring and specious theories into practice was to have catastrophic results, as we shall see later in the Agenda: the main effect of the said "caresses" is to attract into the child's body vital Forces of a dark order, and "genii of sex" rather than anything else, are likely to be incarnated.)
This is how Mother replied to the disciple who had sent her her study on the formation of the new child: "I have read your work with keen interestit deals with an important aspect of the problem. But a public presentation is impossible. Seeing and reading this, too many young girls would imagine they are destined to give birth to the 'solar child'that would be a disaster." Then Mother added: "In order to realize this work, one must have gone beyond all desire; and unfortunately, this is not generally the case as yet. Whereas ambition and vanity are rather widespread maladies."
0 1967-06-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise. The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal fire, not the true Agni, or else a short-lived fire which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their ownafterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary Forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhar [vessel] tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From Ignorance, obviously. From Ignorance and the incapacity to renew Forces; and that means the whole lower life: it decomposes, recomposes, decomposes again. But its only with animality and the beginning of a mental functioning that (Mother takes on a grandiloquent tone) death comes, such as we conceive it. But that is when the vital element that gives life (what we call life) breaks down. There are innumerable reasons for that, all of which stem from the same source. Of course, taken together, it is the incapacity to follow the movement of progress: the need to remix everything together in order to start all over again. But for those who are beginning to think, that no longer has any reason to exist.
An accident? An accident to the material combination? But what accident, since the heart can stop and start again? Its a question of how long the accident lasts.
--
I didnt say anything to anyone because it was nobodys business, nobodys concern. I remained standing there and (gesture showing the Forces passing from Sri Aurobindo into Mothers body).
You know, people revel in high-sounding words and go on talking and talking they dont even know what theyre talking about.
--
There was also, in relation to those possibilities of magic and also to adverse Forces, a vision of it all as being a part of the great Play (gesture from below), but This Immensity, luminous and smiling, an immensity (immensity is a wordinfinite too is a word), something absolutely limitless, which simply goes like this (gesture of descent) in a movement of manifestation; then, at a certain point, It encounters a sort of movement from below that seizes hold of That and turns That into what we see. In the higher part, its a mixture of perverted mind and extremely powerful vital, which obviously takes pleasure in the distortion; and as That becomes more concrete it becomes all those human reactions; and when That draws near the earth, then ah, you have the fine mess men have made of the earths atmosphere. So this Thing, this smiling, luminous, marvellous Immensity, sowhich is a living and conscious bliss That is what it becomes.
And if by chance, by miracle, one drop falls without getting completely distorted, it becomes a miracle!
0 1967-06-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But India, supposed to embody the Forces of truth, is herself prey to the same Falsehood as is the rest of the earth. The Asura is also in India, perhaps more dangerous there as it is masked behind a veil of false truth.
The awaited conflict will thus have to put the house of the Mother in order to begin with, at the same time as it will put the other houses of the earth in order.
--
The question was worded thus: "Must we think that these two great peoples in conflict represent symbolic Forces that are destined to decide the fate of our civilization?"
See Satprem's article in Addendum.
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was another experience I had a little later (a little later, around eighteen or nineteen), in which I suddenly found myself riding a horse, dressed as a man, leading armies to a fantastic victory; and it was the glory of the sense of the presence of the Force of Victory that made me lead the entire army to victory. Afterwards, I remembered the costume I was wearing, the peoples costumes, everything, and I saw it was Murats famous victory.3 I was (how can I put it?) the victorious spirit in Murat. And ONLY THAT. So when people tell you, I was this person, that person, its all tales: they are Forces, states of consciousness that manifested in certain individuals at certain moments in their lives and which, at such moments, touched Matter concretely. And all that is gathered, collected together little by little, gradually, until it produces a conscious being.
Now, this (Mothers being) is a rather special conscious being. The psychic of this life (laughing) was rather collective! Memories of Catherine the Great, memories of Elizabeth, memories of two lives at the same time (!) at the time of Francis I,4 memories innumerable memories, and quite diverse. Each one Its not that you were in such or such person for a whole life: you were the important psychic MOMENT in those existences.
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, there are, inside oneself naturally (and consequently around oneself), Forces that oppose ones realization, and the system of those [Tantric] mantras is to look for the support of those Overmind beings against those Forces, which are much more powerful than they (the gods)the proof is that despite all their goodwill, they (the Overmind gods) have never been able to make the earth a harmonious place. We cant help noting the fact. So I told him it was a direct fight, all those mantras are a direct fight against the difficulty, whereas (and thats what gave him the terrible headache he complains about: its dangerous, of course, it can unsettle the whole functioning). I told him to stop and use that (Mothers Mantra). I explained it all to him yesterday. I told him he shouldnt wage a direct fight: one must try to find the support in the force one has inside oneself, which is everywhere and can overcome the difficulty: Instead of fighting, live in the other consciousness. But I saw he was closedlocked inwith a hard look. He didnt want to understand. So
For half an hour he kept me here. It was half past twelve!
--
De Gaulle has an embryo of inner life, he knows that there is a force higher than the physical and mental Forcesand that is why he is more receptive than many others.
But he has ideas, principles, preferences and so on, and as such, he can make gross errors as any other human being.
0 1967-09-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But nothing in the creation that belongs to the mineral world, the plant world, or the animal world, need disappear. There were those monstrous animals: they disappeared materially, but not not the principle of the creation. Its since man came with the mindwhen the mind was twisted, deformed by the adverse Forces. That is really ugly.
How can that be dissolved? Torture, for instance, that sort of thing? How can it be dissolved from the earth consciousness so it no longer happens again? How can it be done?
0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when he left, there was a whole part the most material part of the descent of the supramental body down to the mind that visibly came out of his body like that and entered mine, and it was so concrete that I felt the FRICTION of Forces passing through the pores of the skin. I remember having said at the time, Well, anyone who has had this experience can, by this experience, bring the proof of afterlife to the world. It was it was as concrete as if it had been material. So naturally, after that it was there in the field of consciousness. But I have seen more and more, more and more, that all that happens, all the people we meet, all that happens to us personally (that is, taking this little body as being the person), all of that is ALWAYS a test: you stand firm or you dont; if you stand firm, you make a progress forward; if you dont, you have to go through it again.
Now it has become that way FOR THE BODY: when it hurts, when it gets disorganized, when it threatens to fall apart. And then, there is always that Consciousness inside, straight as a sword, that says, Now, will you stand firm? And the cells are really touchingly good willed: Oh, is it like that? Well, very well. So you remain very quiet, very peaceful, and then you callyou call the Lord. And you repeat the mantra, which comes automatically, and Peace establishes itself. And after a while the pain has disappearedeverything, just everything, all the threats disappear one after the other Thats how it is: Lord, You are there And you know, such dazzling, indisputable proof of this Presence, which is so wonderful and so simple, so simple, so total, in all that comes, all that happens, down to the smallest detail, so as to lead you as fast as possible to the transformation.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It began when the doctors declared I was seriously ill, that was the beginning.2 Because the entire body was emptied of its habits and Forces, and then, slowly, slowly, the cells woke up to a new receptivity and opened directly to the divine Influence.
Every cell is vibrating.
0 1967-11-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body itself has more than an impression, its a sort of knowledgemore than a knowledge, its, well, a fact: there are lots and lots of beings, Forces, personalities that manifest through it, at times even several at once. Thats a very common experience. For instance, the experience that Sri Aurobindo is here, and that he speaks and sees, with his own way of seeing (piercing and ironic gesture) and his way of expressing himself that happens very often. Often too, its Durga, or Mahakali, or very often. Often, what manifests is a being from very high up, very permanentvery permanentand then there comes into the being a sort of absoluteness. At times, its beings from a nearby plane trying to make themselves felt, to express themselves, but thats under control.
The body is used to it, you understand.
0 1967-12-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know what it is. I dont really know what it is, but the day before, in the evening (I forget what I was doing, I was busy), there was suddenly Often there are small vital entities, I think, or vital Forces (but to me those things are without force or power), and a small vital entity showed me the memory of an earthquake: around 1922 or 23, we had an earthquake; I was with Pavitra and we stood talking (we were going out, it was in the afternoon), when suddenly, hop! we jumped out of our skin, both of us.3 We knew what it was because we had gotten used to it in Japan. I said, Oh, an earthquake. It didnt lasta few seconds and it was over. I had completely forgotten it, and it was as if one of those beings came to bring the memory back, with at the same time, And what if there were another one? Oh, I said, what nonsense!
Just the evening before.
0 1967-12-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, that was the method of the adverse Forces to prove the creation was bad: they werent satisfied with the creation and set about doing that thats what they have been doing on a big scale. But it proves nothing! They have established death, established destruction and all forms of violence and hatred, anyway they have changed everything the wrong way round with the thought that, in that way, the world would become a superior worldwhich is idiotic.
And all these people now follow one another in single file, not even aware of what theyre doing or why or how or anything! They act in the name of freedom and in the name of progress, yes, free progress, because they want to impose an arbitrary law (Hindi) on them the arbitrary law is silly, but what they are doing is even sillier.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No error can be more perilous than to accept the immixture of the sexual desire and some kind of subtle satisfaction of it and look on this as a part of the sadhana. It would be the most effective way to head straight towards spiritual downfall and throw into the atmosphere Forces that would block the supramental descent, bringing instead the descent of adverse vital powers to disseminate disturbance and disaster. This deviation must be absolutely thrown away, should it try to occur and expunged from the consciousness, if the Truth is to be brought down and the work is to be done.
It is an error too to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre. The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital Forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.8
Sri Aurobindo
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For three things one should be on ones guard. One is the collective suggestion of diseasedisease is something that doubtless exists, in the sense that there are obviously adverse Forces at work trying to disorganize and delay the work; but, for the individual, those so-called diseases Outwardly they are based on the idea (they call it knowledge), on the knowledge of microbes, germs and so on, but thats taking things upside down, heels over head, because those microbes and germs and all those things are EFFECTS, not causes.
Its the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertiaits all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effectdeath. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.
--
In the relationship with the whole, there are roughly three we might call them means of defense, or attitudes one can take. The attitude of isolation, which cant be total unless you withdraw, and which is only very relatively effective. The attitude of attack: a power fighting and repulsing adversaries (that has a big drawback which is that if you use Forces on the same plane, they are ineffective, or very relatively effective; and if its supreme Forces, then the effect is rather catastrophic: it would amount to destroying in order to conquer, which is certainly not the Supremes intention). And finally, there is the way of the contagion of the higher Force, but that implies what expresses itself here as time. That is the attitude which has been adopted. But it implies timewhich is why ages go by.
The result is certain, with the least amount of damage. But that least amount is still quite considerable.
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I see these people [of the jute factory]: no choice needs to be made, the man didnt say spontaneously (or anyway, with feeling), This money is at the disposal of divine Forces for the actionnot at all, thats a thousand miles away from his thought. Its I quite simply want to take POSSESSION again of something he claims to own. So thats why (Mother shakes her head) it may be this or that, this way or that wayit hardly makes any difference.
The true attitude is this: money is a universal force meant to do the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive the divine Forces and manifest them, and it must come into the hands (the utilizing power, that is) of those who have the clearest vision, the most general and truest vision.
The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession Its mine, what does that mean? What does it mean? I cant really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs?To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. Thats how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a pile somewhere But thats a disease. To be sure of always having money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that the vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more Forces it can contain ( Forces, that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization the best, that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the egos falsified needs, but according to the earths general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.
Behind all false movements, there is a true one: there is a joy in being able to direct, utilize, organize things so as to keep wastage to a minimum while having a maximum of results. (Thats a very interesting vision to have.) And that must be the true side in those who want to amass: a capacity of utilization on a very large scale.
0 1968-04-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All that is going on in the bodyperhaps in different parts of the body, I dont know. There are GRADATIONS of consciousness, or more or less complete identifications, according to certain bodily functions I dont know. And beneath, there are still old undercurrents of mental influence, from what we are used to calling the higher mind (intuitive mind and so on). And then, all around, a whole play of Forces, suggestions, formations, which comes from outside. I say from outside, but theres no sense of outside; theres no such sense, no longer any sense of these people here and those people there its not like that, no longer at all, even for the body.
(Mother abruptly goes into a long contemplation that lasts till the end)
0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it shows that his vital is still not pure enough to be strong enough. The vital Forces there [in the Vatican] are EXTREMELY powerful.
But he told me that as soon as he goes out of his body, his body is devoured by wild beasts.
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its mostly P.L. who has been the victim, and me in part: it touched this body. But you know, even from the most ordinary, outward point of view, the healing was miraculous. Those things [the swelling] generally last for eight to ten daysit was over in two days. That was Even my body, though its used to being in contact with the Forces, was wonderstruck. It was miraculous.
The concrete action of this Force, which Sri Aurobindo called the supramental force, its first contact and first aspect is an aspect of Truth.2 As Sri Aurobindo said, Truth had to manifest first, before the Power of Love.
--
Have you read the letters of S.s children? Theyre over there. For instance, all the students and the whole working class have joined Forces. Naturally, on the mental level theres a whole mixture of all kinds of ideas, but the Force behind For example, the students want to completely change the method of education: they violently demand the elimination of all examinations. And they themselves are unaware of it, but they are driven by a force that wants the manifestation of a truer truth.
They themselves would rather have no violenceit seems its not the students who started the violence, but the police. And thats very interesting, because the police stand for the defense of the past. When I read those childrens letters, and when later I was given the news, then there came in me (it was said very, very clearly, a very clear vision): the future. Its the higher Power COMPELLING people to do what they must do. Between now and that (which is a long way ahead), there must be the power of an IMMOBILE number. And the vision was very clear: if millionsnot thousands, millionsof people assemble together and occupy the place absolutely peacefully (simply assemble and occupy the place, naturally with representatives who will say what they like), then it will have power. But there must be no violence; as soon as one indulges in violence, its the return to the past and the open door to all conflicts. At the time, I didnt know it was the police that had started the violence; I didnt know, I wasnt aware of the details of the events. But it was a very clear vision: an occupation by the mass, but a mass all-powerful in its immobility, imposing its will through sheer numbers, with intellectual representatives for negotiations.
0 1968-05-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Attacks by adverse Forces and Asuras.
Oh! (Laughing) Thats a convenient way of putting the blame on others!
--
When now people tell me about attacks by adverse Forces, I always feel like saying to them, The adversity is within you!
I think its a very convenient way to get impunity. Because if you are perfect, they cant do anything against you. Its absolutely obvious. Its imperfections that give them power. So if we shift our standpoint as Sri Aurobindo did, well see, as he said, that the so-called adverse Forces are tolerated because they are useful to awaken people to the need for transformation, to the urgency of purification.
***
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You say, An illness is quite simply, always and in every case, even when doctors tell you there are germsin every case its a disequilibrium in the being: a disequilibrium between various functionings, a disequilibrium between Forces.
I dont know, but if you say, a disequilibrium between various functionings, then it seems to be purely physical. I feel something is missing to say that its a disequilibrium in the PSYCHOLOGICAL being or functioning?
--
What you say here gives an impression that an illness has purely physical causes. So it might be necessary to add somewhere the word consciousness or psychological. You say, Its always a disequilibrium in the being, a disequilibrium between various functionings, a disequilibrium between Forces. It gives an impression of being something purely material.
There are no such things as purely material Forces.
If you like, the only distinction that may be made is between a greater or lesser degree of consciousness. And the appearance of materiality is in proportion to the unconsciousness.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And here [in Mother], the fact of the physical presence allows the Forces to be directed more precisely. I see how the Force from above acts (gesture of a descending pressure or mass), and people get the contact through a similarity of vibration. But when it goes like this (gesture through Mother), there is the addition of that physical, material knowledge, which makes it [the action of the Force] more precise and concrete. From the point of view of help, its Sri Aurobindo was right: the help is more direct. It spares people a work. I see what comes, that sort of atmosphere (its much more than an atmosphere: its a Presence, you know, constant, He is constantly there), but then, in the consciousness here [in Mother], the action is growing more precise: its growing more precise on an individual level, depending on the case, the need, the occasion. Its a sort of almost automatic work. I can imagine it helps people, obviously. They generally need a personal thingby personal I mean with a vibration identical to theirs.
I dont know if its because of this cold, I am not sure (I dont think so I know very well where it comes from), the whole morning (during the night and the morning), there has been a sort of perception of all kinds of states of consciousness this body has been through, groups of circumstances, and then a perception so concrete, you know, so absolute: Where is the person? Where, where is the individual? Where is the person? Where And with such a clear vision of the supreme Consciousness, which, on the other hand, is the ONLY permanent consciousness the supreme Consciousness at play in all that, all those movements, all those actions, all those But it was felt and lived in such a concrete way that I saw, for instance, that this body, which people think is the same body as the one born more than ninety years ago, isnt at all the same! Everything has changed: the cells have changed, everything! Everything: the state of consciousness is absolutely different. So then, where is the person? Where? Suddenly there was, Where, where is that personality? Where is it? There was only That (gesture above): Consciousness. And then, the vision of the whole, of things taking form and (wavy gesture of a Whole diversifying into innumerable forms).
0 1968-08-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Powerful and prolonged penetration of the supramental Forces into the body, everywhere at the same time.
Penetration into the body. Yes, penetrations of currents I had had several times, but that night (two nights ago, that is), what came all of a sudden was as though there was nothing anymore except a supramental atmosphere. Nothing remained except that. My body was in it. And it was PRESSING to enter, from everywhere, but everywhere at the same timeeverywhere. You understand, it wasnt a current flowing in, it was an atmosphere penetrating from everywhere. It lasted for at least four or five hours. And there was only one part that was BARELY penetrated: it was from here to here (gesture between the throat and the top of the head). Here it seemed gray and dull, as if the penetration were less My teeth are in a dreadful state, my head is in a dreadful state I tell you, I cant see anymore, cant hear anymore, cant All this (from head to throat) is in need of a great transformation. But apart from it, all the rest without exceptionit was pouring and pouring and pouring in. I had never, ever seen that before, never! It lasted for hourshours. Perfectly consciously.
--
As if the entire body were bathing in Forces penetrating it everywhere at the same time with a slight friction.
Then you say:
0 1968-08-30, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The same thing with the Vital. The Vital took a very bad turn, of course; its the Vital that has contained all the adverse Forces and all difficulties. Well, its the same thing: it was the first means to pull Matter out of the Inconscient. But once it has done its work we might say (smiling), well do without these two scoundrels!
Theres an experience (an experience Sri Aurobindo had constantly): there is an Intelligence highly superior to the Mind, which has nothing to do with the Mind. An intelligence of things And thats why he called his new creation supramental. He always used to describe it as a perfect understanding of things.
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital Forces and the Forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the Forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
--
Its strange. I have my eyes closed, but I see. Only, I see differently. Its very SIMPLE. Its Forces like a Pressure like this (same descending gesture).
Very strange.
0 1968-09-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its not merely the play of Forces: its conscious.3 Its conscious and has the obstinacy of a conscious will.
(long silence)
0 1968-10-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A cook who had been dismissed went to a fakir (or Muslim Tantric) to get revenge. For several weeks in a row, at certain times of the day stones rained in the courtyard of the Guest-House: a disciple even had his arm injured. It was a condensation of vital Forces. Amrita picked up some of those stones and preserved them to study them scientifically, but they were real stones, whose only peculiarity was that they were covered with moss all over. That was in 1921. Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter to Dilip on the subject (on February 2, 1943).
***
0 1968-11-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The basis should be the manifestation of supramental Forces. Only, theres no question of anything like that in religion, of course. If there had been any question of a Force or a Light or a change in the atmosphere announcing Christs reincarnation, they could have gone along in that direction, but theres nothing of that sort.2
There are some vague Scriptures that mention it. But theyre regarded as crank esotericism.
0 1968-11-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its going on. The body has the impression that its beginning to understand. For it, naturally, there are no thoughts at allnone at all; but its states of consciousness. States of consciousness complementing one another, replacing one another. To such a point that the body wonders how one can know with thought; for it, the only way of knowing, the only way of experiencing, is consciousness. Its growing increasingly clear from a general point of view. And its applying it; its applying it to itself, that is to say, a work is going on to make all the parts of the body conscious not only of the Forces they receive, the Forces going through the body, but of the action of its inner working.
Thats growing increasingly precise.
0 1969-02-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am entirely convinced that things are as they must be, and that its simply the body that lacks suppleness, tranquillity, trust. So I cant even say that things grate (they dont grate at all), but You understand, the work consists in changing the conscious base of all the cells but not all at once! Because that would be impossible; even little by little is very difficult: the moment when the conscious base is changed is There is almost a sort of panic in the cells, and the impression, Ooh! Whats going to happen? And since there are still lots and lots of them So now and then, its difficult. Its by group, almost by faculty or part of faculty, and some of them are a little difficult. I dont know (since its quite new), I dont know if it would be easier if I werent doing anything? Probably not, because its not so much the work [to be done], its not that: its peoples general attitude. It makes for a kind of collective support at the moment of the transition. At the moment when the consciousness that ordinarily supports the cells fades away for the new one to take the place, the cells need (the cells, I dont know if its them), but there has to be the support of (how can I put it?) in people it gets expressed as the need of the Presence, but thats not what is necessary: its a sort of collaboration of the collective Forces. Its not much, its not indispensable, but it helps a little, in some measure. There is a moment when theres almost an anguish, you know, youre suspended like that; it may be a few seconds, but those few seconds are terrible. This morning again there was a moment like that. I remember that at the time of the darshans, for two days Sri Aurobindo didnt want me to do any work for others (to see them, read letters, reply, all that), but he was here, so it was he who acted as support. Because I see that the work began long ago (in a subordinate and very little conscious way), but now its in full swing. So the cells feel some slight panic. Generally, a few minutes concentration is enough, but it causes a sort of wearinessweariness in the cells, a need not to do anything (Mother points at the clock, which reads 11).
If I hadnt known, if the body hadnt known what it was, well, ordinarily I would have lain down without seeing anyone. But the consciousness was there to say that the unpleasantness of it [the second of transition], the unpleasant consequence of it would have been worse than the fact of being tired.
0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These last few days, Mothers presence has revealed itself in my being and activities, stronger and more VISIBLE. In the polls commission, of which you know I am a member at the Popes pleasure, I felt the other day an irrepressible force in my breast: I had to speak out. I knew that my words would cause a scandal in the meeting. The little voice was telling me, Now is the time, cry out the message Mother has given you; do not fear, she is with you. And I spoke, to the great consternation of those present. Listen to me, all of you. The only thing that could open up Christianity (because its closed in on itself, turned towards the past, and therefore immutable, unprogressive: there is the seed of its own death and decomposition), the only thing would be for it to admit a force from the FUTURE. Satprem, do you remember these words? You conveyed them from Mother to me on 26 November 68, the day I sent you that article on the crisis of Christianity. I went on: There are new Forces and new facts. Someone has said it (I did not name Sri Aurobindo, following your same letter), and has spoken of the SUPRAMENTAL, but the word, the form or terms matter little.(There I quoted you again.) If only Christianity could admit, for instance, Christs reincarnation, or a second, FUTURE Christ, it would be saved, its attitude would be open instead of being closed. That is the crux of the whole matter, and beating about the bush, carrying out all kinds of reform and modernization is nothing, it only touches appearances, and unless we touch this center But of course, it instantly means heresy! Yet there is the only salvation for the Church, the only thing that really needs rethinking. All the rest is chatter. We have shut everything up: we are the depositaries of the faithDepositum Fidei! And nothing to add. Does it mean that Christ died without leaving any possibility to add to his message? But we arent the same men as in Palestine. We have limited the Divines powers. We have forbidden Christ any expansion. We have locked him up and thrown the key into the sea..
The silence was dense, the stupefaction huge. And I went on again: But we believe we are the interpreters, and except us none has the right to speak. Nevertheless we are faced with the current phenomenon of anti-establishment protest. The youth is running away from us, our formulas are old, ineffective, we preach without conviction, we demand absurd things, and to have peace, we stick a label of sin on all taboos. I know that my speech will be called subversive. In dictatorial or established regimes, those who move forward are suspicious. For twenty centuries we have used the weapon of heresy, and we know the atrocities that were committed in the name of Christ: that was our defenseit was his wisdom to keep power But if Christ suddenly appeared here, in front of us, do you think he would recognize himself in us? Is the Christ we preach the Christ of the BEATITUDES? Our preoccupation is to prohibit opening. And we make fools of ourselves with the pill. But are we also preoccupied with the TRUTH? Yet we should read our holy books again, but read them without passion, without egoistic interest; almost two thousand years ago, St. Paul said, Multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens in prophetis, novissime diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio (several times and in several ways God has spoken through the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son Jesus Christ). Thus God has spoken in several ways. I know that a new light has just appeared, a new Consciousness let us go in search of it. But we shall have to step down from our throne, from our convenience; perhaps to leave the place to others and do away with the Hierarchy: no more Pope or Cardinals or Bishops, but all of us seekers of the TRUTH, of the CONSCIOUSNESS, the POWER, the SUPRANATURAL, the SUPRAHUMAN..
0 1969-04-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What will stop it? Is it receptive to the subtle Forces?
(After a silence) Theres a man First, theres our good S.H.5 here, but theres another man at Shantiniketan; I saw him, I know him, and he always said it was Sri Aurobindos thought that could save China. But he came here because he wasnt a Communist and they filched all his goodshe gave them; when he was informed, he wrote [to the Chinese government] and told them, I give them to you; you took them, but I give them to you. That was very good, very clever. So naturally, he is respected. But I dont think he can do much. But his own opinion is that its only Sri Aurobindos thought that can save China. China is extremely intellectual; if the Chinese intelligence were captured by Sri Aurobindos thought, it would be That seems to be the sole, the only hope.
--
For for years, even from the time Sri Aurobindo was here, there had been the visionan inner vision that India is the place where the fate of the earth will be decided. So the two opposite possibilities are there. As if it were said that if there were war, it would be over India; that the world conflict (how can I put it?), the ISSUE would be played out over India. But will the Force of Peace be sufficient to prevent war? Theres the whole question. But the whirl of Forces is here, over India.
And since this Consciousness came, things have been accelerating. It has given a great rapidity of movement to circumstances. But then, its becoming urgent. And oh, falsehood, duplicity oh, everything seems to be rising to the surfaceits hideous. Will the the Force of Harmony and Peace be strong enough to to digest all that? I dont know.
--
Its like a conflict between the Forces that want to destroy the earth and the terrestrial transformation. If those Forces can be checked, can be mastered or rendered powerless, then the earths progress and transformation will go on soaring upmagnificent! But now monsters seem to be coming up from every side to prevent that.
(silence)
0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I get a sense of many illwills at the momentmany Forces of ill-will.
Yes, oh yes!
--
There would seem to be a rage among the adverse Forces; they feel that something radical is now going on and want to prevent it at any costwhich is idiotic, by the way, completely stupid. But we might say its fine, because they actually give an opportunity they put themselves in the conditions needed to receive the answer: the backlash.
You know, I saw something last night.
--
But if the Forces werent relentless, things could go on for a long, long time, you understand; this way, the conflict becomes swifter. And thats what this consciousness That trust is what it wanted to give. We mustnt go out of this Consciousness, you understand. It has power. And a fantastic power.
Basically, this message of Sri Aurobindo is almost this: Do not go out of this Consciousness, do not refuse this Consciousness. It is sent by the Grace, do not refuse it.
0 1969-04-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That serpent, you know Why this vision suddenly? I dont know. I was in a state in which I was trying to establish a general harmonyprobably it was too limited or incomplete or And then that serpent came.1 You understand, the universe is the Lord manifested, and so for this body, anyhow, its perfection, but of course its unable to understand; and all of a sudden this serpent came, and came in such a way that the body said to itself, Well! Id never thought of that (which isnt true, of course). There are all the theories that explain evil as the action of adverse Forces in the universe, but that seems quite childish. And as always it showed something VERY subtle in the play of Forces (and how, to try and make it [evil] understood, the notion was born of a succession in time, which is absurdin other words, successive creations). And there was something very subtle to show that those poisoned fangs are a defense, not an attack; this consciousness gave proof that the poisoned fangs are a defense, because they existed AFTER the attack but how to explain that I dont know.
(Mother seems to gaze at a world of simultaneous things, and gropes for words)
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But with this Consciousness, there is the why of everything: everyones reaction, why he acts in that way, and And since its been there, not once have I seen in this Consciousness a reproachnot once did it reproach anyone. It has explained everything in such a way that it becomes so luminous, so understanding as to make you wonder, Why should one reproach anyone? Oh, for it, moral notions are something something ultra-stupid. But I told it (I am still telling it) that they were necessary in the course of evolution to refine matter and open the way to certain Forces: if people had been from the beginning wholly satisfied with themselves, they would never have progressed. But now, its time to seetime to see.
The vast majority of humanity is unconscious (what I call unconscious, that is, without contact with the Consciousness, not CONSCIOUSLY in contact with Consciousness), the vast majority; but for one who is capable of being above circumstances with a clear and precise vision of the why and the how its wonderful.
--
But I cant make out the difference: for me theres always the force, so I cant tell the difference between Forces.
No, but I Mind you, if I hadnt had that experience of January 1st, when I felt it come I felt it, saw it come, it was wholly concrete, like like someone coming into the room, you understand, that concrete. So thats what made me take notice, otherwise I would have found it to be the normal course of the development. But that experience alerted me; that, and the fact that three people felt it before I said anything, and those three people told me about it before I even said a word. They told me about it while asking me, What has happened? Thats what I found interesting. But, for me, it was the same thing as for them, there was no difference; I told them there wasnt any difference in gradationit wasnt that this Consciousness was more intimate with me than with you all: its the same thing, it was like someone coming in. But a someone superlatively conscious. Thats what caused me to note the fact; otherwise I would have taken it as the course of the development, like you.
0 1969-05-21, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most people the vast majority of peoplego into a sort of assimilative sleep: all the experiences they had in their lives, all they learned, the consciousness seems to ruminate over that. In the beginning (Thon knew a lot of things I dont know how he came to know them, but I verified them and found them to be correct), in the beginning, the span of time between two lives is very long, and its a sort of assimilative sleep in which the consequences of what one has learned develop inwardly. Then, as the psychic being is formed and as one grows more conscious, rebirths take place more and more closely, until the time when rebirth becomes the result of a choice: at a precise place, for a specific length of time. And then, depending on what the psychic being wants to do, depending on the action it has to do, the new birth may be near or distant. There, we have all possible differences. But in the formative stage, thats how it is: very distant rebirths. So then, Ive often wondered You see, Thon says there is a psychic STATE in which those beings rest (its true, there is such a place, I know it), but many people, especially at the beginning of their evolution, are quite tied down to the earth; I have seen quite a few people in trees, for instance. Very often I saw them in trees; often, while following someone [with the inner vision], I saw him enter into a tree; and often, while looking at a tree, I saw someone in it. I saw others who were oh, people clinging to a place they were interested in: for instance, I saw a man who was interested in nothing but his money, which he had hidden somewhere, and as soon as he left his body, he went there, settled there, and refused to budge from there! Incidentally (laughing), it had a curious result: it led people to discover the place! You see, it caused movements of Forces, and some people felt it and thought, Oh, there must be something here.
There was a time when I concerned myself with that a good deal, and I made a good number of discoveries (following Thons indications); later on, it no longer interested me. And now, quite lately, I have been reviewing all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
0 1969-06-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My work is the same, there are difficulties in accepting my ideas. I am regarded as a crank (I think so, though no one has talked to me about it, for there is a force protecting me). Yet, things at the Vatican, at the center of the Church, are changing. The struggle of the new Forces against the traditional ones is now very strong. If the Pope accepts (his entourage is against it) to go to Geneva on June 10 and take part in the Assembly of Protestant Churches, and asserts there that we are not the only ones to possess the truth, I believe that will be a great step forward. But will he have the courage to accept that other religious movements too are seeking? Or will he remain rooted in the assertion that extra ecclesia non est salus,1 that the only depository of the Truth, the exclusive owner (!) of salvation is the Catholic Church? For the time being, I am on the list of those accompanying him. Mothers assistance will have to be strong on that day
(after a silence)
0 1969-06-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is referring to a special puja or Tantric ritual (kumari puja) during which the officiant brings down certain Forcesan emanation of the Motherinto a very young girl. This was on October 20, 1958.
These last few days, Mother has been "in a bad state."
0 1969-08-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This state From experience I know its the state in which ONE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. One becomes a sort of instrument (which is even unaware of being an instrument, you understand), which is used for (gesture showing the flow of Forces through the instrument) projecting Forces (gesture in every direction from the central instrument). You know, the brain is far, far too smalleven when its very large, its too small to understand; thats why there is this blank in the mind. And the thing takes place.
So then, you realize that for the purposes of the very small life you represent, it takes place automatically, and it simply makes you do every minute what you have to do, without without calculation, without speculation, without decision, without anything, like this (same gesture of flowing through the instrument).
0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there was a great Asura behind her!1 There were the adverse Forces behind. The woman herself was nothing, but she was very receptive to those Forces.
And he didnt want to break her?
--
Otherwise, its the play of Forces, and its NECESSARY to intervene.
But there, if one is like this (still gesture, turned upward), then its the Supreme Power that comes. Then
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. Then the woman died the day after giving birth, and the child is now seventeen, I think. He told me, Thats how it is: there is NO power, it doesnt existthere is That, the Harmony; everyone has the capacity to call this Harmony, and It acts. And It acts in a second, instantly. But then, he told me, Here is my question (as far as I can express what he said). Basically, he is aware of quite an extraordinary Powerthough I should say I didnt feel a shadow of ego in this man, theres no trace of ego. He read my book, but that didnt teach him things, it only confirmed some experiences. This man spoke to me for more than three hours, and apart from you and Sri Aurobindo, I have heard no one speak like him. It was a sage who spoke, a living experience that sprang forth, there wasnt one thing he said you wouldnt subscribe to: those great Forces of Harmony that must be embodied on earth, brought down on earth It was really a sage who spoke, and those were your words, Sri Aurobindos words.
Thats what A. told me; the first day when he received him, he told me, I thought I was listening to you or to Sri Aurobindo!
--
Because it would be interesting if in front of you he tried to formulate his question outwardly He understands quite well that evolution has reached a point where things must accelerate and those Forces of Harmony must be brought into the world, but basically, he feels such a power in him that he wouldnt want to act arbitrarily: he wouldnt want to break the equilibrium, but to follow the Law. And for that, total vision is needed. He told me, The miracles Christ worked, for instance (there is no such thing as miracles, by the way), all that I can do, but if I did it, with the means of communication of modern science, it would immediately be known the world over, and something of that sort could strike a great blow to the ordinary mind which only believes in the truths of matter. He asks, That would be a means of action, but should I do that? His problem is one of action.
What is he doing now?
0 1969-09-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Satprem to Mother:) Thats how he had taken it, but he wanted a confirmation. Because, for example, he has the case of a man whom he knows intimately and who has become a paralytic. He put all his heart into curing him, and he says he feels the Forces entering this man, he finds him receptive
But he isnt cured.
--
I constantly feel nauseous, which points to the insufficiency of material Forces.
But thats strange, because in my case, when my body is near him, its full of energy.
0 1969-11-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That process of holding hands in meditation is the process you use when you want to circulate vital Forces. I did that with a group in 1910. And as soon as I came here, all those things seemed to me to be not the true Thing. And yet he is open and receives the Force VERY WELL. But as soon as theres something else, it no longer works. So there.
But at the same time, he says, I want to find!
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you several times, the organs are supported in their functioning by the Forces of Nature, and in this process of transformation, the Forces of Nature are withdrawn and replaced with the divine Presence. But you understand, there comes a moment when there is a gap [between the old functioning and the new]it may be imperceptible, but still it has an effect; a moment comes when there is an anguish. And then, some things are only partially transformed; so one part, then another part, then yet another part are taken up in succession, and since the heart is a very important thing, I am convinced it takes place very slowly. As a result, one often experiences the same thing, more or less strongly. The calmer one is, the more trusting one is, the more one is in the true attitude, and the less strong it is the consequences are less strong. But still, there is a consequence, and he was taken by surprise, he didnt know what it was.
But it interested me. What A.R. said, To be entirely governed by the divine Consciousness, appealed to him a lot, its an approach he understood. He must have tried, and thats the result. I saw other people who had pains, but that one is more alarming. Others have pains here or there or but when it touches the heart, people start being more alarmed. But in several cases, I saw that this Force doesnt act only here [in Mother]: it acts in others. And always, always, the moment of transition (it may be very brief, or it may take some time) is a bit difficult. One needs to be forewarned.
0 1969-12-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. But I can see, thats what Sri Aurobindo also had: there is a certain power that comes from the contact with the supramental Forces, which Sri Aurobindo had, and which I have experienced (when I said, He takes things away as one would do with ones hand, and nothing remains), but its not cured, in the sense that out of weakness one lets the ailment come back. I clearly see that, I have the same experience now, but thats not what I call cure; and I clearly see that to cure, something else would be needed. Something else would be needed. Ultimately to put it quite tritely, one can cure only if the disease isnt necessary to the individuals development.
One can give the body an indication of the direction it should follow in order to be cured, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it wont do it.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the exact indication of people when they are displeased (displeased with what I said or with what I did, or with the way the Divine treats them through someone else, or), and its their displeasure which causes that. People with quite different characters, all three of them, quite a different position, quite different thoughts . So I wondered: is this really the action of whats conventionally called the adverse Forces through people?
I am studying that.
0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this body feels so clearly that it it no longer belongs here, but its not yet there, so (Mother makes a gesture in suspense) in appearance its something completely absurd, with apparent weaknesses that human beings scorn, and (laughing) awesome Forces that human beings cannot bear.
Its curious.
0 1970-02-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That atmosphere is full of an anguish that so much calls for a response, and so it comes, and after (sometimes it takes a long time, hours) but it penetrates, it spreads. But I dont always have the time. In the morning especially, I always see lots of people (Wednesdays and Saturdays3 are the two days when Ive done away with it, but even then Ill see some twenty people before you!), and that causes a dissipation of Forces. So thats the form it takes (Mother points to her throat): increased disorder. Otherwise, when I am alone, that is at night (its only at night), when I am like that, lying on my bed, then then its all right. But its the anguish of the world! Now I understand (I am not aware of what goes on), but it was so dreadful! I felt, I said to myself, What is it? Whats going on that can cause this? People themselves are so unconscious. Did I tell you the story of those poor little seals?4
Such unconsciousness! If they could only feel a little the suffering they inflict on others, it might make them stop (?)
0 1970-02-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ayudh puja or "festival of arms." On a similar occasion, when Mother was seriously attacked, Sri Aurobindo had to write the disciples a letter in which he said, "The Mother has had a very severe attack and she must absolutely husb and her Forces.... It is quite out of the question for her to begin seeing everybody and receiving thema single morning of that kind of thing would exhaust her altogether. You must remember that for her a physical contact of this kind with others is not a mere social or domestic meeting with a few superficial movements which make no great difference one way or the other. It means for her an interchange, a pouring out of her Forces and a receiving of things good, bad and mixed from them which often involves a great labour of adjustment and elimination and in many cases, though not in all, a severe strain on the body."
(November 12, 1931, Cent. Ed., 25.315)
0 1970-03-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its as if from every sideevery sidethose mental Forces, mental powers were rising in protest, violent in their protest, so as to impose their old laws: But things have always been this way! But its over. They wont always be this way, thats all.
(long silence)
0 1970-03-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a consciousness in which the sense of ego completely disappears, it does not exist. There isnt a person in front of others, you understand, receiving and sending influencesits no longer like that at all. Its a general play of Forces (Mother makes a vast, fluid gesture) in which everyone spontaneously plays his part.
Several times the body has had that experience. It remains in that for a long time. Now its almost that relationship with things and beings (the old relationship) is on the verge of becoming a memory. Its no longer no longer natural.
--
My difficulty in distinguishing Forces or influences is that its always translated as an intensity of force in me, so I dont know how to untangle: its always force, you understand, intensity.
Yes, and his must be VERY intense!
0 1970-04-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a curious situation. The being isnt at all turned in on itself: theres nothing, its like this (Mother stretches her arms into the infinite). Its like this. Maybe thats why: it receives Forces but doesnt keep them, they hardly enter at all [into Mother], its like this (gesture of a continuous flow through Mother and spreading outward), all the time. All the time like that. So if I am told about something, it makes a point (Mother pinches a point in space between her two fingers), a point of concentration for a moment; otherwise its all the time like that (same gesture of continuous flow), all the time. It goes like this, like this (same gesture of outward flow). It feels the body feels Forces coming, but it doesnt even feel them going through, doesnt feel its giving them, not at all, its like that (same gesture of spreading). It all goes through without through what, one doesnt know Very nonexistent. Very nonexistent. And then, if the body starts being conscious of itself or of something, its MOST unpleasant, a discomfort.
I have noticed that with receptive people (I see people, lots of them), with receptive people, it starts flowing and flowing and flowing like that. And nothing else: no thought, no not even sensation. But the strange thing is that if the body becomes conscious of itself it doesnt suffer, thats not suffering, but something which is an inexpressible discomfort.
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I forget how it started, but I was very ill, seriously ill, and my body wasnt asleep, yet wasnt awake (thats a fairly normal state now: Ill be absorbed in a consciousness, which I think is the consciousness of the subtle physical; at least I was there last night). So then, I was very ill, but I knew it wasnt this body (but it was this bodys consciousness), it was a family at the Ashram, and the father was seeking help, looking for a doctor (all the details with such precision!). And while that was going on, the body said to itself, So I am identified with this person, since he is treating this person (me, that is); and since I am identified, I must do in this person what needs to be done. Then I concentrated and called the Forces of the Lord, and treated the person. All that down to the last detail. It lasted for two hours. At the same time, I saw people who were extraordinarily interested in the event, looking on; for instance, among them, not to name him, there was Nolini, bent over like that and looking (Mother opens her eyes wide) to try and understand what was going on. Which means it was taking place in a world that had the full appearancefull appearanceof the material world, but in which people were conscious.
Im not recounting all the details, but my body FELT the battle of the illness. And at the same time it knew it wasnt its own body, you understand? It was like that, a very complex, very precise consciousness, with a great force. And all of it going on at the same time I wasnt asleep.
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, its a light with several degrees, and in the most material its slightly it must be the supramental force, because its slightly golden, slightly pinkish (you know that light), but very, very pale. One of them (gesture pointing to another, higher layer) is white like milk, opaqueits very strong. And theres another (gesture very high) which is white like its transparent light. With that one, its strange: one drop of it on the hostile Forces, and theyre dissolved. They melt like this (gesture before ones very eyes). I said all that to Sri Aurobindo, he completely confirmed it. Thats essentially the Grace in its (gesture very high) supreme state. Its a Light it has no color, you know, its transparent, and that Light (I have experienced that, I mention it because I know it), if you put it on a hostile being it melts like that. Its extraordinary. And then, in its benevolent form, as we might call it (that is to say, the Grace helping and assisting and healing), its white like milk. And if I want a wholly material action (but this is quite recentits since this new Consciousness came), then in its physical action, on the physical, its become slightly colored: its luminous, golden with some pink in it, but its not pink (Mother takes a hibiscus next to her). Its like this.
Like Aurovilles flower?
0 1970-07-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I told her, But are the children happy about it? Oh, she said, there its all Mothers ideas, its all the same thing. Then she asked me, Do you think there is a difference between the Divine here and there? So she is completely open at the level of vital Forces. When youre near her, you receive a sort of vital delugenot ugly or low, but With a great desire to help others, to act, to be the instrument and so on.
Oh!
0 1970-10-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Answer:) Not sex exactly, but what might be called the masculine and feminine principle. It is a difficult question [whether sex is altered in rebirth]. There are certain lines the reincarnation follows and so far as my experience goes and general experience goes, one follows usually a single line. But the alteration of sex cannot be declared impossible. There may be some who do alternate. The presence of feminine traits in a male does not necessarily indicate a past feminine birththey may come in the general play of Forces and their formations. There are besides qualities common to both sexes. Also a fragment of the psychological personality may have been associated with a birth not ones own. One can say of a certain person of the past, that was not myself, but a fragment of my psychological personality was present in him. Rebirth is a complex affair and not so simple in its mechanism as in the popular idea.
11 January 1936
0 1971-04-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unfortunately my bad eyesight Forces me always to rely on intermediaries, and that impairs the working harmony.
With all my affection and blessings
0 1971-05-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a concentration of adverse Forces wanting to create as much confusion as possible. And what is amusing is that theyre coming from all sides [asking Mothers advice] except PakistanPakistan doesnt ask anything, but otherwise. And all that.
But I was told fantastic things, for example, that Pakistan wanted India to declare war because she would immediately call for Chinas help; and that Pakistan is already receiving arms from America through Turkey. Such things.
0 1971-05-22, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats always there. Its everything that does not want the Divine which creates the atmosphere deliberately to discourage those who want the Divine. You must you mustnt pay any attention. Its the device of the devil. Pessimism is the devils tool, for he feels his own situation is (shaky gesture). You know, if the possibility I see materializes, it will really be a decisive Victory over the adverse Forcesnaturally they fight back as best as they can. But thats always the devil, as soon as you see even the tail of pessimism, its the devil. Thats his great tool.
(long silence)
0 1971-06-09, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres an onslaught of adverse Forces. A ferocious onslaught. But the Response is beginning to comejust a very small beginning. In each person there was like a storm, and its not completely over. Everything you thought was conquered and pushed away is rushing backin the most unexpected personsunder every guise, but mainly in the character, oh! doubts, revolts, everything.
(silence)
0 1971-06-26, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very mixed. I mean the Forces on one side and the Opposition on the other are not clear-cutits not like that. Pakistan is fully in falsehood, but even there. Its mixed, very mixed.
India too.
0 1971-07-03, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, nonsense! Thats part of the adverse Forces. When it comes, you just have to say, Well, fine, I am just listening to the Falsehood. You have a whole life of realization ahead of you!
I mean something to create.
0 1971-07-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, one has the impression that America is doing the politics of the adverse Forces. Youd say theyre working for the adverse Forces.
(silence)
0 1971-07-31, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To master the sex-impulse,to become so much master of the sex-centre that the sexual energy would be drawn upwards, not thrown outwards and wastedit is so indeed that the force in the seed can be turned into a primal physical energy supporting all the others, retas into ojas. But no error can be more perilous than to accept the immixture of the sexual desire and some kind of subtle satisfaction of it and look on this as a part of the sadhana. It would be the most effective way to head straight towards spiritual downfall and throw into the atmosphere Forces that would block the supramental descent, bringing instead the descent of adverse vital powers to disseminate disturbance and disaster. This deviation must be absolutely thrown away, should it try to occur and expunged from the consciousness, if the Truth is to be brought down and the work is to be done.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1971-09-29, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, it means that all those Forces that have remained hidden underneath for thousands of year
Yes.
0 1971-10-02, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The problem is deeper, of course, as you well know. What is at stake at the end of the present mental cycle is the creation of a new man that is what we are trying to do here with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Great Forces are at work here, in a humble way. And I am happy that Supermanhood did not leave you insensitive. Indeed, its cry needs you and your capacity to grasp the profound Sense of our human crisis.
May the Force of Sri Aurobindo and Mother be with you.
0 1971-10-20, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and Forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field, and I have been careful not to make any public pronouncement as that might prejudice my possibilities of future action. What that will be will depend on developments. The present trend of politics may end in abortive unrest, but it may also stumble with the aid of external circumstances into some kind of simulacrum of self-government. In either case the whole real work will remain to be done. I wish to keep myself free for it in either case.
Aurobindo
0 1971-10-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, but people are going mad. I really dont know how long it will last, but there is a wind of madness everywhere. They talk only of killing. Its as if (gesture showing the onrush of vital Forces on earth), oh! The world has become repugnant.
Division is very strong.
0 1971-11-20, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The remedy lies in union with the divine Forces which are at work and in a confident and quiet receptivity that facilitates the process.
November 18, 1971
Those who want to progress have an exceptional chance; because the transformation begins by opening the consciousness to the working of the new Forces; and thus individuals have a unique and marvelous opportunity to open to the divine influence.
November 20, 1971
0 1971-11-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Answer:) The statement made to X was not quiet correct; it is putting things in too physical a form. A spiritual and occult working supplies Forces and can watch over the members of the execution of a world event, but to put it like that makes the actual workers too much of automata which they are not.
25 January 1937
0 1971-12-04, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The world situation is critical today. Indias fate too is hanging in the balance. There was a time when India was a absolutely secure, there was no danger whatever of her being victim to Asuric aggression. But things have changed. People and Forces in India have acted in such a way as to invite Asuric influences upon her: these have worked insidiously and undermined the security that was there.
If India is in danger, Pondicherry cannot be expected to remain outside the danger zone. It will share the fate of the rest of the country. The protection I can give is not unconditional. It is idle to hope that in spite of anything and everything, the protection will be there over all. My protection is there if conditions are fulfilled. It goes without saying that any sympathy or support for the Nazis (or for any ally of theirs) automatically cuts across the circle of protection. Apart from this obvious and external factor, there are more fundamental psychological conditions which demand fulfillment. The Divine can give protection only to those who are whole-heartedly faithful to the Divine, who live truly in the spirit of sadhana and keep their consciousness and preoccupation fixed upon the Divine and the service of the Divine. Desire, for example, insistence on ones likes and conveniences, all movements of hypocrisy and insincerity and falsehood, are great obstacles standing in the way of the Divines protection. If you seek to impose your will upon the Divine, it is as if you were calling for a bomb to fall upon you. I do not say that things are bound to happen in this way; but they are very likely to happen, if people do not become conscious and strictly vigilant and act in the true spirit of a spiritual seeker. If the psychological atmosphere remains the same as that of the outside world, there can be no wall of security against the dark Forces that are working out in it the ordeal of danger, suffering and destruction entering here.
The Mother
0 1971-12-08, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My nights. I dont have the impression of sleeping, but time goes by without my noticing it, like that, simply feeling the Forces going through. But I dont know what they do I know theyre going through [Mother] and are focused here or there. But I have no curiosity; just the impressions of being very quiet so the process can go on unhinderedso that nothing creates an obstacle to the passing of the Forces at work.
And hour after hour, hour after hour, day after day its like that. With the impression that the time goes by unnoticed. Not long, not.
0 1971-12-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes a great wandering Thought sees the ages still unaccomplished, seizes the Force in its eternal flow and precipitates upon earth the powerful vision, which is like a power of realizing what it sees. The world is a vision becoming real. Indeed its past and its present are not the result of an obscure impulse coming from the womb of time, of a slow accumulation of sediments which little by little mold usand stifle us and imprison us. It is the powerful golden attraction of the future which draws us in spite of ourselves, as the sun draws the lotus from the mud, and Forces us to a glory greater than any our mud or efforts or present triumphs could have foreseen or created.
Sri Aurobindo is this vision and this power of precipitating the future into the present. What he saw in an instant the ages and millions of men will unwittingly accomplish. Unknowingly they will seek the new imperceptible quiver that has entered the earths atmosphere. From age to age great beings come amongst us to hew a great opening of Truth in the sepulchre of the past. And in actuality, these beings are the great destroyers of the past. They come with the sword of Knowledge to shatter our fragile empires.
0 1972-01-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may interest the reader to know that according to Sri Aurobindo, these colours generally have the following significances, though the exact meaning may vary "with the field, the combinations, the character and shades of the colour, the play of Forces": red = physical; orange = supramental in the physical; yellow = thinking mind; green = life; blue = higher mind; violet = divine compassion or grace; gold = divine Truth; white = the light of the Mother, or the Divine Consciousness. (See also Agenda IV, May 18, 1963.)
March 30, 1935. (Question:) Sri Aurobindo is bound to be wholly supramental and is being supramentalised in parts. If that is true and it iswell, he can't die till he is supramental and once he is so he is immortal. (Answer:) "It looks very much like a non-sequitur. The first part and the last are all right but the link is fragile. How do you know I won't take a fancy to die in between as a joke?" (Question:) Some people say that yourself and the Mother would have been supramentalised long ago if only we had not kept you down. Is it really true? (Answer:) "I can't say there is no truth in it."
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the Forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have apparently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.
--
In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra Forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.
Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.
0 1972-06-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I continually have the feeling (fifty times a day, perhaps) of being a little baby (gesture, kicking hands and legs), completely wrapped in and tossed about by the divine Forces! (laughter) Exactly like that.
There are still. It isnt completely transparent, naturally, there still remain some old things, the egos old rule over the body, which causes grating and friction, but otherwise otherwise just like a baby!
0 1972-07-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its truly interesting, because I dont at all feel like eating, I am not interested in it, and yet something Forces me to eatnot much, but it says, Eat.
The same with speech. Things are so clear, there is such a clear vision! (gesture above the head) When I am silent and quiet for hours, SO MUCH work is being done, and everywhere at the same time (universal gesture). But I cant express it.
0 1972-08-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On one side She had to fight the onset of decay and old age and on the other She was fighting against this dirt that we were constantly throwing upon Her. But more the failing body I hold responsible for what happened. Often I have seen that She was trying to counteract these Forces but when She saw that She could not concentrate much, She could not talk much, She could not write much, She could not see people, She could not do as She wanted, because the body was failing, and the dirt and dust that we were throwing upon Her was increasing, increasing and increasing, I felt and I have seen also some kind of despair.
We know that all too well, alas: they thought she was old and disabled But Pranab adds the following, which suddenly gives us the magnitude of the real tragedywe could almost say the horror Mother had to face in her body. This is what he says, and let us remember we are today in August 1972:
--
As in all tragedies in human History, there is not a particular person to blame. Humans only incarnate certain types of force or character they come, die, triumph and vanish but the Forces remain and continue to animate millions and millions of unknown little humans here and there, who are silently responsible and the invisible actors in the drama. There is no one to put on trial hereexcept millions who are but ourselves. It would therefore be absurd to say that Pranab was the author, or the sole author, of that formation (Everywhere, there are wills that it [the body] should die! she said), but he certainly fostered it and transmitted it, and because he was physically present all the time, Mother had to brea the that horror constantly. Ultimately there remains this haunting question, the only one perhaps: Could it have been otherwise?
***
0 1972-08-16, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a long story. Some adverse Forces had banded together and decided that I was going to die yesterday. And it was true, it happened, there was an attack. In that sense a real victory took place at the balcony. But it was invisible.
Now if this (whats the word?) this news is true, if it continues to be true, I should last till Ill be this way (gesture in suspense or between two positions) till my centenary, that is, 1978, then (still assuming this voice is true), the supramental transformation of the body will begin.
0 1972-09-30, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The principle of mechanical repetition is very strong in the material nature, so strong that it makes one easily think that it is incurable. That, however, is only a trick of the Forces of this material inconscience; it is by creating this impression that they try to endure. If, on the contrary, you remain firm, refuse to be depressed or discouraged and, even in the moment of attack, affirm the certainty of eventual victory, the victory itself will come much more easily and sooner.
Letters on Yoga, XXIV.1336
0 1973-01-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you know, at the same time, I am aware of the divine Forces going through like this (gesture through the body). I try to obstruct as little as I can. And it gives some extraordinary results: constantly, there are what people call miracles.
But to me, its not quiet as it could beas they SHOULD be.
0 1973-02-18, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There would be a lot to say. It depends on each case. I myself very much encouraged the practice of fencing because it gives you skill, control over your movements and discipline in violence I very much encouraged fencing at one time. I learned how to shoot; I used to shoot with a rifle, because it gives you steadiness and skill and a very good eye; and it Forces you to remain calm in the midst of danger. All these things are. I dont see why one should be hopelessly nonviolent, it only makes a spineless character.
Turn it into an art! An art for cultivating calm, skill and self-control. Theres no need to cry out indignantly as Gandhi would. Its useless, useless, absolutely useless I am not at all in favor of it! One should master the means of self-defense, and one should cultivate them in order to do so.
Above all, make them understand that moral violence is just as bad as physical violence. It can even be worse, that is, at least physical violence Forces you to become strong and control yourself, whereas moral violence is. You may be like this [apparently quiet] and harbor the worst moral violence in yourself.
***
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark Forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous Forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
Agni feared and tried to escape from the burden of his responsibility. He wrapped himself in a thick and vast cloak and hid in the depths of far waters. That is the parable way of describing the difficulty, the apparent impossibility of the undertaking Agni has to shoulder. Curiously however he has taken shelter just in the spot which seemed safest to him, from where begins his work, whose nature and substance he has to transform, that is to say, the nether regions of inconscience which is to be raised and transfigured into the solar region of the supra-consciousness.
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Unsatisfied Forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar Forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
--
This war is a great menace; it is also a great opportunity. It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very downrush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true' use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring about a change, better still, a reversal, in his consciousness, that is to say, it will be of highest utility if it Forces upon him by the pressure of inexorable circumstancessince normally he is so unwilling and incapable to do it through a spontaneous inner awakening the inescapable decision that he must change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed" as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and how or end in barrenness is the question the Fates and the gods are asking of man the mortal beingtoday.
***
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter Forces Matter to be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient. This tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a mighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which the blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and heat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in Matter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness that is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in Matter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and embodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first sprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened consciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant or vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to come still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and in a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its movements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next higher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a psyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and sensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of vitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it asks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied, for it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal, arrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and self-consciousness and capacity for self-determination.
Thus we see that evolution, the unfolding of consciousness follows exactly the line of its involution, only the other way round: the mounting consciousness re-ascends step by step the same gradient, retraces the same path along which it had descended. The descending steps are broadly speaking (I) Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, (2) Supermind and its secondary form Overmind, (3) Mind(i) mind proper and (ii) the intermediary psyche, (4) Life, (5) Matter. The ascending consciousness starting from Matter rises into Life, passes on through Life and Psyche into Mind, driving towards the Supermind and Sachchidananda. At the present stage of evolution, consciousness has arrived at the higher levels of Mind; it is now striving to cross it altogether and enter the Overmind and the Supermind. It will not rest content until it arrives at the organisation in and through the Supermind: for that is the drive and purpose of Nature in the next cycle of evolution.
--
The various movements or Forces of consciousness that play in the various fields or levels of creation are not merely states or degrees and magnitudes, currents and streams of consciousness: they are also personalities with definite forms and figuresnot physical indeed, yet very definite even when subtle and fluidic. Thus the supreme Reality, which is usually described as the perfect status of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, is not merely a principle but a personality. It is the Supreme Person with his triune nature (Purushottama). It is the Divine as the supreme Knower and Doer or Creator and Lover. The creation in or from that status of consciousness is not simply a play or result of the force of consciousness, it is even more truly the embodiment of a conscious Will; it is the will of the Divine Father executed by the Divine Mother.
Now, as the Reality along with its consciousness, in the downward involutionary course towards materialisation, has been gradually disintegrating itself, multiplying itself, becoming more and more obscure and dense in separated and isolated units, even so the Person too has been following a parallel course of disintegration and multiplication and obscuration and isolation. At the origin lies, as we have said, the Perfect Person, the Supreme Person, in his dual aspect of being and nature, appearing as the supreme purua and the supreme prakti, our Father and our Mother in the highest heaven.
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We say that at the lowest level of involution, in Matter, where consciousness has zero magnitude, there is no personality or individuality. It is all a mechanical play of clashing particles that constantly fly apart or come together according to the force or the resultant of Forces that act upon them. An individuality means a bounded form as its basis of reaction and a form that tends to persist and grow by assimilation; it means a centre of a definite manner and pattern of reaction. Individuality, in its literal sense, designates that which cannot be divided (in + dividus). Division is only another name for death for the particular entity. Even in the case of cell-division or self-division of some lower organisms, in the first instance the original living entity disappears and, secondly, the succeeding: entities, created by division, always re-form themselves again into integral wholes. A material particle, on the other hand, is divisible ad infinitum. We have been able to divide even an atom (which means also that which cannot be divided) to such an extent as to reduce it to a mere charge of energy, nay, we have sublimated it to a geometrical point. Individualisation starts with the coming of life. It is a ganglion of life-force round which a particular system of action and reaction weaves itself. The characteristic of individuality is that each one is unique, each relates itself to others and to the environment in its own way, each expresses itself, puts forth its energy, receives impacts from outside in a manner that distinguishes it from others. It is true this character of individuality is not very pronounced in the earlier or rudimentary forms of life. Still it is there: it grows and develops slowly along the ladder of evolution. Only in the higher animals it attains a clear and definite norm and form.
In man something else or something more happens. For man is not merely an individual, he is also a personality. He is the outcome of a twofold growth and revelation. He has outgrown the vital and climbed into Mind, and he has dived into the Heart and touched his inner soul, his true psychic centre. It is this soul that is the source of his personality.
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Earth's eyes half-see, her Forces half-create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven's art.
02.02 - The Message of the Atomic Bomb, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by Nature's Forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action: there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a liberation of man's conscious being originally imbedded in Nature's inertial movements, and then, a growing power to react upon Nature and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being. The result at the outset was a release and organisation on the mental level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found at once that this increasing self-consciousness and self-power meant immense possibilities for good, but, unfortunately, for evil also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai, the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained and continued through the centuries with necessary changes and modifications in application and finds enshrined today in International Covenants and Conventions.
But a new situation has arisen for some time past. The last Great War (World War No. I) was crucial in many ways in the life of humanity. It opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt on the part of man (and Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; it has given the go-by to all ethical standards and codes of honour. The poison gas was not used not because of any moral restraint or disinclination, but because of practical and utilitarian considerations. The Atom Bomb, however, has spoken the word.
That word is a warning that unless man changes, becomes master of himself, he cannot be truly master of the world. He cannot comm and the Forces he has unleashed unless he has comm and over his own nature. The external immensity, the bloated mass that his physical attainments are, unless armoured and animated by an inner growth, will crash by its own weight. The mammoth, the mastodon, the huge pachyderms, in spite of, rather because of their inordinately one-sided growth could not stand the demand of life and perished. Likewise man will not possess the world but the world will engulf and devour him in its aboriginal hunger of unconsciousness, if he does not take a right-about turn and declare his conversion. The Frankenstein that man has raised can no longer be met by merely human devicesreason and morals but by a higher discovery and initiation.
The Bomb has shaken the physical atmosphere of the earth as no other engine has done. It has shaken the moral atmosphere too not in a lesser degree. Reason and moral sense could not move man, so Fear has been sent by the Divine Grace. Dante said that God created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice that seems to be the inevitable gate through which one has to pass to arrive at the Divine. We are indeed in hell today upon earth, a worse can hardly be tolerated.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its Forces have made landings on our globe,
Its signs have traced their pattern in our lives:
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All Forces are Life's retinue in that world
And thought and body as her handmaids move.
02.06 - Vansittartism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hence it is suggested that for the postwar reconstruction of Germany what is required is the re-education of its people. For, only a psychological change can bring about a durable and radical change. But certain proposals towards this end raise serious misgivings, since they mean iron regimentation under foreign control. Even if such a thing were possible and feasible, it is doubtful if the purpose could be best served in this way. Measures have to be taken, no doubt, to uproot Prussianism and Junkerism and prevent their revival, no false mercy or sympathy should be extended to the enemies of God and man. But this is only a negative step, and cannot be sufficient by itself. A more positive and more important work lies ahead. The re-education of Germany must come from within, if it is to be permanent and effective. What others can do is to help her in this new orientation. As we have said, there are the progressive elements in Germany too, although submerged for the moment. The task of reconstruction will precisely consist in calling up and organising and marshalling these Forces that are for the Light. The Allied organisation, it may be noted, itself has grown up in this way. When one remembers how Britain stood alone at one time against the all-sweeping victorious march of the Titan, how slowly and gradually America was persuaded to join hands, at first in a lukewarm way, finally with all its heart and soul and might and main, how a new France is being built up out of a mass of ruins, we can hope that the same process will be adopted in the work that lies ahead even after victory, with regard to Italy and with regard to Germany. In the second case the task is difficult but it has got to be done.
***
02.07 - India One and Indivisable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, what we see rampant in India today is the mediaeval spirit. This reversion to an olderan extinct, we ought to have been able to saytype of mentality is certainly a fall, a lowering of the collective consciousness. It bas got to be remedied and set right. Whatever the motive Forces that lie at the back of the movement, motives of fear or despair or class interest or parochial loyalty, motives of idealism, misguided and obscurantist, they have to be taken by the horns and dominated and eliminated. A breath of modernism, some pure air of clear perception and knowledge and wider consciousness must blow through the congested hectic atmosphere of the Indian body politic.
It will do no good to anyone to try to Balkanise India. The Balkan malady is no longer tolerated even in its homeland; it cannot be transported to India in this century and after this Great War. To be and remain free and strong and invincible, India must be and remain indivisible. The strength of the United States of America, of the United Soviets of the Russias, of the British Commonwealth (pace Churchill) lies precisely in each one of them being a large unified aggregate, all members pooling their resources together. India cannot maintain her freedom, nor utilise her freedom to its utmost effectivity unless she is one and indivisible. The days of small peoples, of isolated independence are gonegone for ever even like Thebes and Nineveh, like Kosala of Dasarathi and Mathura of Yadupati.
02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
His poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and manner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the East. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way but a kind of oblique sight into what is hidden behind the appearance. By the oblique way I mean the sideway to enter into the secret of things, a passage opening through the side. The mystic vision has different ways of approachone may look at the thing straight, face to face, being level with it with a penetrating gaze, piercing a direct entry into the secrets behind. This frontal gaze is also the normal human way of knowing and understanding, the scientific way. It becomes mystic when it penetrates sufficiently behind and strikes a secret source of another light and sight, that is, the inner sight of the soul. The normal vision which I said is the scientist's vision, stops short at a certain distance and so does not possess the key to the secret knowledge. But an aspiring vision can stretch itself, drill into the surface obstacle confronting it, and make its contact with the hidden ray behind. There is also another mystic way, not a gaze inward but a gaze upward. The human intelligence and the higher brain consciousness seeks a greater and intenser light, a vaster knowledge and leaps upward as it were. There develops a penetrating gaze towards heights up and above, to such a vision the mystery of the spirit slowly reveals itself. That is Vedantic mysticism. There is a look downward also below the life-formation and one enters into contact with Forces and beings and creatures of another type, a portion of which is named Hell or Hades in Europe, and in India Ptl and rastal. But here we are speaking of another way, not a frontal or straight movement, but as I said, splitting the side and entering into it, something like opening the shell of a mother of pearl and finding the pearl inside. There is a descriptive mystic: the suprasensuous experience is presented in images and feeling forms. That is the romantic way. There is an explanatory mysticism: the suprasensuous is set in intellectual or mental terms, making it somewhat clear to the normal understanding. That is I suppose classical mysticism. All these are more or less direct ways, straight approaches to the mystic reality. But the oblique is differentit is a seeking of the mind and an apprehension of the senses that are allusive, indirect, that move through contraries and negations, that point to a different direction in order just to suggest the objective aimed at. The Vedantic (and the Scientific too) is the straight, direct, rectilinear gaze the Vedantin says, May I look at the Sun with a transfixed gaze'; whether he looks upward or inward or downward. But the modem mystic is of a different mould. He has not that clear absolute vision, he has the apprehension of an aspiring consciousness. His is not religious poetry for that matter, but it is an aspiration and a yearning to perceive and seize truth and reality that eludes the senses, but seems to be still there. We shall understand better by taking a poem of his as example. Thus:
Alter Ego
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She Forces back to the beast the human fall.
Yet in her formidable instinctive mind
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The geographical revolution has led inevitably to the economic revolution which is not less momentous, pregnant with prophecies of brave new things. We all know that the modern world was ushered in with the industrial revolution. As a result of this new dispensation, world and society gradually divided into two camps: on one side, the industrialists and on the other the agriculturists, or, in a general way, the possessors of raw materials. The Imperialists formed the first group, while the latter, dominated by these, belonged to the Colonies. The "backward" countries and people who could not take to industry, but continued the old system became a helpless prey to the industrial nations. Africa and Asia and the South American countries came under the domination of European nations, rather the West European Nations: they became the suppliers of raw materials and also the market for finished products. Also within the same country occupying the imperial status, there came a division, a class division, as it is called. A few industrial magnates or trusts (France had its famous Two-Hundred Families) monopolised all the wealth, became the top-dog, the "Haves", the others were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, serfs and slaves, the "Have-Nots". Exploitation was-the motto of the age. The "exploiters" and the "exploited", this trenchant duality was the whole truth of the social scheme and that summed up the entire malady of the collective life. Then came the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution which brought to a head the great crisis and initiated the change-over to new conditions. The French Revolution called up from the rear of social ranks and set in front the Third Estate and gradually formed and crystallised, with the aid of the Industrial Revolution, what is known as the Bourgeoisie. The Russian Revolution went a step farther. It dislodged the bourgeoisie and installed the Fourth Estate, the proletariate, as the head and front of society, its centre of power and governmental authority. In the meantime there was developing in the bourgeois society, too, a kind of socialism which aimed at the uplift and remoulding of the working class into a total social power. But the process could not, go far enough. The Industrial League, no doubt, began to release some of its monopolies, delegate some of its power and authority to the Proletariate and sought an armistice and entente; but still it is they who wielded the real power and gave to society the tone and impress of their characteristic authority. The Russian experiment made a bold departure and attempted to build up a new society from the very bottom: the manual labourers, they who produce with the sweat of their brow and make a society living and prosperous must also be its rulers. Now whatever the success or failure in regard to the perfect ideal, the thing achieved is solid; certain Forces have been released that are working inexorably in and through even contrary appearances, they have come to stay and cannot be negatived. The urge, for example, towards a more equitable distribution of wealth and wealth-producing implements; an even balancing of economic values has been growing and gathering strength: it has become an asset of the body social. Instead of an unfettered competition between rival agencies, the mad drive for a jealous and closely guarded appropriation (rather, mis-appropriation) by private cartels, there has arisen an inevitable need for a unitary or co-operative control under a common direction, whether it be that of the state or some other body equally representing the common interest. In other words, the principle of co-operation has now become a living reality, a thing of practical politics. All effort towards progress and amelioration, cure of social ills and regaining of health and strength must lie in that direction: anything going the contrary way shall perforce be out of tune with the Time-Spirit and can cause only confusion, bring in stagnation or even regression.
First of all, the colonies, which mean practically the Eastern hemisphere, can no longer be regarded, even by those who would very much wish to, as the field of exploitation, the granary of raw materials or the dumping ground of finished articles. Industrialism, the spirit and urge of it at least, has reached these places too: the exploiters themselves have been instrumental In bringing it about. The growing industrialism in countries so long held in subjection or tutelage, as safe preserves, need not necessarily mean a further spell of keen competition. If we look closely, we see things moving in a different direction. It is self-evident that all countries do not and cannot grow or manufacture all things with equal ease and facility. Countries are naturally complementary or supplementary to each other with regard to their raw produce or industrial manufacture. And an inevitable give and take, mutual understanding and help must follow such an alignment of economic Forces.
It must also be noted that all countries need not and cannot have the same pattern of economic life, even that of a successful economic life. A vast country like India, with the manifold resources of a whole continent, can at once be industrial and agriculturalmodern America, to some extent, is an example of this type. She can follow both the lines of economic development with equal vigour and success. And in the midst of an intensive and extensive agricultural and industrial occupation, there may be still room for the age-long, old-world cottage industry, for the individual artisan or craftsman whose God-given hand may always give to things an added value beyond the reach of the mere machine.
With this perspective in view, keeping always in front the probable shape of things to come, one must learn to consider the present, look for those Forces that make for the new world and thus help the course of evolution and progress. Nature does not care for her past formations, she is not bound to them; she is always throwing up chances and opportunitiesvariations-for new developments. Nature red in tooth and claw is only one side of the shield; and the picture is not as true today as it was even a few hundred years ago, in spite of the spells of devastating carnage she still allows in her surface movements. It may be that the very pressure and insistence of an inner harmony has brought to the fore, made acute difficulties and contraries that have to be met and solved for good.
International co-operation has become a thing of immediate necessity, of practical utility. We met in San Francisco, not out of the spirit of sheer idealism or altruism but because we were forced to it. Circumstances have come to such a pass that even local needs, natural aspirations can be best met and served in and through international understanding. It is the solution of international problems, the amelioration of international relations first that would more easily lead to the solution of national problems than the other way round, which was perhaps the normal direction of the world- Forces even a decade or two ago. Such world-organisations as the UNRRA or even the Red Cross, although they do not go deep enough into the root problems and are not powerful enough to mould or control world- Forces, appearing more or less as charitable institutions, are still concrete expressions of an urgent immediate demand for mutuality and solidarity among the nations, even between warring nations.
The relation between India and Britain is peculiar and has an especial significance. It is not enough to say that Britain is the imperialist overlord and India the subject underling. The two stand for two world- Forces and their relation is symbolic. The difficulty that will be solved between them will be a world-difficulty solved; what they achieve in common will be a world-achievement. India means nations in bondage aspiring to be free, peoples living in conditions of want and weakness and internecine quarrel, still struggling towards a harmonious and prosperous organised life; she is the cry of the down-trodden demanding her share of earth's air and lightlife-room. Britain represents the other side, the free people, organised, strong and successful. Neither America nor Russia fills this role. America is young; she has a wonderful grasp over life's externals; none can compare or compete with her in the ordering and marshalling of an efficient pattern of life, but what escapes her is the more abiding and deeper truth of life and living. Russia started to create on totally new foundations, indeed the outer aspect here has changed very much. But the Forces that ruled Russia's past do not seem to have changed to the same extent. In spite of the rise of the proletariate, in spite of all local autonomies, it is doubtful if the true breath of freedom is blowing over the country, if the country is creating out of a deeper soul-vision. Life movement in either of these two countries seems to have a rigid mould; that is because they seek to build or reform, that is to say, fabricate life, in other words, they impose upon life a pattern conceived by notions and prejudgments, even perhaps idio-syncracies. The British are more amenable to change, precisely because they do not force a change and do not know they are changing. The British Empire is more loosely formed, its units have more freedom than is the case with other Empires built upon the pattern of the extremely centralised Roman Empire. Truly it has the spirit of a commonwealth. The spirit of decentralisation and federation that is increasing today and has seized even old-world Empires the Dutch, the French, the Russianhas come largely from the British example. Therefore, the unravelling of the Britain and India tangle would mean the solution of a world-problem. These two countries have been put together precisely because the solution is possible here and an ideal solution for all others to profit by.
The British people do not move by ideals and idealism, as the French do, for example. The French rise naturally in revolt and rebellion and revolution for the sake of an idea the motto of the Great Revolution was "Liberty or Death". Without an upsetting they cannot bring about a change; for the social moulds are rigid and more presistent. The AngloSaxons, on the contrary, go by an unfailing instinct, as it were, gradually and slowly, but surely and inevitablyfrom precedent to precedent", as they themselves say. A life-intuition guides them: the inherent merit of an ideal has not such a great value in their eye, but if the ideal means a practical utility, a thing demanded by time and circumstances, a clear issue out of a dead impasse, well, they hesitate no longer and go about it in right earnest as practical men of affairs.
Now, there can be no doubt that the British wish, are even eager, to have a settlement with India: they wish to have an India free and united and strong and they are willing to lend their help as far as lies in their power and competence,not because it is an ideal, something good in the abstract and therefore worth pursuing and they are altruistic or philanthropic by nature, but because it is a matter of self-interest to them, it is a thing to be done because of the actual life conditions. A strong free and friendly India is an asset they wish to build and conserve. They feel that the old-world methods of one-sided exploitation is neither possible nor desirable any longer; they must move with the moving times. And, as I have already said, they do not move principally by ideas and notions and brain formations, they are in closer touch with life Forces and are more easily responsive to these.
True, there are contrary voices. But as one swallow does not make a summer, even so, many such voices cannot perpetuate the past. The name, even the form of Imperialism is there, but the substance of it is how much changed, if one goes behind! The British Empire, as it stands today, is composed of three strands, we may say: the first, the front line, consists of Canada and Australia, the second, of Ireland, Egypt and Irak, and the third, mainly of India. This graded pattern shows that it is something fluid and even progressive, there is nothing rigid and final about it. The very nature of the composition seems to exert a pressure working for an equality, an equilibrium of partnership building up a genuine Commonwealth. The model is catching. An Imperialistic Russia, that has found a new avatara in Stalin, has become a champion of federalism, as the best way of preserving the imperial integrity!
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Strange beasts that were Nature's Forces made alive
And, wakened to the wonder of his role,
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Of Forces whirling from the hands of Chance
Seemed to obey some vast imperative:
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The unseizable Forces of the cosmic whirl
Bear in their bacchant limbs the fixity
02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and Forces that work out that consummation.
Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities and lives as a member among others with whom he is related and connected in various ways. These groupings are the units round which man's life crystallises and develops, the nuclei of a growing, an increasingly complex and unified organism.
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Now out of this complex of Forces and ideals, what seems to stand out clearly is this: (i) the family unit remains for practical purposes,whatever breaking or modification affects its outward forms, the thing seems to be a permanent feature of life organization; (ii) the nation too has attained a firm stability and inviolability; it refuses to be broken or dissolved and in any larger aggregate that is formed this one has to be integrated intact as a living unit. The other types of aggregates seem to be more in the nature of experiments and temporary necessities; when they have served their purpose they fade and disappear or are thrown into the background and persist as vestigial remains. It seems to us that the clan, the tribe, the race are such formations. Regionalism, Imperialism (political, economic or religious) are also not stable aggregates.
Still it is difficult to say as yet what would be the exact form of the intermediate grouping between the nation and humanity at large, even if a grouping of nations appear to be a necessity as an intermediate stage, whether such groupings or commonwealths are going to be a permanent feature or whether the nation will finally remain the ultimate unit and humanity will consist of such free equal nations, independent units, all together forming a unified whole.
02.13 - In the Self of Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its Forces with their feet of wind and fire
Arisen from the dumbness in his soul.
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Beings and Forces, forms, ideas like waves
Jostled for figure and supremacy,
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The question now is to devise ways and means of materialising this ideal. Circumstanced as man is, in doubt and darkness with regard to his inner nature, one most often does not know one's true vocation; those who do know their minds and are sure of their "mission in life" are the fortunate few, and very few indeed they are. Of the vast majority, some discover themselves only at the fag-end of their life or when they are already far too committed and in harness in alien fields and among alien faces; others do not discover themselves at all, they need no such revelation: these form the general mass in which the individuals have not developed so far as to come out into any bold relief, they are cast into the stereotype mould, moved more or less by the same general Forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally.
Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and organize things within that given framework, is, to say the least, only another form of the old laissez-faire system. Take Nature as it is, but go farther and beyond. That is the problem of all human endeavour.
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But again, who are the talents and where are they? For a modern society produces at best clever politicians, but very few great souls if at all, who can inspire, guide and create. Not a system or organization, but such centres of Forces, with creative vision and power, it is that that mankind sorely needs at this hour. System and organization come after, they can only be the embodiment of a creative vision.
II
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What is the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization of producers and consumers, their relation and functions were, in many respects, what is called primitive. An American of today would laugh at their uncouth simplicity. And yet America has to bow down to those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly exaggerated holding the entire social fabric in its stifling grip, the culture spirit has been pushed into the background and made subservient to economic and other cruder Forces. That was what Julien Benda, the famous French critic and moralist, once stigmatised as "La Trahison des Clercs"; only, the "clercs" did not voluntarily betray, but circumstanced as they were they could do no better. The process reached its climaxperhaps one should say the very nadirin the Nazi experiment and something of it still continues in the Russian dispensation. There the intellectuals or the intelligentsia are totally harnessed to the political machine, their capacities are prostituted in the service of a socio-economic plan. Poets and artists and thinkers are made to be protagonists and propagandists of the new order. It is a significant sign of the times how almost the whole body of scientists the entire Brain Trust of mankind today, one might sayhave been mobilised for the fabrication of the Atom Bomb. Otherwise they cannot subsist, they lose all economic status.
In the older order, however, a kindlier treatment was meted out to this class, this class of the creators of values. They had patrons who looked after their physical well-being. They had the necessary freedom and leisure to follow their own bent and urge of creativity. Kings and princes, the court and the nobility, in spite of all the evils ascribed to them, and often very justly, have nevertheless been the nursery of art and culture, of all the art and culture of the ancient times. One remembers Shakespeare reading or enacting his drama before the Great Queen, or the poignant scene of Leonardo dying in the arms of Francis the First. Those were the truly great classical ages, and art or man's creative genius hardly ever rose to that height ever since. The downward curve started with the advent and growth of the bourgeoisie when the artist or the creative genius lost their supporters and had to earn their own living by the sweat of their brow. Indeed the greatest tragedies of frustration because of want and privation, occur, not as much among the "lowest" classes who are usually considered as the poorest and the most miserable in society, but in that section from where come the intellectuals, "men of light and leading," to use the epithet they are honoured with. For very few of this group are free to follow their inner trend and urge, but have either to coerce and suppress them or stultify them in the service of lesser alien duties, which mean "forced labour." The punishment for refusing to be drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in.
--
In the old Indian social organisation there was at the basis such a psychological pattern and that must have been the reason why the structure lasted through millenniums. It was a hierarchical system but based upon living psychological Forces. Each group or section or class in it had inevitably its appropriate function and an assured economic status. The Four Orders the Brahmin (those whose pursuit was knowledgeacquiring and giving knowledge), the Kshattriya (the fighters, whose business it was to give physical protection), the Vaishya (traders and farmers who were in charge of the wealth of the society, its production and distribution) and the Sudra (servants and mere labourers )are a natural division or stratification of the social body based upon the nature and function of its different members. In the original and essential pattern there is no sinister mark of inferiority branded upon what are usually termed as the lower orders, especially the lowest order. If some are considered higher and are honoured and respected as such, it meant simply that the functions and qualities they stand for constitute in some way higher values, it did not mean that the others have no value or are to be spurned or neglected. The brain must be given a higher place than the stomach, although all its support and nourishment come from there. Hierarchy means, in modern terms, that the essential services must pass first, should have certain priorities. And according to the older view-point, the Brahmin, being the emblem and repository of knowledge, was considered as the head of the social body. He is the fount and origin of a culture, the creator of a civilisation; the others protect, nourish and serve, although all are equally necessary for the common welfare.
Fundamentally all human society is built upon this pattern which is psychological and which seems to be Nature's own life-plan. There is always this fourfold stratification or classification of members in any collective human grouping: the Intellectual (taken in the broadest sense) or the Intelligentsia, the Military, the Trader and the Labourer. In the earlier civilisationswhen civilisation was being formedespecially in the East, it ,was the first class that took precedence over the rest and was especially honoured; for it is they who give the tone and temper and frame of life in the society. In later epochs, in the mediaeval age for example, the age of conquerors and conquistadors, and of Digvijaya, man as the warrior, the Kshattriya, the Samurai or the Chivalry was given the place of honour. Next came the age of traders and merchants, and the industrial age with the invention of machines. Today the labourer is rising in his turn to take the prime place.
--
As already stated, the remedy is to be sought in the salvage of the individual. The present trend of social Forces is towards movements in the mass. That was necessary perhaps; for larger, wider, indeed world-wide unities have to be found and established for the unification of the whole of humanity. But in the drive towards that-goal Nature seems to have overlooked for the moment the case of the individual, and naturally, man has been blind and one-sided in his attempts to reform and rebuild society and the world. This neglected thread has to be taken up again and put back into the web of social life. The value of the individual, the worth and speciality of each person has to be found and recognised; indeed it is round that centre that society can best be reformed and remade. And this can only be done by a spiritual outlook. For, the true individual is founded in the spirit, the spiritual consciousness; so long as man is limited to his body, life and mind, and his functions are solely determined by his earthly nature, so long he must needs be taken as a mere element in the mass, the cosmic mass. The true individual or person emerges only when something of man's spiritual being finds expression in these lower elements of his nature. And when man totally transcends his inferior sphere of existence and rises into his divine status where things are marshalled and organised through each individual truth-centre, then only there is the chance of a perfect social system descending upon earthly life.
Perhaps this is a far cry from the level of our normal humanity. But things have to be regarded and moulded from the highest heights; otherwise there will be no real solution, there can be only a temporary make-believe and a final frustration.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Certain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may be noticed here. The year 1905 and those that immediately followed found them together on the crest wave of India's first nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a momentous period marked by events of epochal importance, one of which was the First World War. For Tagore it was yuga-sandhi, the dying of the old age of Night to the dawning of a new with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail of death, sorrow and pain". For Sri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in the old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the Balaka his visions and experiences of the Forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages of the Arya the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him into the earth's atmosphere.
So it was natural and almost inevitablewritten among the stars that both should meet once more on this physical earth. Sri Aurobindo had been in complete retirement seeing none except, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only four times in the year to give silent darshan to his devotees and a few others who sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore was then on a tour to the South. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both were together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some of his lectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that Tagore requested the Mother to take charge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently he felt that the future of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the Mother could not but decline since it was her destiny to be at another place and another work.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet internationalism is not the one thing needful either. If it means the obliteration of all national values, of all cultural diversity, it will not certainly conduce to the greater enrichment and perfection of humanity. Taken by itself and in its absolute sense, it cannot be a practical success. The fact is being proved every moment these days. Internationalism in the economic sphere, however, seems to have a greater probability and utility than in the merely political sphere. Economics is forcing peoples and nations to live together and move together: it has become the soldering agent in modern times of all the elements the groups and types of the human family that were so long separate from each other, unknown to each other or clashing with each other. But that is good so far as it goes. Powerful as economic Forces are, they are not the only deciding or directing agents in human affairs. That is the great flaw in the "International", the Marxian type of internationalism which has been made familiar to us. Man is not a political animal, in spite of Aristotle, nor is he an economic animal, in spite of Marx and Engels. Mere economics, even when working for a greater unity of mankind, tends to work more for uniformity: it reduces man to the position of a machine and a physical or material machine at that. By an irony of fate the human value for which the international proletariate raised its banner of revolt is precisely what suffers in the end. The Beveridge Plan, so much talked of nowadays, made such an appeal, no doubt because of the economic advantages it ensures, but also, by far and large, because it views man as a human being in and against the machine to which he belongs, because it is psychologically a scheme to salvage the manhood of man, so far as is possible, out of a rigidly mechanistic industrial organization.
Humanism
02.15 - The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There Forces are great outbursts of God's truth
And objects are its pure spiritual shapes;
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to Forces, but create or put out from itself Forces.
Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This knowledge, or rather, this curiosity does not arise from any depth of our being; it is the product of the meddlesome superficial brain-mind. We have become self-conscious; a vigilant self-consciousness is now the invariable coefficient of all our movements, but it is a self-consciousness that has deviated into mere mental introspection and intellectual analysis. It was the soul's consciousness, although perhaps more often from behind the veil, that once inspired and enlivened human nature in its youth; and life was after all a thing of beauty and joy for the soul is the one Rasa of existence. We have deposed the Divine King; an anarchy now reigns in human nature which has become the battle-ground of qualities and Forces that are, if not always more crude, at least, invariably crooked and perverse. We live and move in the cold and blighting, and withal shallow, glare of the brain-mind.
III
03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We spoke of the extreme atomism of modern Science that has thrown into the background the solid unity of creation and is laying emphasis for the moment more upon the division and scattering of Forces than upon the cohesiveness and identity of the substratum; still that unity has not been abrogated but has been maintained on the whole, even if as an underlying note. Not only so, the reign of multiplicity, by a curious detour, is working towards a discovery of enhanced unity. The plurality of the modern consciousness is moving towards a richer and intenser unity; it is not a static, but a dynamic unitya unity that does not suppress or merely transcend the diversity and disparity of its components but holds them together as an immanent force, and brings forth out of each its fullness of individuality. In the same way the present-day movement towards internationalism or supra-nationalism has produced a rebound towards regionalism or infra-nationalism. And the voice of anarchism tends to be as insistent as that of collectivism.
The consciousness of yesterday was a unilateral movement. It rose up high and descended deep into the truth of things, but mostly along a single line. In the horizontal direction also, when it travelled, it effected a linear movement. The consciousness of today is complex and composite; it has lost much of the vertical movement; it does not very easily soar or dive, precisely because it has spread itself out in a multitude of horizontal movements. Our modern consciousness is outward gazing and extensive; it has not the in-gathering and intensive character of the old-world consciousness; but what it has lost in depth and height, it has sought to make up in width.
03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we regard the gradation of worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex movement; the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lower react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental plane. In more detail, particular Forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with Forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it preexistent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes preexistent movements and forms in the occult mental planes. That is an aspect of things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic Yoga.
But all this must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. It is an immense plastic movement full of the play of possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense in the seeing consciousness. It cannot be reduced to a too rigorous logical or mathematical formula.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In a general way we may perhaps say, without gross error, that every man has the right to become a poet, a scientist or a politician. But when the question rises in respect of a particular person, then it has to be seen whether that person has a natural ability, an inherent tendency or aptitude for the special training so necessary for the end in view. One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible Forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to deal with them. You raise ghosts and spirits, demons and godsFrankenstein monsters that are easily called up but not so easily laid. You break down under their impact, unless your adhr has already been prepared, purified and streng thened. Now, in secular matters, when, for example, you have the ambition to be a poet, you can try and fail, fail with impunity. But if you undertake the spiritual life and fail, then you lose both here and hereafter. That is why the Vedic Rishis used to say that the ear then vessel meant to hold the Soma must be properly baked and made perfectly sound. It was for this reason again that among the ancients, in all climes and in all disciplines, definite rules and regulations were laid down to test the aptitude or fitness of an aspirant. These tests were of different kinds, varying according to the age, the country and the Path followedfrom the capacity for gross physical labour to that for subtle perception. A familiar instance of such a test is found in the story of the aspirant who was asked again and again, for years together, by his Teacher to go and graze cows. A modern mind stares at the irrelevancy of the procedure; for what on earth, he would question, has spiritual sadhana to do with cow-grazing? In defence we need not go into any esoteric significance, but simply suggest that this was perhaps a test for obedience and endurance. These two are fundamental and indispensable conditions in sadhana; without them there is no spiritual practice, one cannot advance a step. It is absolutely necessary that one should carry out the directions of the Guru without question or complaint, with full happiness and alacrity: even if there comes no immediate gain one must continue with the same zeal, not giving way to impatience or depression. In ancient Egypt among certain religious orders there was another kind of test. The aspirant was kept confined in a solitary room, sitting in front of a design or diagram, a mystic symbol (cakra) drawn on the wall. He had to concentrate and meditate on that figure hour after hour, day after day till he could discover its meaning. If he failed he was declared unfit.
Needless to say that these tests and ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane,keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm, self-possessed, one may even be a consummate master of the senses and be endowed with other great virtues. Yet all this is no assurance of one's success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumuksu, that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life.
03.03 - The Inner Being and the Outer Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different Forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge. We are composed of many parts each of which contri butes something to the total movement of our consciousness, our thought, will, sensation, feeling, action, but we do not see the origination or the course of these impulsions; we are aware only of their confused pell-mell results on the surface upon which we can at best impose nothing better than a precarious shifting order.
There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this Yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.
--
The individual is not limited to the physical body - it is only the external consciousness which feels like that. As soon as one gets over this feeling of limitation, one can feel first the inner consciousness which is connected with the body but does not belong to it, afterwards the planes of consciousness above the body - also a consciousness surrounding the body, but part of oneself, part of the individual being, through which one is in contact with the cosmic Forces and with other beings. This last is what I have called the environmental consciousness.
By environmental consciousness I mean something that each man carries around him, outside his body, even when he is not aware of it, - by which he is in touch with others and with the universal Forces. It is through this that the thoughts, feelings etc. of others pass to enter into one - it is through this also that waves of the universal force - desire, sex, etc. - come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body.
They [the environmental consciousness and the subconscient] are two quite different things. What is stored in the subconscient
- impressions, memories, rise up from there into the conscious parts. In the environmental things are not stored up and fixed, although they move about there. It is full of mobility, a field of vibration or passage of Forces.
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine means the All: whatever there is (manifest or beyond) is within Him and is Himself. Man too who is within that Divine is the Divine in a special way; for he is a replica or epitome of the Divine containing or embodying the threefold status and movement of the Divine the Transcendent, the Cosmic and the Individual. He is co-extensive with the Divine. Only, the Divine is conscious, supremely conscious, while Man is unconscious or at best half-conscious. God has made himself the world and its creatures, the transcendental has become the material cosmos, true; but God has made himself Man in a special sense and for a special purpose. Man is not a fabrication of the Lower Maya, a formation thrown up in the evolutionary course by a temporary idea in the Cosmic Mind and developed through the play of Forces; on the other hand, it is a typal reality, a Real-Ideaa formation of the original truth-consciousness, the Divine's own transcendental existence. Man is the figure of the Divine Person. The Impersonal become or viewed as the Personal takes up the human aspect, the human, that is to say, as its original prototype in the superconscience.
The conception of a personal immortality the impersonal is naturally always immortal, there is no problem thereof a physical immortality even attains a significant value looked at from this standpoint. The urge for immortality is not merely a wish to continue indefinitely an earthly life, because of its pleasures or because of an unreasoning attachment; it means regaining and establishing the immortal body that one has or that one is essentially and potentially. The body seeks to be immortal, for it contains and secretly is its immortal Formal Cause (to make use of an Aristotelian term). The materialisation of an immortal being and figure of being that is the consummation demanded of human life on earth.
03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So it is contended by some dissident voices that Europe and Asia are, as a matter of fact, different and disparate and incommensurable bodies they belong to categories that are as poles asunder; and therefore the twain can and shall never merge nor meet. For Europe, on the one hand, with her materialistic and mechanistic culture, forms one indivisible unity, her entire life in its manifold expression is moulded according to a definite pattern, forming a closed circle; on the other hand, Asia basing herself upon the spiritual and the other world has in quite a different way fashioned an altogether different culture-complex. One cannot take some spiritual element out of Asiatic culture and mix it with some profane element extracted from European culture, serving the product to humanity as its universal Ideal. The details the multitudinous forms and Forces that make up an integral whole are irrevocably determined by a basic intuition which is the soul of that integrality; the entire edifice is a compact unityeach piece of brick, every bit of space is in its own place and has its own function by virtue of a dominant, a compelling Idea. Like an object of art, even like a living organism, a "body cultural" is inviolable in its self-sufficient and jealous completeness.
In other words, the difference between Europe and Asia is the difference between two species; and there can be no fruitful union between them. So, the meeting and fusion of Europe and Asia is nothing but a barren ideal, a chimera. It is a hope and a desire cherished, no doubt, by sentimental visionaries, but it is bound to come to grief in the end, when brought to face the realities of life and the stern Forces that shape the forms of the concrete world.
But is it after all an incontrovertible fact that Europe is Europe and Asia Asia? It is now too late in the day to maintain that Asia was always dreamy and metaphysical and that she always lacked the hold upon concrete reality. On the contrary, every new additional information regarding her past is continually bringing to light the fact that Asia was no less efficient than Europe in matters worldly and material; she had as great, if not greater control over the brute reality than the latter can claim even today. Only her conquest of the spiritual realms was also as efficient and sovereign.
Nor is it a fact that Europe is and has been merely profane and materialistic in her outlook and attainment. The godless and mechanistic civilisation which is rampant today in Europe is a distemper of comparatively recent growth. Its farthest limit does not go beyond the sixteenth or the fifteenth century when the first seeds were sown by the Humanists of the Renaissance. It sprouted with the rationalists of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution cleared the ground for its free and untrammelled growth. But only in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries has it reached such vast and disconcerting proportions as to swallow all Europe's other motives and velleities and to appear as the only form of her life-expression. But in the earlier centuries, those that preceded the New Enlightenment, Europe had a different conception of culture and civilisation, she possessed almost another soul. The long period that is known as the mediaeval age was not after all so dark and unregenerate as it has been the familiar custom to represent it. Christian Europe the Europe of cathedrals and monasteries, of saints and sages, of St. Francis and St. Teresa, of Boehme and Bernard, of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, had an enlightenment all her own, which was real and living and dynamic, possessing a far-extending and deeply penetrating influence; in as much as it was this that called into being and fashioned the more abiding Forces, which underlie Europe's cultural life and social institutions, although latterly "fallen on evil days and on evil tongues".
Even the still more ancient Grco-Latin Europe which was not, to a general and apparent view, quite spiritual or other-worldly, was yet not so exclusively materialistic and profane as modern Europe. Classical culture was rationalistic, without doubt; but that rationalism was the function of a sublimated intelligence and a refined sensibility and served as a vehicle for a Higher Perceptiona ratiocinative and ultra-logical mind, like that of Socrates, could yet be so passive and upgazing as to receive and obey the commandments of a Dmon; whereas the rationalism, which is in vogue today and to which orthodox Scientism has affixed its royal sign manual, is the product of mere brain-power, vigorous but crude, of an intellect shut up in its self-complacent cunningness, obfuscated by its infinite but shallow inquisitiveness.
--- Overview of noun force
The noun force has 10 senses (first 7 from tagged texts)
1. (29) force ::: (a powerful effect or influence; "the force of his eloquence easily persuaded them")
2. (20) force ::: ((physics) the influence that produces a change in a physical quantity; "force equals mass times acceleration")
3. (19) force, forcefulness, strength ::: (physical energy or intensity; "he hit with all the force he could muster"; "it was destroyed by the strength of the gale"; "a government has not the vitality and forcefulness of a living man")
4. (15) force, personnel ::: (group of people willing to obey orders; "a public force is necessary to give security to the rights of citizens")
5. (10) military unit, military force, military group, force ::: (a unit that is part of some military service; "he sent Caesar a force of six thousand men")
6. (5) violence, force ::: (an act of aggression (as one against a person who resists); "he may accomplish by craft in the long run what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one")
7. (1) power, force ::: (one possessing or exercising power or influence or authority; "the mysterious presence of an evil power"; "may the force be with you"; "the forces of evil")
8. force ::: (a group of people having the power of effective action; "he joined forces with a band of adventurers")
9. effect, force ::: ((of a law) having legal validity; "the law is still in effect")
10. force out, force-out, force play, force ::: (a putout of a base runner who is required to run; the putout is accomplished by holding the ball while touching the base to which the runner must advance before the runner reaches that base; "the shortstop got the runner at second on a force")
--- Overview of verb force
The verb force has 9 senses (first 8 from tagged texts)
1. (48) coerce, hale, squeeze, pressure, force ::: (to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means :"She forced him to take a job in the city"; "He squeezed her for information")
2. (17) impel, force ::: (urge or force (a person) to an action; constrain or motivate)
3. (13) push, force ::: (move with force, "He pushed the table into a corner")
4. (8) force, thrust ::: (impose urgently, importunately, or inexorably; "She forced her diet fads on him")
5. (3) wedge, squeeze, force ::: (squeeze like a wedge into a tight space; "I squeezed myself into the corner")
6. (2) force, drive, ram ::: (force into or from an action or state, either physically or metaphorically; "She rammed her mind into focus"; "He drives me mad")
7. (1) pull, draw, force ::: (cause to move by pulling; "draw a wagon"; "pull a sled")
8. (1) force ::: (do forcibly; exert force; "Don't force it!")
9. storm, force ::: (take by force; "Storm the fort")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun force
10 senses of force
Sense 1
force
=> influence
=> power, powerfulness
=> quality
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
force
=> physical phenomenon
=> natural phenomenon
=> phenomenon
=> process, physical process
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
force, forcefulness, strength
=> intensity, intensiveness
=> degree, grade, level
=> property
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
force, personnel
=> organization, organisation
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
military unit, military force, military group, force
=> unit, social unit
=> organization, organisation
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
violence, force
=> aggression, hostility
=> action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 7
power, force
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 8
force
=> social group
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 9
effect, force
=> validity, validness
=> legality
=> lawfulness
=> quality
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 10
force out, force-out, force play, force
=> putout
=> out
=> failure
=> nonaccomplishment, nonachievement
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun force
7 of 10 senses of force
Sense 1
force
=> pressure
=> duress
=> heartbeat
=> lifeblood
=> wheel
Sense 2
force
=> aerodynamic force
=> affinity, chemical attraction
=> attraction, attractive force
=> repulsion, repulsive force
=> centrifugal force
=> centripetal force
=> cohesion
=> Coriolis force
=> drift, impetus, impulsion
=> Lorentz force
=> moment
=> propulsion
=> pull
=> push, thrust
=> reaction
=> stress
=> torsion, torque
=> magnetomotive force
=> life force, vital force, vitality, elan vital
Sense 3
force, forcefulness, strength
=> brunt
=> momentum, impulse
=> energy, vigor, vigour, zip
Sense 4
force, personnel
=> guerrilla force, guerilla force
=> military service, armed service, service
=> military, armed forces, armed services, military machine, war machine
=> paramilitary, paramilitary force, paramilitary unit, paramilitary organization, paramilitary organisation
=> police, police force, constabulary, law
=> security force, private security force
=> military police, MP
=> work force, workforce, manpower, hands, men
=> patrol
=> military personnel, soldiery, troops
=> rank and file, rank
=> staff
=> line personnel
=> management personnel
Sense 5
military unit, military force, military group, force
=> trip wire
=> command
=> enemy
=> task force
=> army unit
=> naval unit
=> air unit
=> armor, armour
=> mujahidin, mujahedin, mujahedeen, mujahadeen, mujahadin, mujahideen, mujahadein
=> guard
=> legion
=> echelon
=> phalanx
=> Republican Guard
=> Haganah
=> Israeli Defense Force, IDF
=> militia, reserves
=> commando
=> contingent, detail
=> headquarters
=> spearhead
Sense 6
violence, force
=> domestic violence
=> road rage
=> riot, public violence
Sense 7
power, force
=> juggernaut, steamroller
=> influence
=> Moloch
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun force
10 senses of force
Sense 1
force
=> influence
Sense 2
force
=> physical phenomenon
Sense 3
force, forcefulness, strength
=> intensity, intensiveness
Sense 4
force, personnel
=> organization, organisation
Sense 5
military unit, military force, military group, force
=> unit, social unit
Sense 6
violence, force
=> aggression, hostility
Sense 7
power, force
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
Sense 8
force
=> social group
Sense 9
effect, force
=> validity, validness
Sense 10
force out, force-out, force play, force
=> putout
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun force
10 senses of force
Sense 1
force
-> influence
=> dead hand, dead hand of the past, mortmain
=> force
=> grip, grasp
Sense 2
force
-> physical phenomenon
=> acoustic phenomenon
=> atmospheric phenomenon
=> boundary layer
=> chaos
=> cloud
=> decalescence
=> electrical phenomenon
=> electricity
=> energy
=> energy, free energy
=> power
=> event
=> field, field of force, force field
=> force
=> hysteresis
=> resonance
=> mechanical phenomenon
=> opacity
=> optical phenomenon
=> pressure, pressure level, force per unit area
=> reflection, reflexion
=> refraction
=> resolving power, resolution
=> resolution
=> conduction, conductivity
=> propagation
=> interaction, fundamental interaction
=> surface tension
=> syzygy
=> transparency, transparence
=> turbulence, turbulency
=> chop
=> flotation, floatation
Sense 3
force, forcefulness, strength
-> intensity, intensiveness
=> force, forcefulness, strength
=> badness, severity, severeness
=> vehemence, emphasis
=> top
=> ferocity, fierceness, furiousness, fury, vehemence, violence, wildness
Sense 4
force, personnel
-> organization, organisation
=> adhocracy
=> affiliate
=> bureaucracy
=> nongovernmental organization, NGO
HAS INSTANCE=> Orange Order, Association of Orangemen
=> Tammany Hall, Tammany Society, Tammany
=> fiefdom
=> line of defense, line of defence
=> line organization, line organisation
=> association
=> polity
=> quango, quasi-NGO
=> institution, establishment
=> enterprise
=> defense, defence, defense force, defence force
=> establishment
=> fire brigade, fire company
=> company, troupe
=> unit, social unit
=> Peace Corps
=> force, personnel
=> union, labor union, trade union, trades union, brotherhood
=> musical organization, musical organisation, musical group
=> party, political party
=> machine, political machine
=> machine
=> professional organization, professional organisation
=> alliance, coalition, alignment, alinement
=> federation
=> hierarchy, power structure, pecking order
=> deputation, commission, delegation, delegacy, mission
=> Girl Scouts
=> blue
=> grey, gray
=> host
=> pool
Sense 5
military unit, military force, military group, force
-> unit, social unit
=> klavern
=> administrative unit, administrative body
=> company
=> family, household, house, home, menage
=> general delivery, poste restante
=> instrumentality
=> intensive care unit, ICU
=> member
=> military unit, military force, military group, force
=> task force
=> team, squad
=> den
=> gang, crew, work party
=> combination
=> crew
=> troop, scout troop, scout group
=> outfit
=> fifth column, Trojan horse
=> political unit, political entity
=> side
=> working group, working party
Sense 6
violence, force
-> aggression, hostility
=> meat grinder
=> violence, force
=> plundering, pillage, pillaging
Sense 7
power, force
-> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> agent
=> nature
=> supernatural, occult
=> theurgy
=> first cause, prime mover, primum mobile
=> destiny, fate
=> catalyst
=> deus ex machina
=> operator, manipulator
=> power, force
=> vital principle, life principle
=> engine
=> cause of death, killer
=> danger
=> agent
Sense 8
force
-> social group
=> body
=> society
=> minority
=> sector
=> interest, interest group
=> kin, kin group, kinship group, kindred, clan, tribe
=> kith
=> fringe
=> gathering, assemblage
=> congregation, fold, faithful
=> organization, organisation
=> phylum
=> force
=> platoon
=> revolving door
=> set, circle, band, lot
=> organized crime, gangland, gangdom
=> subculture
=> nonalignment, nonalinement
=> political system, form of government
=> moiety
=> tribe, folk
=> movement, social movement, front
=> Jewry
=> wing
Sense 9
effect, force
-> validity, validness
=> effect, force
Sense 10
force out, force-out, force play, force
-> putout
=> force out, force-out, force play, force
=> fielder's choice
=> sacrifice
--- Grep of noun forces
armed forces
armed forces censorship
armed forces day
forces of umar al-mukhtar
former armed forces
ground forces
lautaro popular rebel forces
market forces
naval forces
revolutionary armed forces of colombia
special forces
u. s. army special forces
umar al-mukhtar forces
united states army special forces
van der waal's forces
Grep of noun force
aerodynamic force
air force
air force academy
air force intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance
air force isr
air force officer
air force research laboratory
air force space command
airforce
attractive force
catholic reaction force
centrifugal force
centripetal force
color force
coriolis force
defence force
defense force
driving force
electrical line of force
electromotive force
electromotive force series
field of force
force
force-feed lubricating system
force-out
force 17
force feed
force field
force majeure
force out
force per unit area
force play
force pump
force unit
forced feeding
forced landing
forced sale
forcefulness
forcemeat
forceps
forceps delivery
forces of umar al-mukhtar
g-force
gravitational force
guerilla force
guerrilla force
israeli defense force
labor force
life force
line of force
lorentz force
loyalist volunteer force
magnetic force
magnetic line of force
magnetomotive force
magnetomotive force unit
military force
moral force
paramilitary force
police force
private security force
reconnaissance in force
repulsive force
retarding force
royal air force
sales force
security force
strong force
task force
tour de force
u. s. air force
united self-defense force of colombia
united states air force
united states air force academy
us air force
us air force academy
vital force
weak force
work force
workforce