TERMS STARTING WITH
Integral ::: 1. Complete, balanced, whole, lacking nothing essential. In this general usage, “integral” is typically lowercase. 2. When capitalized, “Integral” is synonymous with AQAL. In this usage, “Integral Art,” “Integral Ecology,” or “Integral Business” mean “AQAL Art,” “AQAL Ecology,” “AQAL Business,” etc.
Integral Life Practice (ILP) ::: The practice of body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. The personal expression of the AQAL framework. A modular and scalable approach to personal and professional growth. ILP focuses on tailoring a customized approach to the quadrants, levels, lines, states, or types of one’s own potential.
Integrally informed ::: A phrase that denotes a consciousness, approach, or product informed by Integral Theory. For example, an “Integrally informed artist,” or an “Integrally informed artwork.”
Integral Mathematics (of Primordial Perspectives) ::: A type of mathematics that replaces variables with perspectives and objects with sentient beings. A psychoactive math where one inhabits the perspectives of sentient beings and repeatedly takes the role of others. At this point, Integral Mathematics is a notational system and not a fully formed rigorous mathematics. (Although several mathematicians who have looked at it believe it can be developed into a radically new type of mathematics.)
Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) ::: A set of social practices that corresponds with AQAL metatheory. IMP is paradigmatic in that it includes the most time-honored methodologies, and meta-paradigmatic in that it weaves them together by way of three integrative principles: nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment. IMP is associated with the fifth and most current phase of Wilber’s work (“Wilber-V”).
Integral Perspectivism ::: The sum total of all 8 primordial perspectives. See quadrivia.
Integral Post-Metaphysics ::: An AQAL approach to ontology and epistemology that replaces perceptions with perspectives, and thus redefines the manifest realm most fundamentally as the realm of perspectives, not things, nor events, nor processes. This also amounts to “post-ontology” and “post-epistemology,” although the terms “ontology” and “epistemology” are still used loosely given the lack of alternatives.
Integral Semiotics ::: An AQAL approach to the study of signs and symbols, where the referent of any sign is said to exist within a specific worldspace. By way of a quadrivium, Integral Semiotics associates the signifier with the Upper-Right quadrant, the signified with the Upper-Left quadrant, semantics with the Lower-Left quadrant, and syntax with the Lower-Right quadrant. See sign, signifier, signified, semantics, syntax, and referent.
Integral Theory ::: See AQAL.
Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) ::: A personal growth practice pioneered by Michael Murphy and George Leonard.
Integral Yoga ::: a union (yoga) in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work.
Integral Yoga ::: The integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 18-19
integral: 1. The resulting expression of an integration.
integral ::: a. --> Lacking nothing of completeness; complete; perfect; uninjured; whole; entire.
Essential to completeness; constituent, as a part; pertaining to, or serving to form, an integer; integrant.
Of, pertaining to, or being, a whole number or undivided quantity; not fractional.
Pertaining to, or proceeding by, integration; as, the integral calculus.
integral calculus: One of two main parts of calculus which is concerned with the study of integrals, as opposed to differential calculus.
integral ::: entire; complete; whole.
integrality ::: n. --> Entireness.
integrally ::: adv. --> In an integral manner; wholly; completely; also, by integration.
integral membrane proteins ::: Proteins that possess hydrophobic domains that are inserted into membranes.
integral of a power series: An alternative method of integration of a function by integrating the power series representing the function, given that the function (the integrand) can be represented by a power series.
integral sign: The symbol ∫ used to represent integration - the symbol originates from considering integration as a modified (infintie) form of summation, which uses a large capital sigma in a similar capacity.
integral test: See Cauchy integral test.
INTEGRAL WAY TO THE TRUTH ::: To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the height till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind, to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to 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 tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1-p ::: 1. A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents a first-person mode or perspective. 2. The inside view of any holon.
1p ::: A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents an actual but nonspecific first person.
2p ::: A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents an actual but nonspecific second person.
2-p ::: A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents a second-person mode or perspective.
2. The numerical method of approximating the area underneath a curve (value of a definite integral) by areas of rectangles whose widths are not necessarily all equal (known as Riemann sums in the sense of 1).
3-p ::: 1. A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents a third-person mode or perspective. 2. The outside view of any holon.
3p ::: A notation in Integral Mathematics that represents an actual but nonspecific third person.
"A consciousness possessing the essential and integral knowledge, proceeding from the essence to the whole and from the whole to the parts, would be no longer Mind, but a perfect Truth-Consciousness automatically possessed of inherent self-knowledge and world-knowledge.” The Life Divine
“A consciousness possessing the essential and integral knowledge, proceeding from the essence to the whole and from the whole to the parts, would be no longer Mind, but a perfect Truth-Consciousness automatically possessed of inherent self-knowledge and world-knowledge.” The Life Divine
AdhyardhasatikAprajNApAramitAsutra/PrajNApAramitAnayasatapaNcasatikA. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i tshul brgya lnga bcu pa; C. Shixiang bore boluomi jing/Bore liqu fen; J. Jisso hannya haramitsukyo/Hannya rishubun; K. Silsang panya paramil kyong/Panya ich'wi pun 實相般若波羅蜜經/般若理趣分). In Sanskrit, "Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred and Fifty Lines." The basic verses (in Sanskrit) and a commentary describing the ritual accompanying its recitation (originally in Khotanese), are found together as two YOGA class tantras, the srīparmAdhya (T. Dpal mchog dang po) and srīvajramandalAlaMkAra (T. Dpal rdo rje snying po rgyan). In Japan, AMOGHAVAJRA's version of the text (called the Rishukyo) came to form an integral part of the philosophy and practice of the Japanese Shingon sect (SHINGONSHu).
ah. (sapta hotráh) ::: the seven sacrificial energies or "Ladies of the offering", the powers of "the human sacrifice which has a sevenfold energy of its action because there is a sevenfold principle in our being which has to be fulfilled in its integral perfection".
AIM. ::: To return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul’s aim in life.
There is only one aim to be followed, the increase of Peace, Light, Power and the growth of a new consciousness in the being. With that new consciousness the true knowledge, understanding, strength, feeling will come.
Aim of yoga ::: to find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transform one’s own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one’s essential nature and, as a consequence. to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one’s active nature.
Aim of Integral yoga ::: it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into a divine living.
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
antiderivative: Given a function, the function (or family of functions) whose derivative is the given function. It is also called the indefinite integral.
.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
..a path of integral seeking of the Divine by which all that we are is in the end liberated out of the Ignorance and its undivine formations into a truth beyond the Mind, a truth not only of highest spiritual status but of a dynamic spiritual self-manifestation in the universe. ::: he object of this Yoga is not to liberate the soul from Nature, but to liberate both soul and nature by sublimation into the Divine Consciousness from whom they came.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 366-67
apramAda. (P. appamAda; T. bag yod pa; C. bufangyi; J. fuhoitsu; K. pulbangil 不放逸). In Sanskrit, "heedfulness" or "vigilance"; one of the forty-six mental concomitants (CAITTA) according to the SARVASTIVADA-VAIBHAsIKA school of ABHIDHARMA and one of the fifty-one according to the YOGACARA school. Heedfulness is the opposite of "heedlessness" (PRAMADA) and is the vigilant attitude that strives toward virtuous activities and remains ever watchful of moral missteps. Heedfulness fosters steadfastness regarding spiritual and ethical matters; it was presumed to be so foundational to any kind of ethical or wholesome behavior that the SarvAstivAda abhidharma system included it among the predominant wholesome factors of wide extent (KUsALAMAHABHuMIKA). Heedfulness is also an integral part of the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA), where certain types of proclivities (ANUsAYA)-such as passion for sensual pleasure (RAGA)-can only be removed by consistent and vigilant training, rather than simply through correct insight, as on the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). Heedfulness was so crucial to spiritual progress that the Buddha recommended it in his last words delivered on his deathbed, as related in the PAli MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTANTA: "Indeed, monks, I declare to you: decay is inherent in all compounded things; strive on with vigilance." (Handa 'dAni bhikkhave AmantayAmi vo: vayadhammA sankhArA; appamAdena sampAdetha.)
AQAL ::: Pronounced “ah-qwul.” Short for “all-quadrants, all-levels,” which itself is short for “allquadrants, all-levels, all-lines, all-states, and all-types.” Developed by philosopher and author, Ken Wilber, AQAL appears to be the most comprehensive approach to reality to date. It is a supertheory or metatheory that attempts to explain how the most time-tested methodologies, and the experiences those methodologies bring forth, fit together in a coherent fashion. AQAL theory’s pragmatic correlate is a series of social practices called Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). The personal application of AQAL is called Integral Life Practice (ILP). “AQAL” is often used interchangeably with Integral Theory, the Integral approach, the Integral map, the Integral model, and Integral Operating System (IOS).
ascent and descent ::: the two-sided practice of the Integral Yoga, an ascent of the consciousness to the higher planes, a descent of the power of the higher planes into the earth-consciousness so as to drive out the power of darkness and ignorance and control the nature.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
autopoiesis ::: Proposed by biologist Humberto Maturana and cognitive scientist Francisco Varela, autopoiesis refers to the “self-production” or “self-making” of an organism. In Integral Theory, it is derived by looking at the biological phenomenology of an organism. A firstperson approach to a third-person singular reality. The inside view of the exterior of an individual (i.e., the inside view of a holon in the Upper-Right quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
beta function: A symmetric function, denoted by B(x, y), defined by the integral
bhava ::: becoming; state of being (sometimes added to an adjective to bhava form an abstract noun and translatable by a suffix such as "-ness", as in br.hadbhava, the state of being br.hat [wide], i.e., wideness); condition of consciousness; subjectivity; state of mind and feeling; physical indication of a psychological state; content, meaning (of rūpa); spiritual experience, realisation; emotion, "moved spiritualised state of the affective nature"; (madhura bhava, etc.) any of several types of relation between the jiva and the isvara, each being a way in which "the transcendent and universal person of the Divine conforms itself to our individualised personality and accepts a personal relation with us, at once identified with us as our supreme Self and yet close and different as our Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher"; attitude; mood; temperament; aspect; internal manifestation of the Goddess (devi), in . her total divine Nature (daivi prakr.ti or devibhava) or in the "more seizable because more defined and limited temperament" of any of her aspects, as in Mahakali bhava; a similar manifestation of any personality or combination of personalities of the deva or fourfold isvara, as in Indrabhava or Aniruddha bhava; in the vision of Reality (brahmadarsana), any of the "many aspects of the Infinite" which "disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together" until "there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality"; especially, the various "states of perception" in which the divine personality (purus.a) is seen in the impersonality of the brahman, ranging from the "general personality" of sagun.a brahman to the "vivid personality" of Kr.s.n.akali. bh bhavasamrddhi
Integral ::: 1. Complete, balanced, whole, lacking nothing essential. In this general usage, “integral” is typically lowercase. 2. When capitalized, “Integral” is synonymous with AQAL. In this usage, “Integral Art,” “Integral Ecology,” or “Integral Business” mean “AQAL Art,” “AQAL Ecology,” “AQAL Business,” etc.
Integral Life Practice (ILP) ::: The practice of body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. The personal expression of the AQAL framework. A modular and scalable approach to personal and professional growth. ILP focuses on tailoring a customized approach to the quadrants, levels, lines, states, or types of one’s own potential.
Integrally informed ::: A phrase that denotes a consciousness, approach, or product informed by Integral Theory. For example, an “Integrally informed artist,” or an “Integrally informed artwork.”
Integral Mathematics (of Primordial Perspectives) ::: A type of mathematics that replaces variables with perspectives and objects with sentient beings. A psychoactive math where one inhabits the perspectives of sentient beings and repeatedly takes the role of others. At this point, Integral Mathematics is a notational system and not a fully formed rigorous mathematics. (Although several mathematicians who have looked at it believe it can be developed into a radically new type of mathematics.)
Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) ::: A set of social practices that corresponds with AQAL metatheory. IMP is paradigmatic in that it includes the most time-honored methodologies, and meta-paradigmatic in that it weaves them together by way of three integrative principles: nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment. IMP is associated with the fifth and most current phase of Wilber’s work (“Wilber-V”).
Integral Perspectivism ::: The sum total of all 8 primordial perspectives. See quadrivia.
Integral Post-Metaphysics ::: An AQAL approach to ontology and epistemology that replaces perceptions with perspectives, and thus redefines the manifest realm most fundamentally as the realm of perspectives, not things, nor events, nor processes. This also amounts to “post-ontology” and “post-epistemology,” although the terms “ontology” and “epistemology” are still used loosely given the lack of alternatives.
(Integral) psychograph ::: A representation of the unique constellation of levels and lines (as well as states and types) within an individual. The AQAL matrix as it appears in an individual, with particular reference to the Upper-Left quadrant.
Integral Semiotics ::: An AQAL approach to the study of signs and symbols, where the referent of any sign is said to exist within a specific worldspace. By way of a quadrivium, Integral Semiotics associates the signifier with the Upper-Right quadrant, the signified with the Upper-Left quadrant, semantics with the Lower-Left quadrant, and syntax with the Lower-Right quadrant. See sign, signifier, signified, semantics, syntax, and referent.
Integral Theory ::: See AQAL.
Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) ::: A personal growth practice pioneered by Michael Murphy and George Leonard.
Integral Yoga ::: a union (yoga) in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work.
Integral Yoga ::: The integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 18-19
bliss ::: “For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.” The Life Divine
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.
built ::: pt. and pp. of build. dream-built, high-built, low-built, mind-built, new-built. *adj. *built in. Constructed or included as an integral part of. adj. built-up. Built by the fastening together of several parts or enlarged by the addition of layers.
calculus ::: a method of calculation, esp. one of several highly systematic methods of treating problems by a special system of algebraic notations, as differential or integral calculus.
calculus of variations: The study of extremising functionals analogous to calculus and the extremising of functions. As the set of derivatives and integrals can be thought of as forming a vector space, in addition to being analogous to, the study is naturally considered as overlapping with calculus to a certain extent.
Cauchy's integral theorem: A theorem that states that, a complex function f(z) which is holomorphic and is integrated along two paths with the same endpoints are the same. Thus the integral of a complex function f(z) holomorphic along the closed curve γ is always zero.
Cauchy's residue theorem: Mostly known as the residue theorem, it is the generalisation of Cauchy's integral Theorem and Cauchy's Integral formula.
change of variable: A method for integrating a function with respect to a variable other than the one original given in the integral.
Comparing this fourfold classification of the human constitution with the sevenfold division commonly set forth in theosophical literature: atman (the essential principle of selfhood and therefore the highest) is the same in both; karana-sarira is equivalent to buddhi and the higher manas; sukshma-sarira comprises manas and kama; while sthula-sarira takes in the three lower principles — prana, linga-sarira, and sthula-sarira. The reason for the two classifications is that Subba Row fastened “attention on the monads, looking upon the universe as a vast aggregate of individualities; while H. P. B. for that time of the world’s history saw the need to give to the inquiring Western mind . . . some real explanation of what the composition of the universe is as an entity — what its ‘stuff’ is, and what man is as an integral part of it. Now the seven principles are the seven kinds of ‘stuff’ of the universe. . . . [however] we must not have our minds confused with the idea that the seven principles are one thing, and the monads are something else which work through the principles as disjunct from them” (FSO 443-4). See also PRINCIPLES.
complementary function: Along with the particular integral, it forms the general solution of a linear differential equation. It is essentially an element in the kernel of the differential operator.
composition ::: n. --> The act or art of composing, or forming a whole or integral, by placing together and uniting different things, parts, or ingredients.
The invention or combination of the parts of any literary work or discourse, or of a work of art; as, the composition of a poem or a piece of music.
The art or practice of so combining the different parts of a work of art as to produce a harmonious whole; also, a work
Concentration ::: Concentration is necessary, first, to turn the whole will and mind from the discursive divagation natural to them, following a dispersed movement of the thoughts, running after many branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to phenomena: we have to fix the will and the thought on the eternal and real behind all, and this demands an immense effort, a one-pointed concentration. Secondly, it is necessary in order to break down the veil which is erected by our ordinary mentality between ourselves and the truth; for outer knowledge can be picked up by the way, by ordinary attention and reception, but the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind on its object, an absolute concentration of the will to attain it and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it. Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 515
constant of integration: The result of apply in reverse, in integration, the fact that any constants differentiate to zero. Thus, any integrals, which can also be considered as the same integral "plus zero", integrates to an expression that always includes an arbitrary constant. Note that an arbitrary constant is not necessary in definite integration simply because whatever arbitrary value it takes, it remains a constant and the process of subtracting the value calculated with the lower bound from the value calculated with the upper bound would ensure that the effects of the arbitrary constant "cancel each other out".
Constitutive: Of the essential nature; internal; component; inherent. Internal relations are constitutive because they are integral parts or elements of the natures which they relate, whereas external, non-constitutive relations may be altered without change in the essential natures of the related entities.
contour integral: An integral along a contour on the complex plane/argand diagram which may be parametrized.
convergent integral: A improper integral whose limit exists and is finite.
cross ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
cross ::: “… the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga
cultural anthropology ::: Traditionally refers to the study of cultural similarities and differences. In Integral Theory, it is exemplified in the study of worldviews and their patterns and regularities, as conducted by researchers as diverse as Jean Gebser and Michel Foucault. A third-person approach to first-person plural realities. An outside view of the interior of a collective (i.e., the outside view of a holon in the Lower-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
decimal point: A dot used to separate the integral part of a number from the fractional part in the decimal number system. The point is either centred (as in 0·5) or, now more commonly, placed on the line (0.5), as in this Dictionary. In many European countries a comma is used (0,5).
deep structures ::: Typically a Chomskyan notion. Integral Theory, however, uses it to refer to structures or holistic patterns that are shared by a group, whether that group be a family, a tribe, a community, a nation, all humans, all species, or all beings. Thus, “deep” does not necessarily mean “universal”; it means “shared with others.” And research then determines how wide that group is—from a few people to genuine universals. Lastly, all deep structures have surface structures that are relevant and specific to the group.
definite integral: An operation on functions which approximates the sum of the values (of the function) weighted by the length (or measure) of the intervals for which the function takes that value. A real valued function ƒ being evaluated (integrated) over the closed interval [a, b] is written as
delta function (Dirac delta function): The Dirac delta function, or δ function, is (informally) a generalized function depending on a real parameter such that it is zero for all values of the parameter except when the parameter is zero, and its integral over the parameter from −∞ to ∞ is equal to one.
dependencies ::: subject territories that are not an integral part of the ruling country.
Dictionary of Terms from http://integralyoga-auroville.com/interactive/dictionarysee also Glossary of Sri Aurobindo's Terms
differential calculus: One of two main parts of calculus which is concerned with the study of derivatives, as opposed to integral calculus.
directory service "database, networking" A structured repository of information on people and resources within an organisation, facilitating management and communication. On a {LAN} or {WAN} the directory service identifies all aspects of the {network} including users, software, hardware, and the various rights and policies assigned to each. As a result applications can access information without knowing where a particular resource is physically located, and users interact oblivious to the network {topology} and {protocols}. To allow {heterogeneous networks} to share directory information the {ITU} proposed a common structure called {X.500}. However, its complexity and lack of seamless {Internet} support led to the development of {Lightweight Directory Access Protocol} (LDAP) which has continued to evolve under the aegis of the {IETF}. Despite its name {LDAP} is too closely linked to {X.500} to be "lightweight". {LDAP} was adopted by several companies such as {Netscape Communications Corporation} (Netscape Directory Server) and has become a {de facto standard} for directory services. Other LDAP compatible offerings include {Novell, Inc.}'s {Novell Directory Services} (NDS) and {Microsoft Corporation}'s {Active Directory}. The Netscape and Novell products are available for {Windows NT} and {Unix} {platforms}. {Novell Directory Services} also run on Novell platforms. {Microsoft Corporation}'s {Active Directory} is an integral part of {Microsoft's Windows 2000} and although it can interface with directory services running on other systems it is not available for other platforms. (2001-01-02)
divergent integral: An improper integral (infinite integral) with no definite/obvious limit.
Divine in his spiritual and supraihentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind and lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation.
divine Reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Reality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere, — that is the apparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite.” *The Life Divine
double integral: An integral of an integral with respect to two different variables.
DS level ::: (communications) (Digital Signal or Data Service level) Originally an AT&T classification of transmitting one or more voice conversations in one digital data stream. The best known DS levels are DS0 (a single conversation), DS1 (24 conversations multiplexed), DS1C, DS2, and DS3.By extension, the DS level can refer to the raw data rate necessary for transmission: DS0 64 Kb/sDS1 1.544 Mb/s technologies or standards (e.g. X.25, SMDS, ISDN, ATM, PDH).Japan uses the US standards for DS0 through DS2 but Japanese DS5 has roughly the circuit capacity of US DS4, while the European standards are rather different bits per second but rates above DS1 are not necessarily integral multiples of 1,544 kb/s. (1998-05-18)
DS level "communications" (Digital Signal or Data Service level) Originally an {AT&T} classification of transmitting one or more voice conversations in one digital data stream. The best known DS levels are {DS0} (a single conversation), {DS1} (24 conversations multiplexed), {DS1C}, {DS2}, and {DS3}. By extension, the DS level can refer to the raw data rate necessary for transmission: DS0 64 Kb/s DS1 1.544 Mb/s DS1C 3.15 Mb/s DS2 6.31 Mb/s DS3 44.736 Mb/s DS4 274.1 Mb/s (where K and M signify multiplication by 1000 and 1000000, rather than powers of two). In this sense it can be used to measure of data service rates classifying the user access rates for various point-to-point {WAN} technologies or standards (e.g. {X.25}, {SMDS}, {ISDN}, {ATM}, {PDH}). Japan uses the US standards for DS0 through DS2 but Japanese DS5 has roughly the circuit capacity of US DS4, while the European standards are rather different (see {E1}). In the US all of the transmission rates are integral multiples of 8000 bits per second but rates above DS1 are not necessarily integral multiples of 1,544 kb/s. (1998-05-18)
empiricism ::: Empiricism typically means knowledge based on sensory experience. In Integral Theory, it generally means the study of the objective appearance and behavior of an organism. A third-person approach to a third-person singular reality. An outside view of the exterior of an individual (i.e., the outside view of a holon in the Upper-Right quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
epistemology ::: Traditionally, the study of knowledge and its validity. In Integral Post-Metaphysics, epistemology is not a separate discipline or activity but that aspect of the AQAL matrix that is experienced as knowingness; the study of that aspect is epistemology. The term “epistemology” is sometimes used in this sense given the lack of alternatives.
error function: A function used for calculating the probability of an observation lying within a certain interval for a normally distributed random variable, defined as the integral
Euclidean norm "mathematics" The most common {norm}, calculated by summing the squares of all coordinates and taking the square root. This is the essence of {Pythagoras's theorem}. In the infinite-dimensional case, the sum is infinite or is replaced with an integral when the number of dimensions is {uncountable}. (2004-02-15)
Euclidean norm ::: (mathematics) The most common norm, calculated by summing the squares of all coordinates and taking the square root. This is the essence of Pythagoras's theorem. In the infinite-dimensional case, the sum is infinite or is replaced with an integral when the number of dimensions is uncountable.(2004-02-15)
fascism ::: A political ideology and mass movement that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and historical terms, above all other loyalties, and to create a mobilized national community. Many different characteristics are attributed to fascism by different scholars, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, totalitarianism, collectivism, anti-liberalism, and anti-communism.
Fayan zong. (J. Hogenshu; K. Poban chong 法眼宗). In Chinese, the "Dharma Eye School," one of the "five houses" (wu jia; see WU JIA QI ZONG), or distinct schools, that had developed with the mature Chinese CHAN lineage during the late Tang dynasty, c. ninth to tenth centuries CE. Chan genealogical histories (see CHUANDENG LU) speak of a lineage of monks that can be traced back to the eminent Chan master FAYAN WENYI (885-958), who himself inherited the lineage(s) of XUEFENG YICUN (822-908), XUANSHA SHIBEI (835-908), and their student Luohan Guichen (867-928). With the support of the ruler of the state of Wuyue, Fayan and his monastery of Qingliangyuan in Shengzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) flourished. Fayan's prominent students TIANTAI DESHAO (891-972), Baizhang Daoheng (d. 991), Guizong Yirou (d.u.), and Bao'en Fa'an (d.u.) firmly established Fayan's line in the area of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. Chengtian Daoyuan (d.u.), the compiler of the influential genealogical history of Chan known as the JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, also belongs to the Fayan line of Chan through his teacher Tiantai Deshao.The Fayan line's interest in harmonizing the iconoclastic aspects of Chan with the exegetical tradition of HUAYAN and the recitative practices of PURE LAND (see NIANFO) is best exemplified in the Fanyan Chan master YONGMING YANSHOU's magnum opus ZONGJING LU. The works of Fayan masters also exerted much influence in Korean Son Buddhism. Although the Fayan zong did not survive into the Song dynasty as an active lineage, it remained an integral part of the retrospective imagining of the Chan tradition that took place during the Song.
First Tier ::: A phrase used to summarize the first six major levels of values development according to Clare Graves and Spiral Dynamics: Survival Sense, Kin Spirits, Power Gods, Truth Force, Strive Drive, and Human Bond. First-Tier stages are characterized by a belief that “my values are the only correct values.” This lies in contrast to Second-Tier levels of development, wherein individuals recognize the importance of all value systems. Integral Theory uses First Tier to refer to the first six degrees or levels of developmental altitude (Infrared, Magenta, Red, Amber, Orange, and Green).
Footnote (accounting) - Explanatory data that follows the financial statements and is integrally related to them. Footnotes help the user understand financial statement figures and any other matters essential in gauging a company's financial position
for discrete variables and the integral
For the sadhaka of the integral yoga it is necessary to remem- ber that no written Sastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture.
Fourfold Classification There are many different ways of dividing the constitution of the universe or of any integral entity within it, such as a human being. Several philosophical and religious systems employ a fourfold division, as is found in certain Hindu systems. Subba Row, a Vedantist as well as a theosophist, pointed out that the fourfold classification of the human principles in some Hindu systems is not only applicable to man, but likewise to the universe and solar system. The Taraka-Raja-Yoga system — perhaps the most subtlety philosophical of the Brahmanical yoga schools — divides the human constitution into three upadhis (bases) plus the atman or essential self, as follows: atman, karanopadhi, sukshmopadhi, and sthulopadhi.
Fresnel integrals: The collective class="d-title" name of two transcendental functions defined by the integral of trigonometric functions, used in the study of optics.
From time immemorial (some scholars say 8000 years before the Christian era) India has been the land of spiritual knowledge and practice, of the discovery of the Supreme Reality and union with it. It is the country that has practised concentration most and best. The methods, called Yoga in Sanskrit, that are taught and used in this country are countless. Some are merely material, others purely intellectual, others religious and devotional; lastly, some of them combine these various processes in order to achieve a more integral result.
fulcrum ::: A developmental milestone within the self-identity stream, or the proximate-self line of development. Fulcrums follow a general 1-2-3 process: fusion or identification with one’s current level of self-development; differentiation or disidentification from that level; and integration of the new level with the previous level. AQAL theory, and Integral Psychology in specific, focus on anywhere from nine to ten developmental fulcrums.
gamma function: A function related to the factorial function defined by the integral
ganying. (J. kanno; K. kamŭng 感應). In Chinese, "sympathetic resonance," or "stimulus and response," a seminal concept in traditional Chinese philosophy, which is appropriated in early Chinese Buddhism to explain the Buddhist concepts of action (KARMAN) and grace (i.e., the "response" of a buddha or BODHISATTVA to a supplicant's invocation, or "stimulus"). Ganying is a mode of seemingly spontaneous (although not "uncaused") response that occurs naturally in a universe conceived holistically in terms of pattern or "principle" (LI) and interdependent order. The notion itself is deceptively simple: objects belonging to the same category or class are conceived as resonating spontaneously with each other, just as would two identically tuned strings on a pair of zithers. The notion of resonance was used in traditional Chinese philosophy to explain or rationalize the mechanism behind the elaborate system of correlated categories generally known as five-phase (wuxing) thought-viz., the primary elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and soil. According to early Chinese cosmology, the underlying principles and patterns of the universe seemingly give rise to, or resonate spontaneously with, correlative manifestations in the physical world. The Chinese conception of the universe as an interconnected harmonious whole finds expression in theories concerning the cyclic progression of the five phases and yin (dark) and yang (light), as well as in elaborate prescriptions pertaining to the ritual life of the court. The universe, according to this view, is in a state of continual motion and flux. The patterns of change are the result of the cyclic interactions between the five phases and the forces (or vital energies, C. qi) of yin and yang, which tend naturally in the direction of rhythmic balance and harmony. Humans do not stand apart from the natural universe but rather constitute a fundamental and integral part of this whole. Early Buddhist thinkers in China adapted the mechanism of sympathetic resonance to explain in Chinese terms how an action (karman) performed in one time period could evoke a corresponding response, or fruition (VIPĀKA), in another. In addition, sympathetic resonance was used by early Chinese Buddhist thinkers to make sense of the notion of grace. In this later sense, sentient beings' faith (sRADDHĀ) and/or roots of virtue (KUsALAMuLA) would invoke a "sympathetic response" in the minds of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, which prompts them to respond accordingly with salvific grace. In the PURE LAND traditions, sentient beings' recitation of the name of AMITĀBHA (see NIANFO) creates a sympathetic response in the mind of that buddha, which prompts him in turn to bring them to his pure land, where they may become enlightened. The rubric of ganying is just as prevalent in popular religious tracts in China, where it refers to the principle of moral retribution-the belief that one's good and evil deeds will result in corresponding rewards and punishments. While the Chinese notion of moral retribution (bao) meted out in this life or the next was indebted to Buddhist notions of karman and rebirth, in the premodern period, such retribution emerged as a fundamental principle of Chinese popular religious belief and practice, irrespective of one's specific religious affiliation. This doctrine was propagated through innumerable tales of miraculous retribution-such as "numinous attestation" (lingyan), "responsive attestation" (yingyan), or "numinous response" (lingying), and so on-that "attested" (yan) to the reality of the "numinous" or "supernatural" (ling) and the inevitability of divine justice.
Glossary of Sanskrit Terms in Integral Yoga Literature ::: http://www.miraura.org/lit/skgl.html
Gnas chung. (Nechung). In Tibetan, lit. "Small Place," a monastery serving as the seat of the GNAS CHUNG ORACLE, Tibet's state oracle, located near 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery outside LHA SA. According to tradition, on the advice of sĀNTARAKsITA, KHRI SRONG SDE BTSAN invited the tantric thaumaturge PADMASAMBHAVA to Tibet to subdue spirits hostile to the introduction of Buddhism. Padmasambhava appointed a powerful spirit PE HAR as the protector of Buddhism of Tibet in general and of BSAM YAS monastery in particular. The main place (T. gnas chen) of Pe har is in Bsam yas, and a smaller shrine dedicated to his worship (and to the worship of RDO RJE GRAGS LDAN, the chief form in which Pe har carries out his work in Tibet) was located on the site of the present Gnas chung monastery. The monastery became important during the time of the fifth DALAI LAMA (1617-1682) and his regent SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, who completed an extensive expansion of the monastery in 1683 as part of a strategy to legitimatize the new government of Tibet (the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG). They expanded the role of Pe har and made Nechung monastery the seat of Tibet's state oracle, introducing new invocations and rituals as an integral part of the monastery's practices. In the late nineteenth century, O rgyan Phrin las chos 'phel, a lama from SMIN GROL GLING monastery, introduced a number of RNYING MA tantric practices to the monastery; his incarnations are called the Gnas chung sprul skus.
Granting that there may be some historical background for the Biblical account, it is nevertheless allegorical throughout. Blavatsky compares the measurements given in the Bible with those of the Great Pyramid and the Tabernacle of Moses, all of which were constructed upon the same abstract formula derived from the number of years in the precessional cycle, and also upon integral values of pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter. Moses symbolized these “under the form and measurements of the tabernacle, that he is supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these data the later Jewish High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon’s Temple — a building which never had a real existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is simply, and as much a solar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif, of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of Initiation, coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses” (SD 1:314-5). And she refers to “the undeniable, clear, and mathematical proofs that the esoteric foundations, or the system used in the building of the Great Pyramid, and the architectural measurements in the Temple of Solomon (whether the latter be mythical or real), Noah’s ark, and the ark of the Covenant, are the same” (SD 2:465).
Great Chain of Being ::: Traditionally refers to the central claim of premodern wisdom traditions: that reality consists of a great hierarchy of knowing and being which can be summarized as matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, and at which any level human beings can operate. In Integral Theory, the Great Chain is not accepted as pregiven, but is considered the product of evolutionary unfolding.
Great Nest of Being ::: Ken Wilber’s reframing of the Great Chain of Being to more accurately reflect what the premodern sages themselves originally meant: each expanding “link” in the Great Chain transcends and includes its juniors, and is therefore actually a Great “Nest” of Being. In Integral Theory, the Great Nest of Being is not a Platonic given but the result of evolutionary Kosmic habits.
grick /grik/ ({WPI}, first used by Tim Haven to describe "grick trigonometry", a shortcut method of determing attack angles in grid-based games like Star Trek) Any integral increment of measurement. E.g. "Please turn the stereo up a few gricks". (1995-01-31)
grick ::: /grik/ (WPI, first used by Tim Haven to describe grick trigonometry, a shortcut method of determing attack angles in grid-based games like Star Trek) Any integral increment of measurement. E.g. Please turn the stereo up a few gricks. (1995-01-31)
Guiyang zong. [alt. Weiyang zong] (J. Igyoshu; K. Wiang chong 潙仰宗). In Chinese, the "Guiyang school," one of the "five houses" (wu jia; see WU JIA QI ZONG), or distinct schools, that developed within the mature Chinese CHAN lineage during the late-Tang dynasty, or c. ninth century CE. The Guiyang school is named after its cofounders, GUISHAN LINGYOU (771-853) and YANGSHAN HUIJI (807-883), whose lineage derives from the HONGZHOU school of MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and BAIZHANG HUAIHAI (720-814). The Guiyang school is recognized for its distinctive pedagogical style, which privileged nonverbal expressions of enlightenment over verbal descriptions. For example, once Lingyou's teacher, Huaihai, placed a water jug before the assembly of monks and asked them, "If you don't call this a water jug, what can you call it?" Lingyou's response was to kick over the jug and walk away. This combination of action and silence was said to be the way in which the Guiyang school would express the relationship between essence (TI) and function (YONG). The Guiyang school is also known for its use of circular figures, including an intricate set of ninety-seven circular symbols that Yangshan Huiji used to express different aspects of Buddhist ontology and soteriology. Although the Guiyang zong did not survive into the Song dynasty as an active lineage, it remained an integral part of the retrospective imagining of the Chan tradition that took place during the Song.
Head Disk Assembly "hardware, storage" (HDA) A sealed, high capacity {mainframe} {hard disk} with integral heads, as opposed to a {removable disk}. (1999-01-13)
Head Disk Assembly ::: (hardware, storage) (HDA) A sealed, high capacity mainframe hard disk with integral heads, as opposed to a removable disk. (1999-01-13)
hermeneutics ::: Traditionally refers to the study of interpretation. In Integral Theory, it is the study of interpretation within the interior of a “We,” as exemplified by Hans-Georg Gadamer. A first-person approach to first-person plural realities. The inside view of the interior of a collective (i.e., the inside view of a holon in the Lower-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
holon ::: A term coined by Arthur Koestler. In Integral Theory, a holon refers to a whole that is simultaneously part of another whole, or “whole/part.” Whole atoms are parts of whole molecules, which themselves are parts of whole cells, and so on. There are individual holons and social holons. The main difference between the two is that individual holons have a subjective awareness or dominant monad (an “I”), while social holons have an intersubjective awareness, dominant mode of discourse, or predominant mode of resonance (a “We”/“Its”): social holons emerge when individual holons commune. Individual and social holons follow the twenty tenets. Lastly, “holon,” in the broadest sense, simply means “any whole that is a part of another whole,” and thus artifacts and heaps can loosely be considered “holons.”
I get the supramental knowledge best by becoming one with the truth, one with the object of knowledge; the supramental satisfaction and integral light is most there when there is no further division between the knower, knowledge and the known, jnata, jnanam, jneyam. I see the thing known not as an object outside myself, but as myself or a part of my universal self contained in my most direct consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 831-32
“Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
I-I ::: 1. Sri Ramana Maharshi’s term for the Witness, or the root of attention. The Witness is an “I-I” because it witnesses or reflects the little “I”: the ego or small self. See anterior self. 2. I-I is also an abbreviation for Integral Institute.
Impersonal realisation ::: It is the realisation of the silent Self, of the pure Existence, Consciousness and Bliss in itself without any perception of an Existent, Conscient, Blissful. It leads there- fore to Nirvana. In the integral knowledge the realisation of the
improper integral An integral where the concept of infinity is involved in one or both of the limits. It is an improper integral because it is really the limit of a sequence of integrals rather than being an integral itself.
impulse: 1. The integral of a (possibly variable) force over time resulting in a change of momentum:
In considering how the One becomes the many, how the homogeneous becomes heterogeneous, during the differentiations during manvantara, we are posing the ultimate problem. The unity during manvantaric kosmic differentiation does not lose its unity in the vast diversities of such differentiation, for the unity forever remains the originant and expresses itself at the same time as its integral unity and as the emanated hierarchies which temporarily flow forth from it, in time to return into it again.
indefinite integral Also called an antiderivative. The indefinite integral of function f(x) is the (family of) function(s) whose derivative is f(x).
infinite integral: Also known as an improper integral, it is where an integral involves infinity in either its limits (upper or lower or both)
infinitesimal calculus: A term for the branch of mathematics usually known simply as calculus. This term is necessary since the term is calculus is also associated with other unrelated fields in mathematics (e.g. lambda calculus, which is not about derivatives and integrals.)
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. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
In mathematics, the word calculus has many specific applications, all conforming more or less closely to the above statement. Sometimes, however, the simple phrase "the calculus" is used in referring to those branches of mathematical analysis (q.v.) which are known more explicitly as the differential calculus and the integral calculus. -- A.C.
Instrumental value: See Value, Instrumental. Integral: A whole composed of parts. Belonging to a whole as one of its parts. Anything composed of distinguishable parts. Complete, untouched. In mathematics, related to integers, the result of integration. -- J K.F.
integral: 1. The resulting expression of an integration.
integral ::: a. --> Lacking nothing of completeness; complete; perfect; uninjured; whole; entire.
Essential to completeness; constituent, as a part; pertaining to, or serving to form, an integer; integrant.
Of, pertaining to, or being, a whole number or undivided quantity; not fractional.
Pertaining to, or proceeding by, integration; as, the integral calculus.
integral calculus: One of two main parts of calculus which is concerned with the study of integrals, as opposed to differential calculus.
integral ::: entire; complete; whole.
integrality ::: n. --> Entireness.
integrally ::: adv. --> In an integral manner; wholly; completely; also, by integration.
integral membrane proteins ::: Proteins that possess hydrophobic domains that are inserted into membranes.
integral of a power series: An alternative method of integration of a function by integrating the power series representing the function, given that the function (the integrand) can be represented by a power series.
integral sign: The symbol ∫ used to represent integration - the symbol originates from considering integration as a modified (infintie) form of summation, which uses a large capital sigma in a similar capacity.
integral test: See Cauchy integral test.
INTEGRAL WAY TO THE TRUTH ::: To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the height till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind, to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to 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 tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
integrand The expression in an integral that is to be integrated.
integrant ::: a. --> Making part of a whole; necessary to constitute an entire thing; integral.
integrate ::: v. t. --> To form into one whole; to make entire; to complete; to renew; to restore; to perfect.
To indicate the whole of; to give the sum or total of; as, an integrating anemometer, one that indicates or registers the entire action of the wind in a given time.
To subject to the operation of integration; to find the integral of.
integration ::: n. --> The act or process of making whole or entire.
The operation of finding the primitive function which has a given function for its differential coefficient. See Integral.
In the theory of evolution: The process by which the manifold is compacted into the relatively simple and permanent. It is supposed to alternate with differentiation as an agent in development.
integration: The inverse process of differentiation, as related by the fundamental theorem of calculus. It can informally thought of as the process of finding functions (called integrals) which calculates the limit of sums of (different) constant quantities over a number of small intervals for what is actually a variable quantity over an interval.
intermodulation distortion "electronics, communications" (IMD) {Nonlinear} {distortion} in a system or {transducer}, characterised by the appearance in the output of frequencies equal to the sums and differences of integral multiples of the two or more component frequencies present in the {input} waveform. (2000-08-21)
intermodulation distortion ::: (electronics, communications) (IMD) Nonlinear distortion in a system or transducer, characterised by the appearance in the output of frequencies equal to the sums and differences of integral multiples of the two or more component frequencies present in the input waveform.(2000-08-21)
In the receiving there must be no inability to contain, no breaking down of anything In the system, mind or life or nerv'e or body under the traasmudng stress. There must be an endless receptivity, an always increasing edacity to bear an ever stronger and more and more insistent action of the divine Force. Other- wise notlung great or permanent can be done ; the Yoga will end in a break-down or an inert stoppage or a stultifying or a disastrous arrest in a process which must be absolute and integral if it is not to be a failure.
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 is in direct contact with the higher Truth but not in an integral contact. It gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into intuitions—intuitive ideas. The ideas of the true Intuition are always correct so far as they go —but when intuition is diluted in the ordinary mind stuff, its truth gets mixed with error.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 159
ion channels ::: Integral membrane proteins possessing pores that allow certain ions to diffuse across cell membranes, thereby conferring selective ionic permeability.
ionotropic (ionotropic receptors) ::: Receptors in which the ligand binding site is an integral part of the receptor molecule.
irrational ::: a. --> Not rational; void of reason or understanding; as, brutes are irrational animals.
Not according to reason; absurd; foolish.
Not capable of being exactly expressed by an integral number, or by a vulgar fraction; surd; -- said especially of roots. See Surd.
iterated integral: An expression with nested integrals, also known as multiple integration.
It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, that naturally taken by the body when seated and gathered together, but with the back and head strictly erect and in a straight line, so that there may be no deflection of the spinal cord. The object of the latter rule is obviously connected with the theory of the six chakras and the circulation of the vital energy between the muladhara and the brahmarandhra. The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears the nervous system; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will according to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being; it gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Purusha on each of the ascending planes. Coupled with the use of the mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method. Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; it commences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from outward things, proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Th
refore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind, accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are, however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only
reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same. Here, it might be supposed, the whole action and aim of Rajayoga must end. For its action is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cittavrtti, first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajasic activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic, then, by the stilling of all activities; and its object is to enter into silent communion of soul and unity with the Divine. As a matter of fact we find that the system of Rajayoga includes other objects,—such as the practice and use of occult powers,—some of which seem to be unconnected with and even inconsistent with its main purpose. These powers or siddhis are indeed frequently condemned as dangers and distractions which draw away the Yogin from his sole legitimate aim of divine union. On the way, th
refore, it would naturally seem as if they ought to be avoided; and once the goal is reached, it would seem that they are then frivolous and superfluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi, and an account of the powers and states which are possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the science. These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them; or else, even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a single-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, greater powers belonging to the supramental planes which are the very powers of the Divine in his spiritual and supramentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind and lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation. They then become, not abnormal and laboriously acquired siddhis, but simply the very nature and method of his action, if he still continues to be active in the world-existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 539-40-41-42
It might be said that the universe is infilled with chiliocosms, each one corresponding more or less to a hierarchy with its own integral system of worlds, regions, or divisions, each division again being subdivided to form the vast complexity of universal nature we see around us. Further, each such hierarchy from another standpoint consists of divine, spiritual, intellectual, astral, or astral-physical divisions running from the higher downwards to the lowest; and the three lowest of each such chiliocosm bear the names kama-loka (or kama-dhatu), rupa-loka (or rupa-dhatu), and arupa-loka (or arupa-dhatu), these three commonly spoken of as the trailokya, the name applying to whatever universe, hierarchy, or chiliocosm they may be in or belong to.
IYE::: Glossary of English Terms in Integral Yoga Literature :::
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Kosmos ::: 1. A Pythagorean term meaning the pattern or order that connects the universe throughout its many dimensions of physical, mental, and spiritual existence. 2. In Integral Theory, the sum total of the manifest universe when contrasted with Spirit as the unmanifest or Emptiness. When used alone, the sum total of the manifest and the unmanifest, including Spirit.
Laplace transformation: More commonly known as a Laplace Transform, it is a linear operator which transform a function with non-negative real arguments into an integral of complex arguments.
Life-Wave ::: This is a term which means the collective hosts of monads, of which hosts there are seven or ten,according to the classification adopted. The monad is a spiritual ego, a consciousness-center, being in thespiritual realms of the universal life what the life-atoms are in the lower planes of form. These monadsand life-atoms collectively are the seven (or ten) life-waves -- these monads with the life-atoms in andthrough which they work; these life-atoms having remained, when the former planetary chain went intopralaya, in space as kosmic dust on the physical plane, and as corresponding life-atoms or life-specks ofdifferentiated matter on the intermediate planes above the physical. Out of the working of the monads asthey come down into matter -- or rather through and by the monadic rays permeating the lower planes ofmatter -- are the globes builded. The seven (or ten) life-waves or hosts of monads consist of monads inseven (or ten) degrees of advancement for each host.When the hosts of beings forming the life-wave -- the life-wave being composed of the entities derivedfrom a former but now dead planet, in our case the moon -- find that the time has arrived for them toenter upon their own particular evolutionary course, they cycle downwards as a life-wave along theplanetary chain that has been prepared for them by the three hosts of elementary beings, of the threeprimordial elementary worlds, the forerunners of the life-wave, yet integral parts of it. This life-wavepasses seven times in all around the seven spheres of our planetary chain, at first cycling down theshadowy arc through all the seven elements of the kosmos, gathering experience in each one of them;each particular entity of the life-wave, no matter what its grade or kind -- spiritual, psychic, astral,mental, divine -- advancing, until at the bottom of the arc, when the middle of the fourth round isattained, they feel the end of the downward impulse. Then begins the upward impulse, the reascent alongthe luminous arc upwards, towards the source from which the life-wave originally came.
limits of integration: The endpoints (a and b) of an interval over which a defnite integral (the following example) is performed.
lines ::: Relatively independent streams or capacities that proceed through levels of development. Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences is one example of the study of developmental lines. There is evidence for over a dozen developmental lines, including cognitive, moral, self-identity, aesthetic, kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, and mathematical. Integral Theory generally classifies these lines according to one of three types: cognitive lines (as studied by Jean Piaget, Robert Kegan, Kurt Fischer, etc.); selfrelated lines (e.g., morals, self-identity, needs, etc.); and capacities or talents (e.g., musical capacity, kinesthetic capacity, introspective capacity). Cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for development in the self-related lines and appears to be necessary for most of the capacities.
". . . love is the crown of knowledge; for love is the delight of union, and unity must be conscious of joy of union to find all the riches of its own delight. Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“… love is the crown of knowledge; for love is the delight of union, and unity must be conscious of joy of union to find all the riches of its own delight. Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
lower limit: One of the limits of integration in the evaluation of a definite integral that is used as the argument in the indefinite integral that is used as the subtrahend (i.e. the number to be subtracted, not the number to subtract from).
mantissa ::: n. --> The decimal part of a logarithm, as distinguished from the integral part, or characteristic.
MATT RENTSCHLER ::: is a poet, arts scholar, Co-Director of the Integral Art Center, and Managing Editor of AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his mate, Channon.
mean value (of a function): The mean of a function represents the value of a constant function whose integral over the same interval equals that of the specified function.
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.
Merkabah ::: (Heb., “chariot”). The "chariot vision" was an integral element of mysticism signifying a vision of divinity.
metaphysics ::: Traditionally, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with issues of ontology (what is being or reality?) and epistemology (how do we know it?). In Integral Theory, any assertion without injunctions is considered metaphysics, or a meaningless assertion (i.e., postulating a referent for which there is no means of verification). The term is also used in its traditional sense given the lack of alternatives.
monological ::: A descriptor of any approach where an individual conducts a “monologue” with an object and apprehends their immediate experience of that object, usually without acknowledging or recognizing cultural embeddedness and intersubjectivity. Monological approaches, in themselves, are sometimes referred to as subscribing to the “myth of the given,” “the philosophy of the subject,” “the philosophy of consciousness,” or what Integral Theory would describe as the belief that the contents of the Upper-Left quadrant are given without being intertwined in the remaining three quadrants. Monological approaches are typically associated with phenomenology, empiricism, meditation, all experiential exercises and therapies, etc.
morphotic ::: a. --> Connected with, or becoming an integral part of, a living unit or of the morphological framework; as, morphotic, or tissue, proteids.
(Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 05, 08-01-1964)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 one-sided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 82
mukti ::: liberation, "the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature"; in pūrn.a yoga, "a liberation of the soul in nature perfect and self-existent whether in action or in inaction"; the second member of the siddhi catus.t.aya, integral freedom, including liberation of the spirit (essential mukti) and liberation of the nature (comprising ahaṅkara-mukti-siddhi, traigun.yasiddhi and mukti from dvandva), not only a "liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the spirit", but also a "farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience" which "fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery".
multiple integration: An expression with nested integrals, also known as iterated integrals.
multivariable calculus: The study of calculus (derivatives and integrals) of functions of more than one variable. Also known as vector calculus.
namu Amidabutsu. (C. namo Amituo fo; K. namu Amit'a pul 南無阿彌陀佛). In Japanese, "I take refuge in the buddha AMITĀBHA." Chanting of the name of the buddha Amitābha as a form of "buddha-recollection" (J. nenbutsu; see C. NIANFO) is often associated with the PURE LAND traditions. In Japan, nenbutsu practice was spread throughout the country largely through the efforts of itinerant holy men (HIJIRI), such as KuYA and IPPEN. With the publication of GENSHIN's oJo YoSHu, the practice of nenbutsu and the prospect of rebirth in Amitābha's pure land came to play an integral role as well in the TENDAI tradition. HoNEN, a learned monk of the Tendai sect, inspired in part by reading the writings of the Chinese exegete SHANDAO, became convinced that the nenbutsu was the most appropriate form of Buddhist practice for people in the degenerate age of the dharma (J. mappo; C. MOFA). Honen set forth his views in a work called Senchaku hongan nenbutsushu ("On the Nenbutsu Selected in the Primal Vow," see SENCHAKUSHu). The title refers to the vow made eons ago by the bodhisattva DHARMĀKARA that he would become the buddha Amitābha, create the pure land of bliss (SUKHĀVATĪ), and deliver to that realm anyone who called his name. To illustrate the power of the practice of nenbutsu, Honen contrasted "right practice" and the "practice of sundry good acts." "Right practice" refers to all forms of worship of Amitābha, the most important of which is the recitation of his name. "Practice of sundry good acts" refers to ordinary virtuous deeds performed by Buddhists, which are meritorious but lack the power of "right practice" that derives from the grace of Amitābha. Indeed, the power of Amitābha's vow is so great that those who sincerely recite his name, Honen suggests, do not necessarily need to dedicate their merit toward rebirth in the land of bliss because recitation will naturally result in rebirth there. Honen goes on to explain that each bodhisattva makes specific vows about the particular practice that will result in rebirth in their buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). Some buddha-fields are for those who practice charity (DĀNA), others for those who construct STuPAs, and others for those who honor their teachers. While Amitābha was still the bodhisattva Dharmākara, he compassionately selected a very simple practice that would lead to rebirth in his pure land of bliss: the mere recitation of his name. Honen recognized how controversial these teachings would be if they were widely espoused, so he instructed that the Senchakushu not be published until after his death and allowed only his closest disciples to read and copy it. His teachings gained popularity in a number of influential circles but were considered anathema by the existing sects of Buddhism in Japan because of his promotion of the sole practice of reciting the name. His critics charged him with denigrating sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, with neglecting virtuous deeds other than the recitation of the name, and with abandoning the meditation and visualization practices that should accompany the chanting of the name. Some years after Honen's death, the printing xylographs of the Senchakushu were confiscated and burned as works harmful to the dharma. However, by that time, the teachings of Honen had gained a wide following among both aristocrats and the common people. Honen's disciple SHINRAN came to hold even more radical views. Like Honen, he believed that any attempt to rely on one's own powers (JIRIKI) to achieve freedom from SAMSĀRA was futile; the only viable course of action was to rely on the power of Amitābha. But for Shinran, this power was pervasive. Even to make the effort to repeat silently "namu Amidabutsu" was a futile act of hubris. The very presence of the sounds of Amitābha's name in one's heart was due to Amitābha's compassionate grace. It was therefore redundant to repeat the name more than once in one's life. Instead, a single utterance (ICHINENGI) would assure rebirth in the pure land; all subsequent recitation should be regarded as a form of thanksgiving. This utterance need be neither audible nor even voluntary; instead, it is heard in the heart as a consequence of the "single thought-moment" of faith (shinjin, see XINXIN), received through Amitābha's grace. Shinran not only rejected the value of multiple recitations of the phrase namu Amidabutsu; he also regarded the deathbed practices advocated by Genshin to bring about rebirth in the pure land as inferior self-power (jiriki). Despite harsh persecution by rival Buddhist traditions and the government, the followers of Honen and Shinran came to form the largest Buddhist community in Japan, known as the JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu.
Nara ::: (in mythology) the name of a sage (see Nara-Narayan.a); (literally) Man; "the universal man acting in the individual as a human . personality"; in brahmadarsana, the vision of "the cosmic Purusha in humanity", who "is developing in the human race the power that has grown into humanity from below it and shall yet grow to supermind and spirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral self and the divine universality of his nature".
Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. An integral knowledge demands an exploration, an unveiling of all the possible domains of consciousness and experience. For there are subjective domains of our being which lie behind the obvious surface; these have to be fathomed and whatever is ascertained must be admitted within the scope of the total reality. An inner range of spiritual experience is one very great domain of human consciousness ; it has to be entered into up to its deepest depths and its vastest reaches. The supraphysical is as real as the physical ; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. The knowledge of the supraph>'sical has been associated with mysti- efsm and occultism, and occultism has been banned as a super- stition and fantastic error. But the occult Is a part of existence ; a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden Jaws of being and
Nemesis is the automatic reestablishing of equilibrium brought about by the action of the human being — a reestablishing as impersonal and impassive as the kosmic laws operating around us. Themis is the instinct for order and harmony which, when it is able to express itself in human life through man’s active will, frees one from karmic necessity; for such harmony working in the human ego and faithfully followed is becoming at one with nature and following its inherent Law — which the word Themis means — of equilibrium. Human free will grows ever greater as it becomes the free will of the universe of which mankind is a integral and inseparable part. Thus, it is man who creates causes, and karma which adjusts the effects. See also KARMA-NEMESIS; MOIRA
nianifesiing Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice,
noise shaping "communications" {Spectral noise} transformation in a quantisation processes. Noise is "colourised" in the {time domain} an/or {frequency domain} by adding parts of the previous sample. The {SNR bandwidth} and {SNR time integral} stay the same, so some noise decreases, some increases, but overall noise always increases. An example of noise shaping in the frequency domain is quantisation of samples on a {Compact Disc} to reduce noise below -98 dB. The are different algorithms with slightly different filters, e.g. {Super Bitmapping}, {4D Recording}. A time domain example is {MPEG-4 AAC TNS}, which is a method to enhance quality by temporal forming of the noise in a transform block. (2003-07-19)
Nolini: “This world of absolute light which Savitri names ‘everlasting day’ is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has be removed if one is to see the Sun itself—to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.” Collected Works, Vol. 4.
numerical integration: The process of approximating the definite integral of a function in an interval by values of the function with arguments in the interval. More accurate approximations results from more points within the interval being used. The points are usually chosen so that they partition the interval evenly.
Nuñez Regüeiro, Manuel: Born in Uruguay, March 21, 1883. Professor of Philosophy at the National University of the Litoral in Argentine. Author of about twenty-five books, among which the following are the most important from a philosophical point of view: Fundamentos de la Anterosofia, 1925; Anterosofia Racional, 1926; De Nuevo Hablo Jesus, 1928; Filosofia Integral, 1932; Del Conocimiento y Progreso de Si Mismo, 1934; Tratado de Metalogica, o Fundamentos de Una Nueva Metodologia, 1936; Suma Contra Una Nueva Edad Media, 1938; Metafisica y Ciencia, 1941; La Honda Inquietud, 1915; Conocimiento y Creencia, 1916. Three fundamental questions and a tenacious effort to answer them run throughout the entire thought of Nuñez Regüeiro, namely the three questions of Kant: What can I know? What must I do? What can I expect? Science as auch does not write finis to anything. We experience in science the same realm of contradictions and inconsistencies which we experience elsewhere. Fundamentally, this chaos is of the nature of dysteleology. At the root of the conflict lies a crisis of values. The problem of doing is above all a problem of valuing. From a point of view of values, life ennobles itself, man lifts himself above the trammels of matter, and the world becomes meaning-full. Is there a possibility for the realization of this ideal? Has this plan ever been tried out? History offers us a living example: The Fact of Jesus. He is the only possible expectation. In him and through him we come to fruition and fulfilment. Nuñez Regüeiro's philosophy is fundamentally religious. -- J.A.F.
Once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vi^lant, integrally conscious, iwe can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its move- ments as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us. ; , ,
on the satisfaction of cgo-dcsire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a while flame, not a red one ; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human rela- tions and human nature ; it finds the fullness of -its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other ele- ments which seek at once to use it and overshadow it. It gels an outlet for its o^vn full intensities only at rare moments. Other- wise it comes in only as an element, but even so it contributes all the higher things in a love fundamentally vital-— all the finer sweetness, tenderness, fidelity, self-giving, self-sacrifice, rcachings of soul to soul, idealising sublimations that lift up human love beyond itself, come from the psychic. If it could dominate and govern and transmute the other elements, mental, vital, phj-sieal, of human love, then love could be on the earth some reflection or preparation of the real thing, an integral union of the soul and its instruments in a dual life.
ontology ::: Traditionally, the study of being, reality, existence, as well as the given structure of anything, often viewed as unchanging. In Integral Post-Metaphysics, ontology is not a separate discipline or activity but that aspect of the AQAL matrix of any occasion that is experienced as enduring structure; the study of that aspect is ontology. The term “ontology” is sometimes used in this sense given the lack of alternatives.
“Our self-ignorance and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self,—on one side a Nature constituent of our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created, it has to extend itself beyond its body and inhabit the body of the universe.” The Life Divine
Ouyi Zhixu. (J. Goyaku/Guyaku Chigyoku; K. Uik Chiuk 益智旭) (1599-1655). One of the four eminent monks (si da gaoseng) of the late-Ming dynasty, along with YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615), HANSHAN DEQING (1546-1623), and DAGUAN ZHENKE (1543-1604); renowned for his mastery of a wide swath of Confucian and Buddhist teachings, particularly those associated with the TIANTAI, PURE LAND, and CHAN traditions. In his youth, he studied Confucianism and despised Buddhism, even writing anti-Buddhist tracts. He had a change of heart at the age of seventeen, after reading some of Zhuhong's writings, and burned his previous screeds. According to his autobiography, Zhixu had his first "great awakening" at the age of nineteen while reading the line in the Lunyu ("Confucian Analects") that "the whole world will submit to benevolence" if one restrains oneself and returns to ritual. After his father's death that same year, he fully committed himself to Buddhism, reading sutras and performing recollection of the Buddha's name (NIANFO) until he finally was ordained under the guidance of Xueling (d.u.), a disciple of Hanshan Deqing, at the age of twenty-four. At that time, he began to read extensively in YOGĀCĀRA materials and had another great awakening through Chan meditation, in which he experienced body, mind, and the outer world suddenly disappearing. He next turned his attention to the bodhisattva precepts and the study of vinaya. Following his mother's death when he was twenty-seven, Zhixu rededicated himself to Chan meditation, but after a serious illness he turned to pure land teachings. In his early thirties, he devoted himself to the study of Tiantai materials, through which he attempted to integrate his previous research in Buddhism and began to write commentaries and treaties on Buddhist scriptures and on such Confucian classics as the Zhouyi ("Book of Changes"). In the late-sixteenth century, Jesuit missionaries such as Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) had reintroduced Christianity to China and sought "to complement Confucianism and to replace Buddhism." This emerging religious challenge led Zhixu to publish his Bixie ji ("Collected Essays Refuting Heterodoxy") as a critique of the teachings of Christianity, raising specifically the issue of theodicy (i.e., why a benevolent and omnipotent god would allow evil to appear in the world); Zhixu advocates instead that good and evil come from human beings and are developed and overcome respectively through personal cultivation. After another illness at the age of fifty-six, his later years were focused mostly on pure land teachings and practice. In distinction to Japanese pure land teachers, such as HoNEN (1133-1212) and SHINRAN (1173-1262), who emphasized exclusively Amitābha's "other-power" (C. tali; J. TARIKI), Zhixu, like most other Chinese pure land teachers, advocated the symbiosis between the other-power of Amitābha and the "self-power" (C. jiri; J. JIRIKI) of the practitioner. This perspective is evident in his equal emphasis on the three trainings in meditation (Chan), doctrine (jiao), and precepts (lü) (cf. TRIsIKsĀ). Ouyi's oeuvre numbers some sixty-two works in 230 rolls, including treatises and commentaries on works ranging from Tiantai, to Chan, to Yogācāra, to pure land. His pure land writings have been especially influential, and his Amituojing yaojie ("Essential Explanations" on the AMITĀBHASuTRA) and Jingtu shiyao ("Ten Essentials on the Pure Land") are regarded as integral to the modern Chinese Pure Land tradition.
overmind ::: (from 29 October 1927 onwards) the highest plane or system of planes of consciousness below supermind or divine gnosis; especially the principal plane in the overmind system, apparently corresponding to what earlier in 1927 was referred to as supreme supermind. Possessing "an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity", the overmind "takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a universal wideness of consciousness and force"
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.
paradigm ::: From Thomas Kuhn, who used the term to refer to a social practice, injunction, or methodology. Many people, however, use paradigm more loosely to refer to a theory or worldview. Integral Theory uses the term in Kuhn’s original sense. See methodology.
patience ::: “ In all Yoga the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
integrator - A device that approximates and whose output is proportional to an integral of the input signal. A low pass filter.
RL integrator - RL circuit with an output proportionate to the integral of the input signal.
phenomenology ::: The study of consciousness as it immediately appears. A first-person approach to firstperson singular realities. Describing the inside view of the interior of an individual as it is (i.e., the inside view of a holon in the Upper-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
polar integral formula : The method of finding the area between a curve and the half-lines θ = a and θ = b through an integral of the equation describing the curve.
POP++ ::: An object-oriented extension of POPLOG. Available from Integral Solutions.[Jargon File]
POP++ An object-oriented extension of {POPLOG}. Available from Integral Solutions. [{Jargon File}]
Power ; there must a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the false- hood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.
probability distribution: A function of a discrete variable whose integral over any interval is the probability that the random variable specified by it will lie within that interval
Psychic love finds itself wholly when it is the radiation of the diviner consciousness for t^hich uc arc seeking; till then it is diflicult for it to put out its undimmed integral self and figure.
pūrn.a ::: full; complete; integral. purna p purnabrahmadrsti
purna yoga (Poorna Yoga) ::: [the integral yoga].
quadrature ::: a. --> The act of squaring; the finding of a square having the same area as some given curvilinear figure; as, the quadrature of a circle; the operation of finding an expression for the area of a figure bounded wholly or in part by a curved line, as by a curve, two ordinates, and the axis of abscissas.
A quadrate; a square.
The integral used in obtaining the area bounded by a curve; hence, the definite integral of the product of any function of
quadrivia ::: Literally “four ways.” The use of all four quadrants as perspectives with which one can view any occasion. The 8 perspectives of Integral Methodological Pluralism are derived by looking at a quadrivia from the inside and outside.
quantic ::: n. --> A homogeneous algebraic function of two or more variables, in general containing only positive integral powers of the variables, and called quadric, cubic, quartic, etc., according as it is of the second, third, fourth, fifth, or a higher degree. These are further called binary, ternary, quaternary, etc., according as they contain two, three, four, or more variables; thus, the quantic / is a binary cubic.
RaDHA. ::: Personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiri- tual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.
Radha ::: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
raksā. [alt. rāksā] (P. rakkhā; T. srung ba; C. yonghu; J. ogo; K. ongho 擁護). In Sanskirt, "protection," "safeguard," referring to ritual actions or practices that are intended to ward off baleful and impure influences. These protective acts are often performed as a preliminary step in constructing a MAndALA, performing an initiation ritual (ABHIsEKA), or cultivating meditative practices. The ritual is performed by inviting or imagining deities who purify the body, speech, and mind of the practitioner, and remove all inner and outer obstacles and evils; a common form of the Tibetan ritual utilizes a distinctive form of propitiatory offering (S. bali) called a GTOR MA (torma), small conical cakes. The officiating tantric master (VAJRĀCĀRYA) attracts the negative forces (T. gegs) to the offering, where they are propitiated or bound and led away from the assembly. Setting up a "wheel of protection" is an integral part of many ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA ritual practices (SĀDHANA) (see RAKsĀCAKRA). A "protection cord" (raksāsutra; T. srung skud) is ritually embued with protective power by a tantric master and given to each supplicant at the start of an initiation ritual; this is a piece of string or a narrow strip of cloth, usually red, that is tied around the neck, arm, or the wrist to protect the wearer. Tibetan religious figures often give visitors a "protection cord" as a gift. Small amulets (T. ga'u) housing protective buddhas, relics, or tightly rolled copies of ritual invocations or mantras believed to be particularly efficacious against harm are also carried on a belt or around the neck. See also PARITTA; RATANASUTTA.
Record Management Services "operating system" (RMS) Procedures in the {VMS} {operating system} that {programs} call to process {files} and {records} within files. RMS allows programs to issue GET and PUT requests at the record level (record I/O) as well as read and write {blocks} (block I/O). VMS RMS is an integral part of the system software; its procedures run in {executive mode}. (2003-11-11)
Record Management Services ::: (operating system) (RMS) Procedures in the VMS operating system that programs call to process files and records within files. RMS allows programs to write blocks (block I/O). VMS RMS is an integral part of the system software; its procedures run in executive mode.(2003-11-11)
Redintegration: (Lat. re + integratio, from integer, whole) The integral reproduction of a total state of consciousness when an element of it is reproduced. -- L.W.
Redintegration: The integral reproduction of a total state of consciousness when an element of it is reproduced.
reduction formulae: A set of formulae which relates the integral of some general expression to a simpler integral of the same type. e.g. A reduction formula which turns an integral of the nthn power of a trigonometric function into another integral of the same trigonometric function of a lower power (and some other expressions not involving integrals).
referent ::: The actual phenomenon signified by any sign or symbol. All referents exist within developmental worldspaces. See Integral Semiotics.
Riemann sum: 1. The area of rectangles, where its width is identified with a specific sub-interval between the upper and lower limits of the definite integral of an integrable function, whose height equals to the value of the function at a point within the sub-interval. e.g. lower Roemann sum, upper Riemann sum, middle Riemann sum etc.
Rumi, 13th century Iranian mystic poet, considers ahu (jan) conscious life, in which the immutable divine knowledge is reflected. Molavi attributes three qualities to jan: consciousness; ability to distinguish between good and evil; and an inclination towards good and resentment towards evil (Massnavi bk 6). Ferdowsi, 10th century Iranian poet, considers kherad (intellect) the preserver of ahu, the first creation and the integral part of jan.
samagram mam (jnatva) ::: (having known) Me integrally. [cf. Gita 7.1]
samyagjnanam ::: integral knowledge.
sarvajnana-samarthya ::: [capacity for all knowledge]; integral capacity of the thinking intelligence.
SASTRA. ::: The supreme SSstra of the integral yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being.
Second Tier ::: Used to summarize the Flex Flow and Global View stages of value systems development from the Spiral Dynamics model. These stages are defined by their capacity to see the relative importance of all value systems, as opposed to First-Tier value systems, which declare their values to be the only correct values. Integral Theory uses Second Tier to refer to the Teal and Turquoise levels of developmental altitude.
Self and of the impersonal Sacchidananda is only a step, though a very important step, or part of the integral knowledge. It is a beginning, not an end of the highest realisation.
semantics ::: The meaning of any sign or symbol. In Integral Theory, meaning refers to the collective signifieds of cultural intersubjectivity and is typically associated with the Lower-Left quadrant. More broadly, meaning is the means of redeeming a validity claim (i.e., truth, truthfulness, mutual understanding, or functional fit) and is inherently connected to the referent of that claim. See Integral Semiotics.
Shanjia Shanwai. (J. Sange Sangai; K. San'ga Sanoe 山家山外). In Chinese, "On-Mountain, Off-Mountain"; two factions in a debate that engulfed the TIANTAI ZONG during the eleventh century over issues of the school's orthodoxy and orthopraxy. The Shanjia (On-Mountain) faction was led by the monk SIMING ZHILI (960-1028) and his disciples; they pejoratively referred to their opponents within the Tiantai school, such as Ciguang Wu'en (912-988), Yuanqing (d. 997), Qingzhao (963-1017), Zhiyuan (976-1022) and their disciples, as Shanwai (Off-Mountain), for drawing on non-Tiantai elements in their exegeses. The debate began over an issue of textual authenticity, but soon came to cover almost all major facets of Tiantai doctrine and practice. The On-Mountain faction criticized their rivals for attempting to interpret Tiantai doctrine using concepts borrowed from texts such as the DASHENG QIXIN LUN, which had not previously been an integral text in Tiantai exegesis, and from rival exegetical traditions, such as the HUAYAN ZONG. These Shanwai monks argued that the doctrine of the "TRICHILIOCOSM in an single instant of thought" (YINIAN SANQIAN) should be understood in the Huayan framework of the suchness that is in accord with conditions (zhenru suiyuan): in this understanding, an instant of thought is identified with the true mind that in its essence is pure, unchanging, and inherently enlightened; subsequently, by remaining in accord with conditions, that suchness in turn produces the trichiliocosm in all its diversity. From this perspective, they argued that the true mind should be the focus of contemplative practice in Tiantai. Shanjia masters feared such interpretations were a threat to the autonomy of the Tiantai tradition and sought to remove these Huayan elements so that the orthodox teachings of Tiantai would be preserved. Zhili, the major proponent of the Shanjia faction, argued that the Shanwai concept of suchness involved the principle of separation (bieli), since it excluded the afflicted and the ignorant, and only encompassed the pure and the enlightened. According to Zhili, suchness does not produce the trichiliocosm only when it is in accord with conditions, as the Huayan-influenced Shanwai exegetes asserted, because suchness is in fact identical to the trichiliocosm; therefore the instant of thought that encompasses all the trichiliocosm, including both its pure and impure aspects, should be the true focus of contemplative practice in Tiantai. Zhili's disciple Renyue (992-1064) and his fourth-generation successor Congyi (1042-1091) were subsequently branded the "Later Off-Mountain Faction," because they accepted some of the Shanwai arguments and openly rejected parts of Zhili's argument. Nevertheless, the Shanjia faction eventually prevailed, overshadowing their Shanwai rivals and institutionalizing Zhili's interpretations as the authentic teachings of the Tiantai tradition. Two Tiantai genealogical histories from the Southern Song dynasty, the Shimen zhengtong ("Orthodox Transmission of Buddhism") and the FOZU TONGJI ("Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs"), list Zhili as the last patriarch in the dharma transmission going back to the Buddha, thus legitimating the orthodoxy of the Shanjia faction from that point forward.
sign ::: Any aspect of reality that stands for another, to another. See Integral Semiotics.
signified ::: The interior apprehension elicited by any sign or symbol. In Integral Theory, the signified is typically associated with the Upper-Left quadrant. See Integral Semiotics.
signifier ::: The material aspect of any sign or symbol. In Integral Theory, the signifier is typically associated with the Upper-Right quadrant. See Integral Semiotics.
Simpson's rule: A method for approximating a definite integral using parabolic approximations of f.
SNR bandwidth product "communications" The {integral} of the {SNR} over {frequency}. The SNR bandwidth product is an important limit in the capacity of a communication channel. (2003-07-20)
SNR bandwidth product ::: (communications) The integral of the SNR over frequency. The SNR bandwidth product is an important limit in the capacity of a communication channel.(2003-07-20)
social autopoiesis ::: The study of how networks of objective things, organisms, and processes self-organize and self-reproduce. A first-person approach to third-person plural realities. The inside view of the exterior of a collective (i.e., the inside view of a holon in the Lower-Right quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
Solitude of the self in the Divine has to be active as well as passive and static. None who has not arrived at the silence and motionless solitude of the eternal Self can have the free and integral activity of the higher divine Nature. For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free.
Spiritual evolution ::: It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the menial being realised in the fully deve- loped man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the supramental consciousness and the supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an ignorance seeking for knowledge ; it is only the supramental Truth-Cons- ciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-KnowIedge ; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and fulfilment of our spiritual evolution.
*Sri Aurobindo: "For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " In all Yoga the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
structuralism ::: Traditionally refers to the study of the structures of the mind that underlie human behavior. In Integral Theory, structuralism typically refers to the objective study of interior realities over time in search of regularities and patterns. It is most often used as a third-person approach to first-person singular realities. The outside view of the interior of an individual (i.e., the outside view of a holon in the Upper-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
structure ::: The stable pattern of any occasion. In Integral Theory, structure most often refers to the unique, enduring pattern and actual structure of a level of development. See levels.
— stumblings and deviations, hard and seemingly insuperable obstacles and wounds and suffering cannot be escaped and even death or utter downfall are not impossible. Only when the cons- cious integral surrender to the Divine has been learned by mind and life and body, can the way of the Yoga become easy, straight, swift and safe.
Subconscious Mind: (Lat. sub, under -- cum together + scire to know) A compartment of the mind alleged by certain psychologists and philosophers (see Psycho-analysis) to exist below the threshold of consciousness. The subconscious, though not directly accessible to introspection (see Introspection), is capable of being tapped by special techniques such as random association, dream-analysis, automatic writing, etc. The doctrine of the subconscious was foreshadowed in Leibniz's doctrine of petites perceptions (Monadology, Sections 21, 23) and received philosophical expression by A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, and E. von Hartman, Philosophy of the Unconscious and has become an integral part of Freudian psychology. See Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, esp. pp. 425-35, 483-93. -- L.W.
Supermind consciousness. Overmind has not the integrality of the supramental truth but it is n'ell aware of the essential truth of things. Thus overmind gives to the Sacchidananda Brahman the character of a teeming infinite of possibilities which can be developed into worlds or one world.
surface structures ::: Typically a Chomskyan notion. In Integral Theory, however, it refers to the local, cultural, or individually specific features, patterns, or contents on a given level of consciousness or complexity.
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
Svabhava(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word derived from the verb-root bhu, meaning "to become" -- not so much "tobe" in the passive sense, but rather "to become," to "grow into" something. The quasi-pronominal prefixsva, means "self"; hence the noun means "self-becoming," "self-generation," "self-growing" intosomething. Yet the essential or fundamental or integral Self, although following continuously its ownlofty line of evolution, cannot be said to suffer the changes or phases that its vehicles undergo. Like themonads, like the One, thus the Self fundamental -- which, after all, is virtually the same as the onemonadic essence -- sends down a ray from itself into every organic entity, much as the sun sends a rayfrom itself into the surrounding "darkness" of the solar universe.Svabhava has two general philosophical meanings: first, self-begetting, self-generation, self-becoming,the general idea being that there is no merely mechanical or soulless activity of nature in bringing us intobeing, for we brought ourselves forth, in and through and by nature, of which we are a part of theconscious forces, and therefore are our own children. The second meaning is that each and every entitythat exists is the result of what he actually is spiritually in his own higher nature: he brings forth thatwhich he is in himself interiorly, nothing else. A particular race, for instance, remains and is that race aslong as the particular race-svabhava remains in the racial seed and manifests thus. Likewise is the casethe same with a man, a tree, a star, a god -- what not!What makes a rose bring forth a rose always and not thistles or daisies or pansies? The answer is verysimple; very profound, however. It is because of its svabhava, the essential nature in and of the seed. Itssvabhava can bring forth only that which itself is, its essential characteristic, its own inner nature.Svabhava, in short, may be called the essential individuality of any monad, expressing its owncharacteristics, qualities, and type, by self-urged evolution.The seed can produce nothing but what it itself is, what is in it; and this is the heart and essence of thedoctrine of svabhava. The philosophical, scientific, and religious reach of this doctrine is simplyimmense; and it is of the first importance. Consequently, each individual svabhava brings forth andexpresses as its own particular vehicles its various svarupas, signifying characteristic bodies or images orforms. The svabhava of a dog, for instance, brings forth the dog body. The svabhava of a rose bringsforth the rose flower; the svabhava of a man brings forth man's shape or image; and the svabhava of adivinity or god brings forth its own svarupa or characteristic vehicle.
syntax ::: The rules and codes that govern a system of signifiers. In Integral Theory, syntax is typically associated with the Lower-Right quadrant. See Integral Semiotics.
systems theory ::: The objective study of networks of organisms, things, and processes. A third-person approach to third-person plural realities. The outside view of the exterior of the collective (i.e., the outside view of a holon in the Lower-Right quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
Tantrie unified, can arrive at the integral knowledge.
. t.aya (sansiddhi chatushtaya) ::: the quaternary of integral perfection; another name for the siddhi catus.t.aya.
“the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM,—OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name—it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self—existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13—Page 315
"the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM, - OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name – it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self- existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13 – Page 315*
“The Chhandogya,… is to be a work in the right and perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolised in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda, not therefore, the pure state of existence only, but that existence in all its parts… OM is the symbol and the thing symbolised.”the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM,—OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name—it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self—existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13—Page 315
“The Divine Reality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere,—that is the apparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite.” The Life Divine
the house consecrated lo the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that with- stands it.
“The integral Knowledge is something that is already there in the integral Reality: it is not a new or still non-existent thing that has to be created, acquired, learned, invented or built up by the mind; it must rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our self, an integral world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.” The Life Divine
the ionner progress into the external nature and life and helps the integrality ol the sadhana.
::: The Mother: "True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.**
“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 process of the integral yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distingnlsbed or ^parate, but in a certain measure suc- cessive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine ; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being ; fast, the utilisation of our trans- formed hiunanity as a divine centre in the world.
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-Naturc.
"There results an integral vision of the Divine Existent at once as the transcendent Reality, supracosmic origin of cosmos, as the impersonal Self of all things, calm continent of the cosmos, and as the immanent Divinity in all beings, personalities, objects, powers and qualities, the Immanent who is the constituent self, the effective nature and the inward and outward becoming of all existences.” Essays on the Gita*
“There results an integral vision of the Divine Existent at once as the transcendent Reality, supracosmic origin of cosmos, as the impersonal Self of all things, calm continent of the cosmos, and as the immanent Divinity in all beings, personalities, objects, powers and qualities, the Immanent who is the constituent self, the effective nature and the inward and outward becoming of all existences.” Essays on the Gita
The union has a threefold character. There is a union in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of our soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samıpya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 131
The work here is a field and an opportunity for the Karma- yoga part of the Integral yoga, for learning to w-ork in the true yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, dkciplioe, setting the Divine and the
Third Tier ::: Conventionally, a tier is just an arbitrary grouping of stages. Integral Theory often highlights three tiers: First Tier, which consists of the levels up to and including Green altitude; Second Tier, which consists of Teal and Turquoise altitude; and Third Tier, which includes all post-Turquoise levels of development (Indigo, Violet, Ultraviolet, and Clear Light).
"This integral knowledge is the knowledge of the Divine present in the individual; it is the entire experience of the Lord secret in the heart of man, revealed now as the supreme Self of his existence, the Sun of all his illumined consciousness, the Master and Power of all his works, the divine Fountain of all his soul"s love and delight, the Lover and Beloved of his worship and adoration. It is the knowledge too of the Divine extended in the universe, of the Eternal from whom all proceeds and in whom all lives and has its being, of the Self and Spirit of the cosmos, of Vasudeva who has become all this that is, of the Lord of cosmic existence who reigns over the works of Nature. It is the knowledge of the divine Purusha luminous in his transcendent eternity, the form of whose being escapes from the thought of the mind but not from its silence; it is the entire living experience of him as absolute Self, supreme Brahman, supreme Soul, supreme Godhead: for that seemingly incommunicable Absolute is at the same time and even in that highest status the originating Spirit of the cosmic action and Lord of all these existences.” Essays on the Gita*
“This integral knowledge is the knowledge of the Divine present in the individual; it is the entire experience of the Lord secret in the heart of man, revealed now as the supreme Self of his existence, the Sun of all his illumined consciousness, the Master and Power of all his works, the divine Fountain of all his soul’s love and delight, the Lover and Beloved of his worship and adoration. It is the knowledge too of the Divine extended in the universe, of the Eternal from whom all proceeds and in whom all lives and has its being, of the Self and Spirit of the cosmos, of Vasudeva who has become all this that is, of the Lord of cosmic existence who reigns over the works of Nature. It is the knowledge of the divine Purusha luminous in his transcendent eternity, the form of whose being escapes from the thought of the mind but not from its silence; it is the entire living experience of him as absolute Self, supreme Brahman, supreme Soul, supreme Godhead: for that seemingly incommunicable Absolute is at the same time and even in that highest status the originating Spirit of the cosmic action and Lord of all these existences.” Essays on the Gita
tracker ball ::: (hardware) A pointing device consisting of a ball housed in a socket containing sensors to detect rotation of the ball about two axes - like an to use a mouse. Some clip onto the side of the keyboard and have integral buttons which have the same function as mouse buttons. (1996-08-04)
tracker ball "hardware" A {pointing device} consisting of a ball housed in a socket containing sensors to detect rotation of the ball about two axes - like an upside-down {mouse}. The user rolls the ball with his thumb or the palm of his hand to move a cursor. Tracker balls are common on {CAD} {workstations} for ease of use and on modern {portable computers}, where there may be no desk space on which to use a {mouse}. Some clip onto the side of the keyboard and have integral buttons which have the same function as mouse buttons. (1996-08-04)
“‘Transformation’ is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind’) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence’ of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” Letters on Yoga
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
trapezoidal rule: Also known as the trapezium rule, it is a method for estimating the value of a definite integral by dividing the area under the curve into a finite number of trapeziums (trapezoids).
triple integral: A iterated integral consisting of 3 successive integrations.
Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our fast conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an isaoionce seeking for know- ledge ; it is only the Supramental Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-know- ledge ; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and fulfilment of our spiritual evolution. '
upper limit The value whose substitution into the anti-derivative forms the minuend of the calculation of a definite integral.
ūrn.a yoga ::: integral yoga, a spiritual path whose aim is "union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine [saccidananda] through every part of our human nature . . . so that the whole may be transformed into a divine nature of being"; its central method is for the individual "to spiritualise his being by the power of the soul in mind opening itself directly to a higher spiritual force and being and to perfect by that higher force [sakti] so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature". purna p
vision-logic ::: The cognitive stage necessary to support integral consciousness. Typically subdivided into early, middle, and late vision-logic. Early vision-logic differentiates reality into relativistic systems, while middle and late vision-logic add up and integrate those perspectives into systems of systems. Vision-logic is often referred to as the first “postformal” stage of cognitive development since it is immediately beyond or “after” formal operational cognition. However, it is not yet “transrational,” but rather the limit of rational thought. Vision-logic is, in a sense, the bridge between the mental and the transmental.
Wertheimer, Max: (1880) One of the originators -- along with Koffka and Köhler -- of Gestalt psychology. The three began their association at Frankfort about 1912 and later Wertheimer and Köhler worked together at the University of Berlin. Wertheimer was led to the basic conception of Gestalt in the course of his investigations of apparent movement which seemed to indicate that the perception of movement is an integral experience and not the interpretative combination of static sensations. "Experimental studien über das Sehen von Bewegungen, Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 1912, Vol. 61, pp. 161-265. -- L.W.
Where a particular (Interpreted) system does not contain symbols for formulas, it may be desirable to employ Gödel's device for associating (positive integral) numbers with formulas, and to consider the relation between a number and that which the associated formula denotes. This we shall call the numerical name relation and distinguish it from the relation between a formula and that which it denotes by calling the latter the semantical name relation.
whole ::: a. --> Containing the total amount, number, etc.; comprising all the parts; free from deficiency; all; total; entire; as, the whole earth; the whole solar system; the whole army; the whole nation.
Complete; entire; not defective or imperfect; not broken or fractured; unimpaired; uninjured; integral; as, a whole orange; the egg is whole; the vessel is whole.
Possessing, or being in a state of, heath and soundness; healthy; sound; well.
work: Symbol: W. For a simple case, with a force that remains constant and movement in the same direction as the force, it is the product of the magnitude of the force and the distance travelled "due to the force". In vector form, work is the scalar product of force and displacement vector. And in the case of a variable force, it is the integral (i.e. "infinite sum of the infinitely small") of their product.
world-ignorance ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our self-ignorance and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self, — on one side a Nature constituent of our own nature, on the other an Existence which is a boundless continuation of our own self-being. Our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created, it has to extend itself beyond its body and inhabit the body of the universe.” The Life Divine
world-knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The integral Knowledge is something that is already there in the integral Reality: it is not a new or still non-existent thing that has to be created, acquired, learned, invented or built up by the mind; it must rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our self, an integral world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.” *The Life Divine
Yogi ::: The whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 45
KEYS (10k)
116 Sri Aurobindo
20 The Mother
11 Ken Wilber
5 Essential Integral
2 M Alan Kazlev
2 ken-wilber
1 V.S. Apte (1965)
1 The Mother
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 R Buckminster Fuller
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nikola Tesla
1 Nandita Chatterjee
1 MysticMonistToday at 12:23 AM ::: think the theme really needs to be awakening
J- (integralyogin)[12/132]Today at 12:23 AM ::: very good aswell for sure
MysticMonistToday at 12:23 AM ::: And exploration and smashing boundaries
J- (integralyogin)[12/132]Today at 12:23 AM ::: oh nice
1 Michael Murphy
1 Marshall McLuhan
1 Layman Pascal
1 Jean Gebser
1 Integral Yoga; Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice
1 Henry David Thoreau
1 Frank Visser
1 Dion Fortune
1 Daily Evolver
1 Advanced Integral
1 02.14 - The World-Soul
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
106 Sri Aurobindo
31 Ken Wilber
25 Anonymous
20 The Mother
13 Augustus De Morgan
12 Pope Francis
12 Laozi
8 Thomas Berry
7 Parker J Palmer
6 Neal Stephenson
5 R Buckminster Fuller
5 Paul Virilio
5 Lewis Mumford
4 Walter Isaacson
4 Timothy Ferriss
4 Oliver Sacks
4 Jordan Peterson
4 Jordan B Peterson
4 Henry David Thoreau
3 Thomas Merton
1:02.14 - The World-Soul, #KEYS
2:An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth.
~ Ken Wilber,#KEYS
3:The occult is a part of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
4:Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
5:Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind. ~ Dion Fortune, #KEYS
6:Integral opening of the being towards the Divine: the first step of the ascent.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
7:Different worlds are brought forth by the structures of consciousness doing the perceiving and co-creating. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 168, #KEYS
8:To be in full union with the Divine is the final aim. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Aim of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
9:An integral knowledge presupposes an integral Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
10:All the hundred separate paths meet in the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
11:An integral knowledge is the aim of the conscious evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #KEYS
12:The infinity of the One pours itself out and possesses itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
13:To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Asceticism and the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
14:Both the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
15:Evil deforms and disguises good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
16:It is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it that is important for the integral Yoga.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#KEYS
17:Renunciation is to go to the extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #KEYS
18:The integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS
19:The objective is created as a ground of manifestation for the subjective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
20:Falsehood deforms and disguises truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
21:An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more developed, more evolved, more adequate. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
22:Mental knowledge is not an integral but always a partial knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
23:What is needed of me that I may not fail to progress as I should?
A constant and integral aspiration.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T5],#KEYS
24:A divine unity of supreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #KEYS
25:Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother - On spirit possession and mental imbalances
~ ?, https://auromere.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/on-spirit-possession-and-mental-imbalances/,#KEYS
26:Each form is there because it is an expression of some power of That which inhabits it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
27:The supraphysical is as real as the physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
28:In the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
29:The basic idea of integral transformative practice (ITP) is simple: the more aspects of our being that we simultaneously exercise, the more likely that transformation will occur. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
30:Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
~ Henry David Thoreau,#KEYS
31:Our mortality is only justified in the light of our immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
32:Integral reality is the world's transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of the truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both. ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
33:The subjective and the objective truth of things are both real, they are two sides of the same Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
34:Without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
35:For integral self-possession we must be one not only with the Self, with God, but with all existences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Realisation of the Cosmic Self, #KEYS
36:Truth of knowledge must base truth of life and determine the aim of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
37:All things are the symbols through which we have to approach and draw nearer to That by which we and they exist. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
38:It is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
39:It is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
40:To follow Sri Aurobindo in the great adventure of his integral Yoga, one needed always to be a warrior; now that he has left us physically, one needs to be a hero. ~ The Mother, CWM, 15 : 184 #KEYS
41:A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
42:The fundamental truth of Being must necessarily be the fundamental truth of Becoming. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
43:The noun lila means anything from sport, dalliance, play to any languid or amorous gesture in a woman. ~ V.S. Apte (1965), quoted in in Sri Aurobindo's Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita, p. 68 #KEYS
44:The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, "Sri Aurobindo's Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita", p. 68 #KEYS
45:I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun, I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #KEYS
46:To those who want to practise the integral Yoga, it is strongly advised to abstain from three things: 1) Sexual intercourse 2) Smoking 3) Drinking alcohol
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T1],#KEYS
47:The integral liberation comes when this passion for release, mumukṣutva, founded on distaste or vairāgya, is itself transcended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #KEYS
48:The present is always invisible because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone but the artist, the man of integral awareness, is alive in an earlier day. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #KEYS
49:In his self-integration the soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
50:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
51:Its origin is a limitation of knowledge, its distinctive character a separation of the being from its own integrality and entire reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
52:To manifest what is from the first occult within it is the whole hidden trend of evolutionary Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
53:A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
54:A vacant Absolute is no Absolute,—our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
55:When we get back to our true being, the ego falls away from us; its place is taken by our supreme and integral self, the true individuality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, #KEYS
56:Truth of being must govern truth of life; it cannot be that the two have no relation or interdependence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
57:The seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body, #KEYS
58:Perspectival-reason, being highly reflexive, also allows sustained introspection. And it is the first structure that can imagine 'as if' and 'what if' worlds: it becomes a true dreamer and visionary.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 26,#KEYS
59:we have to bring a wider meaning into our human life and manifest in it the much more that we secretly are. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
60:All the basic realities are a bringing out of something that is eternal and inherently true in the Absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
61:The consent of all the being is necessary for the divine change, and it is the completeness and fullness of the consent that constitutes the integral surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Lower Vital Being, #KEYS
62:Cosmic being is not a meaningless freak or phantasy or a chance error; there is a divine significance and truth in it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
63:What do I need to develop most? And what do I need to reject most?
Develop - sincerity (that is, an integral adhesion to the Divine's way. Reject - the pull of the old human habits.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
64:... maintains that, along with Aurobindo's Life Divine, Heidegger's Being and Time, and Whitehead's Process and Reality, Wilber's Sex Ecology Spirituality [SES] is 'one of the four great books of this [twentieth] century'
~ Michael Murphy, Integral, 2004.,#KEYS
65: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
66:The integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #KEYS
67:It is always the originating supermind that contains within itself the true values, significances and relations of the other parts of our being and its unfolding is the condition of the integral possession of our self and nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Sense, #KEYS
68:And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. 'By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Renunciation,#KEYS
69:To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
70:All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, "Sri Aurobindo's Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita" #KEYS
71:Integral theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all of human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that is able to accommodate the gifts of all previous worldviews, including those which have been historically at odds: science and religion, Eastern and Western schools of thought, and pre-modern, modern and post-modern worldviews. ~ Daily Evolver, #KEYS
72:The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
73:WILL, KNOWLEDGE and love are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the divine. The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore, as we have seen, be the foundation of an integral Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
74:Why do men cling to a religion?
Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
75:tapasya :::
Tapasya: a discipline aiming at the realisation of the Divine.
Mental tapasya: the process leading to the goal.
Vital tapasya: the vital undergoes a rigorous discipline in order to transform itself.
Integral tapasya: the whole being lives only to know and serve the Divine.
Perfect tapasya: that which will reach its goal. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
76:Bildung. SIMPOL. Intellectual Deep Web/Syntheism. Critical Realism/Bhaskar. Some of the Bennett strains of the Gurdjieff Work. Lots of the Andrew Cohen people. Utok/Henriques. Lots of the Gebserians. Spiral dynamics. The Almaas community.
Depends which aspects we're looking at and, obviously, we're only really talking about a fraction of the people in these communities... ~ Layman Pascal, integral global, fb,#KEYS
77:The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen and the highest knowledge in which the One Purusha is known (so'ham asmi) is described as the kalyan.atama form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, Integral Yoga and Other Paths -IV,#KEYS
78: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609 [yoga is:],#KEYS
79:...to do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections and we say that the perfections are 1.Sincerity or Transparency 2.Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine) 3.Devotion or Gratitude 4.Courage or Inspiration 5.Endurance or Perseverance
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,#KEYS
80:fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral presence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine Force of an integral Being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of Falsehood and Evil [623],#KEYS
81:All knowledge is ultimately the knowledge of God, through himself, through Nature, through her works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge,#KEYS
82:The means of realisation is to be found in an integral Yoga, a union in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire conseceration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of the divine work.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
83:And Thou, O Lord, who art all this made one and much more, O sovereign Master, extreme limit of our thought, who standest for us at the threshold of the Unknown, make rise from that Unthinkable some new splendour, some possibility of a loftier and more integral realisation, that Thy work may be accomplished and the universe take one step farther towards the sublime Identity, the supreme Manifestation.
And now my pen falls mute and I adore Thee in silence.*
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 270,#KEYS
84:An integral intuition into the nature of conscious being shows us that it is indeed one in essence, but also that it is capable of an infinite potential complexity and multiplicity in self-experience. The working of this potential complexity and multiplicity in the One is what we call from our point of view manifestation or creation or world or becoming - (bhuvana, bhava). Without it no world-existence is possible. The agent of this becoming is always the self-conscience of the Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
85:And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 67,#KEYS
86:The aim of a complete course of development is to divest the basic structures of any sense of exclusive self, and thus free the basic needs from their contamination by the needs of the separate self sense. When the basic structures are freed from the immortality projects of the separate self, they are free to return to their natural functional relationships .... when hungry, we eat; when tired, we sleep. The self has been returned to the Self, all self-needs have been met and discarded; and the basic needs alone remain. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 253, #KEYS
87:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,#KEYS
88:Yet would the ideal working of an integral Yoga be a movement, even from the beginning, integral in its process and whole and many-sided in its progress. In any case our present preoccupation is with a Yoga, integral in its aim and complete movement, but starting from works and proceeding by works althrough at each step more and more moved by a vivifying divine love and more and more illumined by a helping divine knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga Of Divine Works, Self-Surrender In Works - The Way Of The Gita, 93,#KEYS
89:enactment ::: no experience is innocent and pregiven, rather it is brought forth or enacted in part by the activity of the subject doing the experiencing thus one activity, paradigm or injunction will bring forth a particular set of experiences. experiences that are not themselves .... but rather are co-created and co-enacted by the paradigm or activity itself and accordingly one paradigm does not give the correct view of the world and therefore as if it did to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other paradigms. ~ Advanced Integral, L1, slide30 enactment, #KEYS
90:The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T4],#KEYS
91:But since it is from the Ignorance that we proceed to the Knowledge, we have had first to discover the secret nature and full extent of the Ignorance. If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many-sided self-ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution,#KEYS
92:way of the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. ... An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 78,#KEYS
93:Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot - we are introduced to the all-pervading Spiritual domain that the growing tip of our honored ancestors were the first to discover. And they were good enough to leave us a general map to that infinite domain, a map called the Great Nest of Being, a map of our own interiors, an archeology of our own Spirit. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 190, #KEYS
94:The Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p. 114, #KEYS
95:The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #KEYS
96:For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded sidetracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, 444, [T1],#KEYS
97:To take the last issue, the difficult issue, first. The first great Dharma systems, East and West, all arose, without exception, in the so-called "axial period" (Karl Jaspers), that rather extraordinary period beginning around the 6th century B.C. (plus or minus several centuries), a period that saw the birth of Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Moses, Plato, Patanjali—a period that would soon give way, over the next few centuries, to include Ashvaghosa, Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Jesus, Philo, Valentinus…. Virtually all of the major tenets of the perennial philosophy were first laid down during this amazing era (in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity….) ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Life, right-bucks, #KEYS
98:The highest truth, the integral self-knowledge is not to be gained by this self-blinded leap into the Absolute but by a patient transit beyond the mind into the Truth-consciousness where the Infinite can be known, felt, seen, experienced in all the fullness of its unending riches. And there we discover this Self that we are to be not only a static tenuous vacant Atman but a great dynamic Spirit individual, universal and transcendent. That Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind's abstract generalisations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendours.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, The Object Of Knowledge [296],#KEYS
99:The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [63] [T7],#KEYS
100:the threefold character of the union :::
The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
101:three paths as one :::
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
102:The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in the relative and attracting it, as one's highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his-or her-numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together. The mind's door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62,#KEYS
103:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct" the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry - including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology-all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
104:Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quiet, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 106., #KEYS
105:All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,#KEYS
106:Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujya-mukti, by which it can become free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
107:The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of shortcuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 45,#KEYS
108:This is the integral knowledge, for we know that everywhere and in all conditions all to the eye that sees is One, to a divine experience all is one block of the Divine. It is only the mind which for the temporary convenience of its own thought and aspiration seeks to cut an artificial line of rigid division, a fiction of perpetual incompatibility between one aspect and another of the eternal oneness. The liberated knower lives and acts in the world not less than the bound soul and ignorant mind but more, doing all actions, sarvakrt, only with a true knowledge and a greater conscient power. And by so doing he does not forfeit the supreme unity nor falls from the supreme consciousness and highest knowledge. For the Supreme, however hidden now to us, Is here in the world no less than he could be in the most utter and Ineffable self-extinction, the most intolerant Nirvana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2:1, #KEYS
109:I have said that from a young age children should be taught to respect good health, physical strength and balance. The great importance of beauty must also be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of culture from the very beginning of its existence can realise its own harmony and thus become fit to manifest beauty. When we speak of the other aspects of an integral education, we shall see what inner conditions are to be fulfilled so that this beauty can one day be manifested. ~ The Mother, On Education, Physical Education, #KEYS
110:But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His selfmanifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or atmost attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS
111:The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary, Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one third of his time to a useful work. All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #KEYS
112:burden and advantage to an Integral Yoga; :::
...The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impedimenta. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; ... Our compensation is that even if the path is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and baffling arduous, yet after a certain point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the Powers that oppose us.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 74,#KEYS
113:The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, not in these more outward things, but in its power to open up easily higher ranges and powers of thought, emotion, will by which the soul grows in height, range and self-mastery. Especially, withdrawing from the distraction of sensible things, it can, in a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion, prepare itself by a free reasoning, thought, discrimination or more intimately, more finally, by an ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 26, Samadhi, pg. 503,#KEYS
114:To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence. To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
115:Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
116:an all-inclusive concentration is required for an Integral Yoga :::
Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the emotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also; but this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised concentration of the whole being in all its parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve its purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to impose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential character of the sadhana and its character must determine its practice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
117:a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness: - it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
118:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
119:
Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere that if one surrenders to the Divine Grace, it will do everything for us. Therefore, what value has tapasya?
If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all that he has written on that subject. You will then see that he has apparently said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything, and understood a little, one perceives that all the contradictions complement each other and are organised and unified into an integral synthesis. Here is another quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will show you that your question is based on ignorance. There are many others which you can read with interest and which will make your intelligence more supple: 'If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude; it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.' 16 December 1964
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, 308,#KEYS
120:This concentration proceeds by the Idea, using thought, form and name as keys which yield up to the concentrating mind the Truth that lies concealed behind all thought, form and name; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, Concentration [321],#KEYS
121:
An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin
Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science
Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body
The Mother - Mother's Agenda
Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution
T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body
Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy
Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper,#KEYS
122:A major part of the book is devoted to poetry. It opens with Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. The author has a novel way of appreciating this most wonderful epic, which continually overwhelms and bewilders us. He has taken this bewilderment as the subject of the chapter "An Uninitiated Reader's Response to Savitri". This is a rarely explored area, namely the magical poetic beauty of Savitri that casts a spell on the reader even when he does not always understand its content. For the lover of poetry is attracted by its "beauty and strength", "he is overawed by the grandeur of the animated spirituality". Any time spent with Savitri thus becomes a special moment in his life. Later in the book we find another kind of appreciation of the epic in the chapter on K. D. Sethna as a "crusader of aesthetic yoga". There the author calls Savitri the "Odyssey of Integral Yoga" where yoga and poetry come together. He also appreciates the "sensitive analysis of stylistic effect" by Sethna, who uses wonderful quotations from Savitri as examples of adequate style, effective style, illumined style, etc. (From the Near to Far by Dr. Saurendranth Basu) ~ Nandita Chatterjee, review of the book, #KEYS
123: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 Principle of the Integral Yoga, 610 [T3],#KEYS
124: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
125:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18, #KEYS
126: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
127:It proceeds by a personal effort to a conversion through a divine influence and possession; but this divine grace, if we may so call it, is not simply a mysterious flow or touch coming from above, but the all-pervading act of a divine presence which we come to know within as the power of the highest Self and Master of our being entering into the soul and so possessing it that we not only feel it close to us and pressing upon our mortal nature, but live in its law, know that law, possess it as the whole power of our spiritualised nature. The conversion its action will effect is an integral conversion of our ethical being into the Truth and Right of the divine nature, of our intellectual into the illumination of divine knowledge, our emotional into the divine love and unity, our dynamic and volitional into a working of the divine power, our aesthetic into a plenary reception and a creative enjoyment of divine beauty, not excluding even in the end a divine conversion of the vital and physical being. It regards all the previous life as an involuntary and unconscious or half-conscious preparatory growing towards this change and Yoga as the voluntary and conscious
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
128:An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokyalmukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sadharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p.47-8,#KEYS
129:all is the method of God's workings; all life is Yoga :::
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognize in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of the might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and there for right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Conditions of the Synthesis [47] [T1],#KEYS
130:For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, - of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.
It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 85-86, [T1],#KEYS
131:The sadhaka of the integral Yoga will make use of all these aids according to his nature; but it is necessary that he should shun their limitations and cast from himself that exclusive tendency of egoistic mind which cries, "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.
On the contrary, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.
Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man's unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
132:Integral Psychology presents a very complex picture of the individual. As he did previously in The Atman Project, at the back of the book Wilber has included numerous charts showing how his model relates to the work of a hundred or so different authors from East and West.57
57. Wilber compares the models of Huston Smith, Plotinus, Buddhism, Stan Grof, John Battista, kundalini yoga, the Great Chain of Being, James Mark Baldwin, Aurobindo, the Kabbalah, Vedanta, William Tiller, Leadbeater, Adi Da, Piaget, Commons and Richards, Kurt Fisher, Alexander, Pascual-Leone, Herb Koplowitz, Patricia Arlin, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Jan Sinnot, Michael Basseches, Jane Loevinger, John Broughton, Sullivan, Grant and Grant, Jenny Wade, Michael Washburn, Erik Erikson, Neumann, Scheler, Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Steiner, Don Beck, Suzanne Cook-Greuter, Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, Kohlberg, Torbert, Blanchard-Fields, Kitchener and King, Deirdre Kramer, William Perry, Turner and Powell, Cheryl Armon, Peck, Howe, Rawls, Piaget, Selman, Gilligan, Hazrat Inayat Khan, mahamudra meditation, Fowler, Underhill, Helminiak, Funk, Daniel Brown, Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, St. Palamas, classical yoga, highest tantra yoga, St Teresa, Chirban, St Dionysius, Patanjali, St Gregory of Nyssa, transcendental meditation, Fortune, Maslow, Chinen, Benack, Gardner, Melvin Miller, Habermas, Jean Houston, G. Heard, Lenski, Jean Gebser, A. Taylor, Jay Early, Robert Bellah, and Duane Elgin. ~ Frank Visser, Ken Wilber Thought as Passion,#KEYS
133: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
134:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],#KEYS
135:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
136:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],#KEYS
137:Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother's Love,#KEYS
138:the psychic being :::
... it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark of the Divine which supports this obscure mass of our nature and around it grows the psychic being, the formed soul or the real Man within us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begin to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.
As in the works of knowledge, so in dealing with the workings of the heart, we are obliged to make a preliminary distinction between two categories of movements, those that are either moved by the true soul or aid towards its liberation and rule in the nature and those that are turned to the satisfaction of the unpurified vital nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 150,#KEYS
139:challenge for the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 78, [T9],#KEYS
140:the vital
the life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul of man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of nature. The vital part of man is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and governed by the spiritual light and power. The vital has three main parts:
higher vital
the mental vital and emotional vital taken together. The mental vital gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations or other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest.
central vital or vital proper
dynamic, sensational and passionate, it is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passion of various kinds and the field of many vital energies.
lower vital
made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. The material vital is that part of the lower vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. ~ Integral Yoga; Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice,#KEYS
141:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#KEYS
142:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,#KEYS
143:[the first aid, shastra, the lotus of the eternal knowledge:]
The supreme Shastra of the Integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.
Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids [53] [T1],#KEYS
144:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divineWill and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T2],#KEYS
145:the aim of our yoga :::
The aim set before our Yoga is nothing less than to hasten this supreme object of our existence here. Its process leaves behind the ordinary tardy method of slow and confused growth through the evolution of Nature. For the natural evolution is at its best an uncertain growth under cover, partly by the pressure of the environment, partly by a groping education and an ill-lighted purposeful effort, an only partially illumined and half-automatic use of opportunities with many blunders and lapses and relapses; a great portion of it is made up of apparent accidents and circumstances and vicissitudes, - though veiling a secret divine intervention and guidance. In Yoga we replace this confused crooked crab-motion by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution which is planned to carry us, as far as can be, in a straight line towards the goal set before us. In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal, an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of a new birth; there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force - and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this new birth that we make our aim: a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, 89-90,#KEYS
146:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
147:middle vision logic or paradigmatic ::: (1:25) Cognition is described as middle-vision logic, or paradigmatic in that it is capable of co-ordinating the relations between systems of systems, unifying them into principled frameworks or paradigms. This is an operation on meta-systems and allows for the view described above, a view of human development itself. Self-sense at teal is called Autonomous or Strategist and is characterized by the emergent capacity to acknowledge and cope with inner conflicts in needs, ... and values. All of which are part of a multifacted and complex world. Teal sees our need for autonomy and autonomy itself as limited because emotional interdependence is inevitable. The contradictory aspects of self are weaved into an identity that is whole, integrated and commited to generating a fulfilling life.
Additionally, Teal allows individuals to link theory and practice, perceive dynamic systems interactions, recognize and strive for higher principles, understand the social construction of reality, handle paradox and complexity, create positive-sum games and seek feedback from others as a vital source for growth. Values embrace magnificence of existence, flexibility, spontaneioty, functionality, the integration of differences into interdependent systems and complimenting natural egalitarianism with natural ranking. Needs shift to self-actualization, and morality is in both terms of universal ethical principles and recognition of the developmental relativity of those universals. Teal is the first wave that is truly able to see the limitations of orange and green morality, it is able to uphold the paradox of universalism and relativism. Teal in its decision making process is able to see ... deep and surface features of morality and is able to take into consideration both those values when engaging in moral action. Currently Teal is quite rare, embraced by 2-5% of the north american and european population according to sociological research. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-53, Middle Vision Logic,#KEYS
148:The way of integral knowledge supposes that we are intended to arrive at an integral self-fulfilment and the only thing that is to be eliminated is our own unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of the Ignorance. Eliminate the falsity of the being which figures as the ego; then our true being can manifest in us. Eliminate the falsity of the life which figures as mere vital craving and the mechanical round of our corporeal existence; our true life in the power of the Godhead and the joy of the Infinite will appear. Eliminate the falsity of the senses with their subjection to material shows and to dual sensations; there is a greater sense in us that can open through these to the Divine in things and divinely reply to it. Eliminate the falsity of the heart with its turbid passions and desires and its dual emotions; a deeper heart in us can open with its divine love for all creatures and its infinite passion and yearning for the responses of the Infinite. Eliminate the falsity of the thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater faculty of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe. An integral self-fulfilment, - an absolute, a culmination for the experiences of the heart, for its instinct of love, joy, devotion and worship; an absolute, a culmination for the senses, for their pursuit of divine beauty and good and delight in the forms of things; an absolute, a culmination for the life, for its pursuit of works, of divine power, mastery and perfection; an absolute, a culmination beyond its own limits for the thought, for its hunger after truth and light and divine wisdom and knowledge. Not something quite other than themselves from which they are all cast away is the end of these things in our nature, but something supreme in which they at once transcend themselves and find their own absolutes and infinitudes, their harmonies beyond measure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
149:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, - some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, - it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, - if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, - sabdabrahmativartate - beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, - srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
150: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
151:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#KEYS
152:The majority of Buddhists and Buddhist teachers in the West are green postmodern pluralists, and thus Buddhism is largely interpreted in terms of the green altitude and the pluralistic value set, whereas the greatest Buddhist texts are all 2nd tier, teal (Holistic) or higher (for example, Lankavatara Sutra, Kalachakra Tantra, Longchenpa's Kindly Bent to Ease Us, Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka treatises, and so forth).
This makes teal (Holistic), or Integral 2nd tier in general, the lowest deeply adequate level with which to interpret Buddhism, ultimate Reality, and Suchness itself. Thus, interpreting Suchness in pluralistic terms (or lower) would have to be viewed ultimately as a dysfunction, certainly a case of arrested development, and one requiring urgent attention in any Fourth Turning.
These are some of the problems with interpreting states (in this case, Suchness states) with a too-low structure (in short, a severe misinterpretation and thus misunderstanding of the Ultimate). As for interpreting them with dysfunctional structures (of any altitude), the problem more or less speaks for itself. Whether the structure in itself is high enough or not, any malformation of the structure will be included in the interpretation of any state (or any other experience), and hence will deform the interpretation itself, usually in the same basic ways as the structure itself is deformed. Thus, for example, if there is a major Fulcrum-3 (red altitude) repression of various bodily states (sex, aggression, power, feelings), those repressions will be interpreted as part of the higher state itself, and so the state will thus be viewed as devoid of (whereas this is actually a repression of) any sex, aggression, power, feelings, or whatever it is that is dis-owned and pushed into the repressed submergent unconscious. If there is an orange altitude problem with self-esteem (Fulcrum-5), that problem will be magnified by the state experience, and the more intense the state experience, the greater the magnification. Too little self-esteem, and even profound spiritual experiences can be interpreted as "I'm not worthy, so this state-which seems to love me unconditionally-must be confused." If too much self-esteem, higher experiences are misinterpreted, not as a transcendence of the self, but as a reward for being the amazing self I am-"the wonder of being me." ~ Ken Wilber, The Religion Of Tomorrow,#KEYS
153: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
154:complexity of the human constitution :::
There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.
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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 74-75,#KEYS
155:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.
There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,#KEYS
156:meta-systemic operations ::: As the 1950's and 60s begin to roll around the last stage of first tier emerged as a cultural force. With the Green Altitude we see the emergence of Pluralistic, Multicultural, Post-Modern world-views.
Cognition is starting to move beyond formal-operations into the realm of co-ordinating systems of abstractions, in what is called Meta-systemic Cognition. While formal-operations acted upon the classes and relations between members of classes. Meta-systemic operations start at the level of relating systems to systems. The focus of these investigations is placed upon comparing, contrasting, transforming and synthesizing entire systems, rather than components of one system. This emergent faculty allows self-sense to focus around a heightened sense of individuality and an increased ability for emotional resonance. The recognition of individual differences, the ability to tolerate paradox and contradiction, and greater conceptual complexity all provide for an understanding of conflict as being both internally and externally caused. Context plays a major role in the creation of truth and individual perspective. With each being context dependent and open to subjective interpretation, meaning each perspective and truth are rendered relative and are not able to be judged as better or more true than any other. This fuels a value set that centers on softness over cold rationality. Sensitivity and preference over objectivity.
Along with a focus on community harmony and equality which drives the valuing of sensitivity to others, reconcilation, consensus, dialogue, relationship, human development, bonding, and a seeking of a peace with the inner-self. Moral decisions are based on rights, values, or principles that are agreeable to all individuals composing a society based on fair and beneficial practices. All of this leads to the Equality movements and multiculturalism. And to the extreme form of relativitism which we saw earlier as context dependant nature of all truth including objective facts.
Faith at the green altitude is called Conjunctive, and allows the self to integrate what was unrecognized by the previous stages self-certainty and cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. New features at this level of faith include the unification of symbolic power with conceptual meaning, an awareness of ones social unconscious, a reworking of ones past, and an opening to ones deeper self. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-52, Meta-systemic Operations,#KEYS
157:Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality. But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, 681,#KEYS
158: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
159:What is the difference between meditation and concentration?
Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being.
Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being.
Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different.
If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation will be more interesting and easieR But one can meditate without concentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration.
Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy?
Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same.
To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
160:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.
Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,#KEYS
161:It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose.
There is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, - to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 176,#KEYS
162:Sri Aurobindo tells us that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. Therefore it is not merely one of the required qualities, it is the very first indispensable attitude for commencing the yoga.
If you are not decided to make a total surrender, you cannot begin. But to make your surrender total, all the other qualities are necessary: sincerity, faith, devotion and aspiration.
And I add another one : endurance. Because if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged, without giving up under the pretext that it is too difficult, if you are not able to receive blows and continue all the same, to "pocket" them, as it is said,—you receive blows because of your defects : you put them into your pocket and continue to march on without faltering; if you cannot do that with endurance, you will not go very far; at the first turning, when you lose sight of the little habitual life, you despair and give up the game.
The most material form of endurance is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if needed, you will arrive nowhere.
People come to me in despair : "But I thought it had been done, and I have to begin again !" And if they are told, "But it is nothing, you have to begin probably a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times", they lose all courage.
You take one step forward and you believe you are solid, but there will be always something that will bring about the same difficulty a little farther ahead.
You believe you have solved the problem, but will have to solve it again, it will present itself with just a little difference in its appearance, but it will be the same problem.
Thus there are people who have a fine experience and they exclaim, "Now, it is done !" Then things settle down, begin to fade, go behind a veil, and all on a sudden, something quite unexpected, a thing absolutely commonplace, that appears to be of no interest at all, comes before them and closes up the road. Then you lament: "Of what use is this progress that I have made, if I am to begin again !
Why is it so? I made an effort, I succeeded, I arrived at something and now it is as if I had done nothing. It is hopeless". This is because there is still the "I" and this "I" has no endurance.
If you have endurance, you say : "All right, I will begin again and again as long as necessary, a thousand times, ten thousand times, a million times, if necessary, but I will go to the end and nothing can stop me on the way".
That is very necessary.
Now, to sum up, we will put at the head of our list surrender. That is to say, we accept the fact that one must, in order to do the integral yoga, take the resolution of surrendering oneself wholly to the Divine. There is no other way, it is the way. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
163:There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided experience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain caught in the net of appearances or wander confusedly in a chaotic multitude of cosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the price of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited personal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life's hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal. But this knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and metaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental realisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge. This infinite and eternal Self of things is an omnipresent Reality, one existence everywhere; it is a single unifying presence and not different in different creatures; it can be met, seen or felt in its completeness in each soul or each form in the universe. For its infinity is spiritual and essential and not merely a boundlessness in Space or an endlessness in Time; the Infinite can be felt in an infinitesimal atom or in a second of time as convincingly as in the stretch of the aeons or the stupendous enormity of the intersolar spaces. The knowledge or experience of it can begin anywhere and express itself through anything; for the Divine is in all, and all is the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice,#KEYS
164:An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But mans present nature is limited, divided, unequal, -- it is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the Divine Infinity. Some therefore must choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the minds one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works [279-280],#KEYS
165: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
166: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
167:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#KEYS
168:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1],#KEYS
169:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#KEYS
170: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
171:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration,#KEYS
172:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
173:[the sevenfold ignorance and the integral knowledge:]
We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence,-that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, -that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self,-that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end,-that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence,-that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations,-that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal,-that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
Our conception of the Ignorance will necessarily determine our conception of the Knowledge and determine, therefore, since our life is the Ignorance at once denying and seeking after the Knowledge, the goal of human effort and the aim of the cosmic endeavour. Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean [1] the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; [2] the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; [3] the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; [4] the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; [5] the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; [6] the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; [7] the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.
But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 680-683 [T1],#KEYS
174:[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
175:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
176:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 2:Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 3:Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 4:I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 5:An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more developed, more evolved, more adequate. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 6:The basic idea of integral transformative practice (ITP) is simple: the more aspects of our being that we simultaneously exercise, the more likely that transformation will occur. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 7:The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 8:Integral wisdom involves a direct participation in every moment: the observer and the observed are dissolved in the light of pure awareness, and no mental concepts or attitudes are present to dim that light. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 9:Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 10:Joy is always an integral part of loving. There is joy in every act of life, no matter how menial or repetitive. To work in love is to work in joy. To live in love is to live in joy... Why not choose joy?... Why not live in joy? ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 11:What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by integral? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness. Short definition, tall order. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 12:M: Ultimately your character shapes your life and you alone can shape your character. Q: How does one shape one's character? M: By seeing it as it is, and being sincerely sorry. This integral seeing-feeling can work miracles. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 13:Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 14:After years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 15:Most of the world's religions serve only to strengthen attachments to false concepts such as self and other, life and death, heaven and earth, and so on. Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 16:There are several different meanings of the words religion and spirituality, all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 17:If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 18:There are several different meanings of the words "religion" and "spirituality," all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 19:For every human illness, somewhere in the world there exists a plant which is the cure. I believe that there is a healing potential locked inside plants which is integral with their evolution, just as it is part of human evolution to learn to tap this wonderful gift of Nature. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 20:The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as "Tantric," these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 21:With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications - systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 22:National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 23:At the Integral stages of development, the entire universe starts to make sense, to hang together, to actually appear as a uni-verse—a one world—a single, unified, integrated world that unites not only different philosophies and ideas about the world, but different practices for growth and development as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 24:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 25:Human beings are born and begin their evolution through the great spiral of consciousness, moving from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to perhaps integral, and from there perhaps into genuinely transpersonal domains. But for every person that moves into integral or higher, dozens are born into the archaic. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 26:To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 27:Perhaps the best place to begin with an integral approach to business is with.. oneself. In the Big Three of self, culture, and world, integral mastery starts with self. How do body and mind and spirit operate in me? How does that necessarily impact my role in the world of business? And how can I become more conscious of these already operating realities in myself and in others? ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 28:It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man? ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 29:Human beings have a variety of intelligences, such as cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. Most people excel in one or two of those, but do poorly in the others. This is not necessarily or even usually a bad thing; part of Integral wisdom is finding where one excels and thus where one can best offer the world one's deepest gifts. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 30:The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it-that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 31:Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [... ] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 32:The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general... The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 33:A human life has seasons much as the earth has seasons, each time with its own particular beauty and power. And gift. By focusing on springtime and summer, we have turned the natural process of life into a process of loss rather than a process of celebration and appreciation. Life is neither linear nor stagnant. It is movement from mystery to mystery. Just as a year includes autumn and winter, life includes death, not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove 34:..I sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 35:In the past two decades, a radically new theoretical framework for organizing the world and activities in it has started to achieve prominence and widespread recognition. Known as the Integral Approach, it has been used in everything from business to medicine, psychology to law, politics to sustainability, art to education. Because the Integral Framework claims to be comprehensive or inclusive, each discipline using it has been able to reorganize itself in more comprehensive, effective, efficient, and inclusive ways. The Integral Approach itself does not add any content to these disciplines; it simply shows them the areas of their own approaches that are less than integral or less than comprehensive, and this acts as a guide for reorganizing the disciplines in ways that are proving to be, in some cases, nothing less than revolutionary. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Integral Theory, which ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
2:An integral being knows without going, ~ Laozi, #NFDB
3:An important lesson in Integral Education by ~ The Mother, #NFDB
4:We are all an integral part of the chain of life. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
5:In my free time I do differential and integral calculus. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
6:I think Channel One was very integral in my career. ~ Maria Menounos, #NFDB
7:The nanny goat is integral to Lucky Strike’s healing. ~ Lisa Wingate, #NFDB
8:sostenible e integral. El cambio es algo deseable, pero ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
9:We are an integral part of beauty, not something separate. ~ Dewitt Jones, #NFDB
10:Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience. ~ Robert Ludlum, #NFDB
11:Forgetting is as integral to memory as death is to life. ~ Rabih Alameddine, #NFDB
12:am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
13:Your state of mind is integral to how you will experience life. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
14:Perversity and obstinacy are integral tae the Scottish character. ~ Irvine Welsh, #NFDB
15:Honesty has always been an integral part of my operation, really. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
16:Women were integral to the Resistance. Why couldn’t men see that? ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
17:Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
18:Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
19:An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth.
~ Ken Wilber,#NFDB
20:An integral and exclusive aspiration is sure to bring the Divine’s response. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
21:Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
22:El hombre favorecido por la Fortuna se convierte en un imbécil integral. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
23:Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
24:Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
25:If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
26:The information bomb gives rise to the integral and globally constituted accident. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
27:Failure is an integral part of life and that perfection is not of this world. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
28:No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
29:Technical knowledge has now become an integral aspect of the Iranian psyche. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, #NFDB
30:The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
31:(acupuncture) and acutherapy are considered an integral part of veterinary medicine. ~ Ted Kerasote, #NFDB
32:An integral being knows without going, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
33:Small freedoms are integral in the absence of a big freedom. It keeps a person sane. ~ Charmaine Pauls, #NFDB
34:The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
35:Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
36:A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society. ~ Irving Kristol, #NFDB
37:Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics. ~ Shirin Neshat, #NFDB
38:The occult is a part of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
39:Spiritual warfare is an integral part of the entire Christian experience. It is a fact of life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
40:A man doesn't go to drink coffee after climbing, coffee is integral part of the climbing. ~ Wolfgang Gullich, #NFDB
41:An integral being knows without going, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
42:Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
43:Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
44:Any familiarity with photographic history shows that manipulation is integral to photography. ~ Martha Rosler, #NFDB
45:In England, where I come from, fashion and music go hand in hand. They're integral to each other. ~ Don Letts, #NFDB
46:It is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it that is important for the integral Yoga. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
47:All we endured throughout the year was - but an integral part of our life’s learning & evolution. ~ Eleesha, #NFDB
48:Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
49:Interplay and interaction are the integral parts of music - they're as important as the notes. ~ John McLaughlin, #NFDB
50:Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
51:A large quantity of examples is indispensable. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
52:An integral part of any relationship is knowing that you could be killed in your sleep at any time. ~ Trent Reznor, #NFDB
53:I dream of a Digital India where cyber security becomes an integral part of our National Security. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
54:Music is a very integral part of the film, but it will not be as full of music as a Bollywood film. ~ Roland Joffe, #NFDB
55:The arts are not a luxury. They are an integral part of our lives as individuals and as a nation. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
56:Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness. ~ Rene Magritte, #NFDB
57:The school system is the homogenizing hopper into which we toss our integral tots for processing. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
58:Why separate your spiritual life and your practical life? To an integral being, there is no such distinction. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
59:Integral opening of the being towards the Divine: the first step of the ascent.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
60:It was cool to wake up knowing your day would include someone else in a way that was integral to life. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
61:În această lume, respectul de sine depinde integral de ceea ce ne mână de la spate să fm sau să facem. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
62:I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
63:Our fans make the band. What they give we give right back. They're an integral part of us. They ARE us. ~ Jonathan Davis, #NFDB
64:To be in full union with the Divine is the final aim. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Aim of the Integral Yoga, #NFDB
65:Compromise is such an integral part of being a human being. You're compromising in every decision you make. ~ Rick Remender, #NFDB
66:tombstone—integral to the narrative, by the way, and not just plopped in there like the dread flashback, ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
67:An integral knowledge presupposes an integral Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
68:It makes me feel true to the system, knowing that unnecessary risk is integral to the code of urban pathology. • ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
69:All the hundred separate paths meet in the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #NFDB
70:An integral knowledge is the aim of the conscious evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #NFDB
71:A scientist's accomplishments are equal to the integral of his ability integrated over the hours of his effort. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
72:I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion. ~ Michael Haneke, #NFDB
73:For me, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the integral accident. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
74:Modern life can create great confusion and we can forget that humanity is an integral component in the natural world. ~ Ray Mears, #NFDB
75:Creativity is our birthright. It is an integral part of being human, as basic as walking, talking and thinking. ~ John Daido Loori, #NFDB
76:Our sex does not merely determine the form of our sex organs but is an integral part of our entire being. ~ Andreas J K stenberger, #NFDB
77:Schiller is an important philosopher because he shows just how integral the idea of beauty is in normal life. ~ Frederick C Beiser, #NFDB
78:[C]ontemporary liberalism stands on a foundation of assumptions and ideas integral to the larger fascist movement. ~ Jonah Goldberg, #NFDB
79:Odd how somehow she'd once thought she hated had become such an integral part of her daily life. Like breathing. ~ Kimberly Derting, #NFDB
80:Some people become an integral part of our lives; others are ships that pass in the night. Short stories, in fact. My ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
81:Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
82:Music is a fantastic peacekeeper of the world, it is integral to harmony, and it is a required fundamental of human emotion. ~ Xunzi, #NFDB
83:The infinity of the One pours itself out and possesses itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
84:If I want to kiss, I shall kiss. If I am told that a lovemaking scene is integral to the script, I will consider it. ~ Kareena Kapoor, #NFDB
85:Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
86:I think what it is a condition of human - of love. How important that is and integral that is too everybody even a ghost. ~ Boti Bliss, #NFDB
87:Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
88:Es extraño, pero uno puede ser profundamente amado y aún así carecer de la sanidad integral para experimentar ese amor. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
89:Knowledge of constitution is the key for a holistic and integral health care, the true basis of any preventative medicine. ~ Vasant Lad, #NFDB
90:Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him. ~ Thomas M Disch, #NFDB
91:To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Asceticism and the Integral Yoga, #NFDB
92:Both the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
93:I want to explain to her that loneliness isn’t remedied by people around me, that my loneliness is an integral part of me. ~ Sejal Badani, #NFDB
94:Evil deforms and disguises good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
95:Photography is one of the most authentic and integral modes of expression possible in this world in which we live. ~ Clarence John Laughlin, #NFDB
96:We need to ask for God’s wisdom, revelation, and intervening power to be an integral part of our food choices from now on. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
97:integral yoga aims at “opening the springs of creative inspiration hidden in the human psyche” and the “active participation ~ Mark Stephens, #NFDB
98:Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
99:Renunciation is to go to the extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #NFDB
100:The integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #NFDB
101:There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
102:It is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it that is important for the integral Yoga.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#NFDB
103:Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
104:Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life. ~ Karen Horney, #NFDB
105:Music is such an integral part of a film and really drives the emotional narrative, it has to be integrated from the beginning. ~ Drake Doremus, #NFDB
106:The objective is created as a ground of manifestation for the subjective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
107:Falsehood deforms and disguises truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
108:Good grooming is integral, and impeccable style is a must. If you don't look the part, no one will want to give you time or money. ~ Daymond John, #NFDB
109:Lo mismo sucede en una iglesia. Las personas en la iglesia deben conocer el proceso porque son parte integral de su cumplimiento. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
110:Poetry is road maintenance for a fragmented world which seeks to be kept together. It's been an integral activity for a long time. ~ Diane Glancy, #NFDB
111:The snow, the wind, the sun and the sounds of nature, can all be reminders to you that you're an integral part of the natural world. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
112:A luxúria reside menos na exibição integral do que naquela breve nesga de carne mal e mal entrevista entre a luva e a manga. ~ Caio Fernando Abreu, #NFDB
113:It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams. ~ John Knowles, #NFDB
114:Mental knowledge is not an integral but always a partial knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #NFDB
115:Many Americans have never liked acknowledging that the public sector has always been integral to making the private sector successful. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
116:Bohr viewed ignorance as an integral part of the learning process and regarded confusion and paradox as signposts on the road of inquiry. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
117:Different worlds are brought forth by the structures of consciousness doing the perceiving and co-creating. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 168, #NFDB
118:Wholeness is the goal [of life], but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
119:You get rid of the fear of death by understanding that it is an integral fact of our existence. You do that through will and reason. ~ G Gordon Liddy, #NFDB
120:We're finally learning that it is not an either-or situation ... Feelings and learning and emotion are all very integral to each other. ~ Linda Lantieri, #NFDB
121:ACTION IS ALWAYS AN integral part of growth. Spiritual growth does not “happen” to us; it requires a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears, ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
122:A divine unity of supreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #NFDB
123:The churches were so integral to the philosophy behind the revolution that there are books of Christian sermons on the American Revolution. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
124:What is needed of me that I may not fail to progress as I should?
A constant and integral aspiration.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T5],#NFDB
125:She gave him a pointed look. Did people say things like this to men? Women were integral to the Resistance. Why couldn’t men see that? He ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
126:What I have learned the most is that women have always been integral to shaping America; they just haven't been recognized across all fields. ~ Dyllan McGee, #NFDB
127:Each form is there because it is an expression of some power of That which inhabits it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
128:el “internet de la salud” permite que todos nuestros datos médicos estén conectados entre sí y puedan condensarse en un reporte integral. ~ Andr s Oppenheimer, #NFDB
129:The supraphysical is as real as the physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
130:I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
131:I'm always searching for a signature sound and melody that resonates with the film and audience and becomes integral to the film, game, or show. ~ David Raiklen, #NFDB
132:When a man, a woman, see their little daily tasks as integral portions of the one great work, they are no longer drudges but co-workers with God. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
133:Science is the Differential Calculus of the mind. Art the Integral Calculus; they may be beautiful when apart, but are greatest only when combined. ~ Ronald Ross, #NFDB
134:Music should be an integral part of one's life, but how one is able to access it or use it as a career vehicle will always remain in question. ~ Anne Akiko Meyers, #NFDB
135:In the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #NFDB
136:Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place. ~ Charles Duhigg, #NFDB
137:The sampling period is not incidental to the development of great performers—something to be excised in the interest of a head start—it is integral. ~ David Epstein, #NFDB
138:The work now before the reader is the most extensive which our language contains on the subject. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
139:A nation must be embraced, rehabilitated and expressed as a tangible sign of human creativity and as an integral element of mankinds heritage. ~ Abdelaziz Bouteflika, #NFDB
140:I don’t want my pain blanked out, he thought to himself; I need to keep my pain. It is a part of who I am, every bit as integral as the joy I’ve felt. ~ Mark Samuels, #NFDB
141:I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity. ~ Brian Aldiss, #NFDB
142:In the Gulf region and nationwide, small businesses are an integral and crucial part of local economies and communities. They should not be overlooked. ~ Dan Lipinski, #NFDB
143:You can't ignore the reality that faith and family, those two things are integral parts of having limited government, lower taxes, and free societies. ~ Rick Santorum, #NFDB
144:The planetary etheric body is a whole, unbroken and continuous; of this etheric body, those of the healer and the patient are integral, intrinsic parts. ~ Alice Bailey, #NFDB
145:Failure is part of success, an integral part. Everybody gets knocked down. Knowing it will happen and what you must do when it does is the first step back. ~ Bill Walsh, #NFDB
146:For as long as one has no further point of reference, apart from the position of the maximum, the wavelength thus remains uncertain by an integral factor. ~ Max von Laue, #NFDB
147:He reached for the weapon on his right hip. It was a Ruger Mark 2 Amphibian, a stainless steel .22 caliber rim fire pistol with an integral suppressor. But ~ Mark Greaney, #NFDB
148:Our mortality is only justified in the light of our immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
149:. . . the integral being is attached to nothing and can relate to everyone with an unstructured attitude. Because of this, her very existence benefits all things. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
150:Education and the process of educating is a total integral, contextual situation which includes students, teachers, parents, administration and environment. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
151:An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more developed, more evolved, more adequate. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
152:In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness. ~ Richard Diebenkorn, #NFDB
153:Once we begin to regard the well-being of others as integral to our own, we overcome the paralysis of competing rights, which rationalizes innocent suffering. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
154:The subjective and the objective truth of things are both real, they are two sides of the same Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
155:In fact, my experiences as I was writing the 3:16 book weren't that different from writing computer books, although I wasn't using integral signs as much. ~ Donald Ervin Knuth, #NFDB
156:The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
157:At this time let us be exceedingly mindful that bearing one another's burdens and sharing one another's suffering is integral to being members of Christ's body. ~ Frank Griswold, #NFDB
158:There is something mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being. ~ Radclyffe Hall, #NFDB
159:Without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
160:For integral self-possession we must be one not only with the Self, with God, but with all existences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Realisation of the Cosmic Self, #NFDB
161:I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
162:Maybe there will come a day when I realize this void is an integral part of who I am, but right now, it just feels like an empty stomach craving something—anything. ~ Jewel E Ann, #NFDB
163:Goal setting is another integral part of achieving any dream. It is what takes a supernatural vision into the material realm where we can see it being accomplished. ~ Phil Pringle, #NFDB
164:I think humankind is going to have to evolve into systems that are more transparent. Then people will be able to make more integral choices about the food they eat. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
165:Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
166:Truth of knowledge must base truth of life and determine the aim of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
167:As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
168:All things are the symbols through which we have to approach and draw nearer to That by which we and they exist. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
169:Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother - On spirit possession and mental imbalances
~ ?, https://auromere.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/on-spirit-possession-and-mental-imbalances/,#NFDB
170:I wanted to teach them that rejection, and the sadness that attended it, were an integral part of loving something passionately and therefore nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Kate Mulgrew, #NFDB
171:There is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being. ~ Radclyffe Hall, #NFDB
172:I am far from saying that this Treatise will be easy; the subject is a difficult one, as all know who have tried it. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
173:L p sin x dx = -cos x 0 d p = -[cos p - cos 0] = -[-1 - 1] = 2 0 L2p sin x dx = -cos x cos 2p - cos p] = -[1 - s -1d] = p d 2p = -[p -2 The second integral gives a negative ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
174:It is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
175:It is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
176:The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
177:the old Nordic element in Spain, Italy, and France has been again and again strongly reinforced, so that these lands are now an integral part of the White World. In ~ T Lothrop Stoddard, #NFDB
178:Moreover, it is clear that the era of the information bomb, the era of aerial warfare, the era of the RMA and global surveillance is also the era of the integral accident. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
179:In woman, personal history blends together with the history of all women, as well as national and world history. As a militant, she is an integral part of all liberations. ~ H l ne Cixous, #NFDB
180:We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
181:A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
182:Nurses are an integral component of the health care system, and it is important that we recognize the over 2.7 million registered nurses for the significant work that they do. ~ Nathan Deal, #NFDB
183:one of the first steps toward an integral postmodernity is the development and establishment of a genuine environmental ethics, or a moral and ethical stance to nonhuman holons. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
184:When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself-and me-even as I give it away. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
185:The basic idea of integral transformative practice (ITP) is simple: the more aspects of our being that we simultaneously exercise, the more likely that transformation will occur. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
186:The fundamental truth of Being must necessarily be the fundamental truth of Becoming. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
187:To follow Sri Aurobindo in the great adventure of his integral Yoga, one needed always to be a warrior; now that he has left us physically, one needs to be a hero. ~ The Mother, CWM, 15 : 184, #NFDB
188:In the integral yoga there is no distinction between the sadhana and the outward life; it is in each and every movement of the daily life that the Truth must be found and practised. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
189:These too are integral elements in personality and therefore in sanctity—because a saint is one whom God’s love has fully developed into a person in the likeness of his Creator. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
190:The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, "Sri Aurobindo’s Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita", p. 68, #NFDB
191:does no good to nail an unattached branch to the vine; there is no life-giving connection. But those branches that are an integral part of the vine share in the life of the vine. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
192:Everyone's always interested in a dark theme, especially when there's humor connected to it. It seems like that helps, if that's an integral and organic part of the whole story. ~ Robert De Niro, #NFDB
193:Fitness plays such an important role in my life, and an integral part of my golf structure, that I think I might be quite good at teaching others the benefits of sport and fitness. ~ Rory McIlroy, #NFDB
194:I tossed off a mention of the pirates early on. And they became integral to the backstory. Sometimes now I imagine them in the woods. They scare me. All men. Dirty and wearing red. ~ Edan Lepucki, #NFDB
195:Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
196:[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
197:The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives. ~ Michel Chossudovsky, #NFDB
198:It feels strange to be ignored in general, but when someone who was once an integral part of your life fades away, what are you left with? Sadness? Disallusionment? Hope? Surreal... ~ Jos N Harris, #NFDB
199:Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
200:The notion that you would initiate a new product without preparing the way by persuasion and advertising and salesmanship is fantastic. It's an integral part of the system. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
201:Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
~ Henry David Thoreau,#NFDB
202:The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
203:The integral liberation comes when this passion for release, mumukṣutva, founded on distaste or vairāgya, is itself transcended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #NFDB
204:Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of the truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both. ~ Jean Gebser, #NFDB
205:It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
206:I'm very excited about this wonderful opportunity to take part in the evolution of a company that is integral to the Hispanic community and a powerful force in all areas of the media. ~ Gloria Estefan, #NFDB
207:Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of the truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both. ~ Jean Gebser, #NFDB
208:I require every Taipei student to swim; if they can't pass the test they won't graduate. Why do I do that? Because I think that is very, very important integral part of their education. ~ Ma Ying jeou, #NFDB
209:The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
210:To those who want to practise the integral Yoga, it is strongly advised to abstain from three things: 1) Sexual intercourse 2) Smoking 3) Drinking alcohol
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T1],#NFDB
211:Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. ~ Walter Gropius, #NFDB
212:Science fiction stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses. ~ Ben Bova, #NFDB
213:The system of transportation is not coherent; it is not treated as integral. Roads compete with with railroads and airlines in chaotic fashion, and at immense cost to the nation. ~ Anthony Stafford Beer, #NFDB
214:The suddenness with which I was consigned to irrelevance left me stunned. For fourteen years, I had imagined myself integral to my children’s lives. All at once, it appeared that I was not. ~ Shulem Deen, #NFDB
215:Aesthetic life is not something sophisticated - that's a humanistic lie. Aesthetic life is as integral to being human as building sandcastles on the beach and giving your children names. ~ Calvin Seerveld, #NFDB
216:I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them...The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey. ~ David Bowie, #NFDB
217:In his self-integration the soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
218:[Let] go of your attachments: your attachment to being right, to having total control, or to living forever. This process of letting go is integral to the process of becoming whole. ~ Judith Hanson Lasater, #NFDB
219:The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
220:On this International Literacy Day, let us recall that literacy for all is an integral part of education for all, and that both are critical for achieving truly sustainable development for all. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
221:Pudge," she said, faux-condescending, "the sound is an integral part of the artistic experience of this video game. Muting Decapitation would be like reading only every other word of Jane Eyre. ~ John Green, #NFDB
222:A vacant Absolute is no Absolute,—our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
223:Its origin is a limitation of knowledge, its distinctive character a separation of the being from its own integrality and entire reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
224:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #index, #NFDB
225:To manifest what is from the first occult within it is the whole hidden trend of evolutionary Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
226:It’s not a temporary thing,’ she says, ‘it’s integral. If a person’s love for someone else is sincere, it’s with them forever. It changes them. They can never go back to how they were before. ~ Louise Douglas, #NFDB
227:Provocative and challenging The Social License makes a compelling case for why companies must look to increase their positive social impact as an integral part of their core business strategies. ~ Paul Polman, #NFDB
228:A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
229:When we get back to our true being, the ego falls away from us; its place is taken by our supreme and integral self, the true individuality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, #NFDB
230:Truth of being must govern truth of life; it cannot be that the two have no relation or interdependence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
231:Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
232:Freedom from the cloak of secrecy is integral to a teaching that gives primacy to direct experience, inviting each individual to test its principles in the crucible of his or her own experience. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
233:The seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body, #NFDB
234:Christian teaching about sex is not a set of isolated prohibitions; it is an integral part of what the Bible has to say about living in such a way that our lives communicate the character of God. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
235:Hip hop has been an integral part of my life and my whole career. I started off doing videos with Ice Cube, and Dre, and Mary J. Blige, and TLC. So I've been involved in hip hop since the beginning. ~ F Gary Gray, #NFDB
236:People have the false habit of putting an artificial gap between the spiritual and the financial. We cannot accept this habit because life is an integral whole which we should understand deeply. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
237:I pray daily, and I pray in all kinds of places. I mean, I pray in bed, I pray in the Oval Office. I pray a lot. And just different as the spirit moves me. And faith is an integral part of my life. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
238:Thinking well is integral to acting righteously. Truth and spirituality are of a piece: to know the truth is to do it. There is no dichotomy between the two. To be spiritual is to know/do the truth. ~ James W Sire, #NFDB
239:we have to bring a wider meaning into our human life and manifest in it the much more that we secretly are. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
240:All the basic realities are a bringing out of something that is eternal and inherently true in the Absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
241:As for the guides themselves, they are already being trained and certified: late in 2016, the California Institute of Integral Studies graduated its first class of forty-two psychedelic therapists. ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
242:La verdadera educación, al mismo tiempo que estimula el aprendizaje de una técnica, debe realizar algo de mayor importancia; debe ayudar al hombre a experimentar, a sentir el proceso integral de la vida. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
243:This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws? ~ Max Planck, #NFDB
244:Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
245:I would have taken the time to learn how to listen earlier. Learning about non-violent communication and how to take feedback has been integral to both my personal happiness and professional success. ~ Dale J Stephens, #NFDB
246:To aspiring writers, I say : Don't give up. Storytelling has been an integral part of the human condition since the beginning of time. Don't let anyone tell you your dreams don't have value. They do. ~ Beverly Jenkins, #NFDB
247:Glutathione is also the most critical and integral part of your detoxification system. All the toxins stick onto glutathione, which then carries them into the bile and the stool - and out of your body. ~ Mark Hyman M D, #NFDB
248:I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. ~ W S Gilbert, #NFDB
249:To begin to understand your Soul as an integral part of yourself and begin to connect with your Soul as a part of your full being and your true nature, is the beginning of wisdom and the portal to true joy. ~ Genevieve, #NFDB
250:Creativity and imagination are not frosting on a cake: They are integral to our sustainability. They are survival mechanisms. They are of the essence of who we are. They constitute our deepest empowerment. ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
251:I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
252:A fragrance that matches the personality of the man or woman who wears it is an integral part of the memory that you have of him or her. It goes without saying that it's a formidable weapon of seduction. ~ Dree Hemingway, #NFDB
253:Awen is also compassion. Compassion is trying to understand, to see the bigger picture, to be inspired to be a part of an integrated and integral life; living gently, gracefully and with kindness. ~ Joanna van der Hoeven, #NFDB
254:But Rawkus is integral to what I do, because the cats who started Rawkus are the first ones who really saw my vision, and gave me a platform to get it out there, so I'm definitely totally grateful for that. ~ Talib Kweli, #NFDB
255:Advances in computer technology and the Internet have changed the way America works, learns, and communicates. The Internet has become an integral part of America's economic, political, and social life ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
256:. . . integral wisdom involves a direct participation in every moment: the observer and the observed are dissolved in the light of pure awareness, and no mental concepts or attitudes are present to dim that light. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
257:The noun lila means anything from sport, dalliance, play to any languid or amorous gesture in a woman. ~ V.S. Apte (1965), quoted in in Sri Aurobindo’s Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita, p. 68, #NFDB
258:The consent of all the being is necessary for the divine change, and it is the completeness and fullness of the consent that constitutes the integral surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Lower Vital Being, #NFDB
259:[Both high art and industrially produced consumer art] bear the stigmata of capitalism, both contain elements of change. Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
260:I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
261:Cosmic being is not a meaningless freak or phantasy or a chance error; there is a divine significance and truth in it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
262:I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun, I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
263:A game may be as integral to a culture, as true an object of human aesthetic appreciation, as admirable a product of creativity as a folk art or a style of music; and, as such, it is quite as worthy of study. ~ Michael Dummett, #NFDB
264:One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all - apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection? ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
265:If one looks at the different problems of the integral calculus which arise naturally when one wishes to go deep into the different parts of physics, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies existing. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
266:Illusions, distortions, and self-deception appear to be integral to the way normal, well-adjusted people perceive the world. Seeing things as they really are is associated with depression and low self-esteem. ~ Roy F Baumeister, #NFDB
267:What do I need to develop most? And what do I need to reject most?
Develop - sincerity (that is, an integral adhesion to the Divine's way. Reject - the pull of the old human habits.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
268:It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
269:All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
270:It is up to the leader to create a healthy environment where people are not afraid to fail. Mistakes should be seen as an integral part of the organizational process. They are a normal part of striving for excellence. ~ Andrew Harvey, #NFDB
271:Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than I feel. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
272:what is good is integral to itself. That is also why it is not worthwhile to change yourself, your hair or skin or eyes. What is integral to you will always be superior to what is tacked on, simply because it is yours. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
273:Dragons are integral to the Chinese Culture. The First Emperor of China is known as the Dragon King, and the people are known as Descendants of Dragons. - Kailin Gow, Amazon Lee Adventures in China: Tomb of the Dragon King. ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
274:Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
275:Plants are also integral to reweaving the connection between land and people. A place becomes a home when it sustains you, when it feeds you in body as well as spirit. To recreate a home, the plants must also return. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
276:Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
277:Making one’s own medicine is an integral part of being a doctor in North Korea. Those living in warmer climates often grow cotton as well to make their own bandages. Doctors are all required to collect the herbs themselves; ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
278:Perspectival-reason, being highly reflexive, also allows sustained introspection. And it is the first structure that can imagine 'as if' and 'what if' worlds: it becomes a true dreamer and visionary.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 26,#NFDB
279:As people continue to do more and buy more over the Internet, continue to meet people over the Internet, connection speeds are going to get faster, and the Internet is just going to become an even more integral part of people's lives. ~ Moby, #NFDB
280:Man for Leopardi is first and foremost an animal, and his history is merely the last section of the much more ancient history of all living species, which in their turn are an integral part of the entire ecological system. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
281:I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. ~ Jonas Mekas, #NFDB
282:For someone with my cast of mind and mood, medication is an integral element of this wall: without it, I would be constantly beholden to the crushing movements of a mental sea; I would, unquestionably, be dead or insane. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
283:People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday, the Bible in translation is being read to thousands and thousands in Africa. It is an integral part of their functioning and the way they look at the world. ~ Ngugi wa Thiong o, #NFDB
284: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #NFDB
285:I have come to the belief that there is not merely an accidental relationship between bad writing and routine sociological research, but a wonderfully pure, integral relationship; the awkwardness is necessary and inevitable. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick, #NFDB
286:Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
287:Tourism is a top priority activity for federal government, which is why it invests an average of over 2,500 million dollars a year in infrastructure works and integral projects that promote Mexico's culture and natural attractions. ~ Vicente Fox, #NFDB
288:I think that it is important to be gregarious, and that friendships are not just a leisure pursuit, that they are an integral part of what it is to be human, and one does better work if one has a circle of friends that is active. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
289:For right now, I'd like to tell stories that I want to tell. I haven't wanted to use someone else's material yet, but I would with the show. It's become an integral enough part of me now, that I could definitely tell a story in this. ~ Jason Momoa, #NFDB
290:What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth-or in heaven-do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness." Short definition, tall order. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
291:Capablanca plays very superficially sometimes, in a way that can only be ascribed to lack of concentration. This is an integral weakness of his make-up and can only be partially compensated by his employing his time allowance to the full. ~ Max Euwe, #NFDB
292:Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
293:First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
294:It seems to be expected of every pilgrim up the slopes of the mathematical Parnassus, that he will at some point or other of his journey sit down and invent a definite integral or two towards the increase of the common stock. ~ James Joseph Sylvester, #NFDB
295:The growth of equality… calls for decisions, mechanisms and processes directed to a better distribution of wealth, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor, which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
296:Section 3 of the state constitution that came into effect from 26 January 1957 says, “The State of J&K is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India”. Section 147 of the State Constitution says that this Section is not amendable. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
297:But if I had my way, there would be so much more, in everything. It's so vital and integral in life, and it should be reflected in what we're watching, if we're reflecting our experiences. And it's hot. I love the sex stuff, and I want more. ~ Jenji Kohan, #NFDB
298:Employees are a company's greatest asset - they're your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company's mission. ~ Anne M Mulcahy, #NFDB
299:Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
300:Teresa [of Avila]'s story dismantles the common belief that all those chosen for sainthood are flawless in personality and character. Indeed, she would want us to consider her contradictions and struggles as integral to her sainthood. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt, #NFDB
301:In Ishmael I articulated a living mythology that is so integral to our culture that it’s never examined or even noticed by anyone. It’s like the sound of blood rushing through your veins—you hear it so constantly that you don’t hear it at all. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
302:In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds. The hard nerds are the ones who used to have the slide rules at their belt; now they have calculators. The soft nerds are the ones who get violently ill whenever anybody mentions an integral sign. ~ Alan Kay, #NFDB
303:... maintains that, along with Aurobindo's Life Divine, Heidegger's Being and Time, and Whitehead's Process and Reality, Wilber's Sex Ecology Spirituality [SES] is 'one of the four great books of this [twentieth] century'
~ Michael Murphy, Integral, 2004.,#NFDB
304:Space may seem distant, but is an integral part of our daily life. It drives our modern communication and connects even the remotest family to the ordinary. India's space programme is a perfect example of our vision of Scale, Speed and Skill. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
305:The gay rights movement is not a party. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a hair style. It is not a fad or a fringe or a sickness. It is not about sin or salvation. The gay rights movement is an integral part of the American promise of freedom. ~ Urvashi Vaid, #NFDB
306:All human professions, institutions, and activities must be integral with the earth as the primary self-nourishing , self-governing and self-fulfilling community. To integrate our human activities within this context is our way into the future. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
307:In the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
308:<...> black slavery was basic and integral to the entire phenomenon we call “America.” This often hidden or disguised truth ultimately involves the profound contradiction of a free society that was made possible by black slave labor. ~ David Brion Davis, #NFDB
309:The idea of reverence for God is transmitted from parent to child, it is educated into an abnormal development, and thus almost indefinitely strengthened, but yet it does appear to me that the bent to worship is an integral part of man's nature. ~ Annie Besant, #NFDB
310:Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness-mine, yours, ours-need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
311:Most of the world's religions serve only to strengthen attachments to false concepts such as self and other, life and death, heaven and earth, and so on. Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
312:The integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #NFDB
313:All of them, artists and theorists, were talking as if their conscious aim was to create a totally immediate art, lucid, stripped of all the dreadful baggage of history, an art fully revealed, honest, as honest as the flat-out integral picture plane. ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
314:Find a teacher who is an integral being, a beacon who extends his light and virtue with equal ease to those who appreciate him and those who don't. Shape yourself in his mold, bathe in his nourishing radiance, and reflect it out to the rest of the world. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
315:After years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
316:Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness - mine, yours, ours - need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
317:Everyone in this world is connected in a spiritual space. We can’t hurt others without hurting ourselves. The more you hurt others, the more wounds are created in you because the whole world is like one organism of which you too are an integral part. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
318:Insofar as the genocide embodied in residential schooling arises as an integral aspect of colonialism, then colonialism must be seen as constituting that source. To be in any way an apologist for colonialism is to be an active proponent of genocide. ~ Ward Churchill, #NFDB
319:With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral. ~ Serj Tankian, #NFDB
320:el liberalismo no consiste en liberalizar los precios y abrir las fronteras a la competencia internacional, sino en la reforma integral de un país, en su privatización y descentralización a todos los niveles, y en transferir a la sociedad civil —a ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
321:La conciencia de un determinismo integral era sin duda lo que más claramente nos diferenciaba de nuestros antepasados humanos. Como ellos, no éramos sino máquinas pensantes; pero a diferencia de ellos, teníamos conciencia de ser tan sólo máquinas. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
322:Fascism was born to inspire a faith not of the Right (which at bottom aspires to conserve everything, even injustice) or of the Left (which at bottom aspires to destroy everything, even goodness), but a collective, integral, national faith. ~ Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, #NFDB
323:Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leaves them at the mercy of that darkness is part of the DNA of Chile, an integral part of the country's history. ~ Ariel Dorfman, #NFDB
324:The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue... nor afford us any exclusive trade... is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited. ~ Richard Cobden, #NFDB
325:Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross, #NFDB
326:Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral? ~ Raymond Geuss, #NFDB
327:Even if we're in a state of hopelessness, a sense of expectation is an integral part of our relationship to time. Hopelessness is possible only because we do hope that some good, loving someone could come. If that's what Heidegger meant, then I agree with him. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
328:Every one who understands the subject will agree that even the basis on which the scientific explanation of nature rests is intelligible only to those who have learned at least the elements of the differential and integral calculus, as well as analytical geometry. ~ Felix Klein, #NFDB
329:Are we caring for our volunteers properly? Are we providing the right training? Is there a better way we could recruit? What are the faithful volunteers in our church actually experiencing? Are they growing spiritually? Do they feel like an integral part of a team? ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
330:The synergetic integral of the totality of all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans--in pure principle--we do not and never will know all the principles ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
331:Without a solution to the problems of the poor, we will not solve the problems of the world. We need projects, mechanisms and processes to implement better distribution of resources, from the creation of new jobs to the integral promotion of those who are excluded'. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
332:If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
333:There are several different meanings of the words "religion" and "spirituality," all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
334:But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not. ~ Johann Bernoulli, #NFDB
335:Today, the mere idea of aristocracy is incompatible with the dominant ideology. But every people needs an aristocracy. It's an integral part of human nature and can't be dispensed with. The question then is not 'For or against aristocracy?' but 'What kind of aristocracy? ~ Guillaume Faye, #NFDB
336:Everyone you meet has a part to play in your story. And while some may take a chapter, others a paragraph, and most will be no more than scribbled notes in the margins, someday, you'll meet someone who will become so integral to your life, you'll put their name in the title. ~ Beau Taplin, #NFDB
337:I think meditating on tour is integral. It's a priority, because everything is so chaotic, and the calmer you stay, the calmer everybody is. Sometimes I do it hotel lobbies, or in corners, and I try to find moments. It's not ideal when people come out and almost step on you. ~ Thao Nguyen, #NFDB
338:The campaign against the SARS “rogue unit” was driven by elements in the SSA ... Suffice it to say for now that the stories in the Sunday Times were bullshit, but they were integral to the destruction of the most effective law enforcement organisation in the country. ~ Jacques Pauw, #NFDB
339:... the world of nature is by no means absent from the eschatological program set out in the NT. While rarely rising to the level of an explicit emphasis, and never the chief concern in and of itself, the world of nature is an integral component of God's new creation work. ~ Douglas J Moo, #NFDB
340:They had no formal religion, instead, they saw themselves as an integral part of the world around them, no better and no worse than any other living creature. Their philosophy seemed to be that life would thrive where it could, it was the nature of the universe to do so. ~ Michelle Diener, #NFDB
341:And while it makes sense to blind patients in a drug trial, in order to separate the chemical action of the drug from any psychological effects, it misses the point when testing therapies such as hypnosis, when patients’ beliefs and expectations are integral to how they work. ~ Jo Marchant, #NFDB
342:I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
343:With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
344:I’ve started to question if the flaws on the finished photograph aren’t an integral part of the portrait: soft focus, underexposure, poorly applied emulsion, mysterious lines and distortions … all of these elements can change the character of the photograph and its subject. ~ Elizabeth Ross, #NFDB
345:As long as one was an integral part of that world, unaware of the possibilities and responsibilities of individual action, one did not need to be afraid of it. When one has become an individual , one stands alone and faces the world in all its perilous and overpowering aspects. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
346:It is always the originating supermind that contains within itself the true values, significances and relations of the other parts of our being and its unfolding is the condition of the integral possession of our self and nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Sense, #NFDB
347:My generation had never known a world without the OASIS. To us, it was much more than a game or an entertainment platform. It had been an integral part of our lives for as far back as we could remember. We’d been born into an ugly world, and the OASIS was our one happy refuge. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
348:The classical allusions and the Platonic disquisitions on beauty are no longer a form of cover, but integral to Aschenbach's complex sexuality. Moreover, the wandering around Venice in pursuit of Tadzio isn't a prelude to some sexual contact for which Aschenbach is yearning. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
349:For every human illness, somewhere in the world there exists a plant which is the cure. I believe that there is a healing potential locked inside plants which is integral with their evolution, just as it is part of human evolution to learn to tap this wonderful gift of Nature. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
350:Maybe it's superficial to exude a sense of confidence in one's clothes. But it's also integral. We have an appearance. Not all of us are beautiful. But we can appear fine looking. So we should. Feeling good about an outfit is the point at which that outfit finally becomes good. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
351:By saying that someone becomes the owner of something, we are referring to a market transaction, while by saying that something is a good belonging to someone, we emphasize the fact that it has been incorporated into the world of someone, of which it has become an integral part. ~ Michel Callon, #NFDB
352:The absolute requisites for the study of this work... are a knowledge of algebra to the binomial at least, plane and solid geometry, plane trigonometry, and the most simple part of the usual applications of algebra to geometry. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
353:An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancyfor building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
354:The Earth is so integral in the unity of its functioning that every aspect of the Earth is affected by what happens to any component member of the community. Because of its organic quality, Earth cannot survive in fragments….The integral functioning of the planet must be preserved. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
355:Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.
~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB
356:The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as "Tantric," these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
357:We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned. (Hamilton’s staunch abolitionism formed an integral feature of this economic vision.) ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
358:The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself - on which is founded the entire integral calculus - is also the basis of our witty speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures with philosophical rigour. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
359:Can you dissolve your ego? Can you abandon the idea of self and other? Can you relinquish the notions of male and female, short and long, life and death? Can you let go of all these dualities and embrace the Tao without skepticism or panic? If so, you can reach the heart of the Integral Oneness. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
360:Even knowing that my presence brought a shadow over the lives of my loved ones, I can't regret the experiences I've had with them. They gave me life, becoming an integral part of my soul. They healed me when I was broken and somehow they recovered those parts of me, I thought lost forever. ~ J D Stroube, #NFDB
361:Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation? This makes your mind narrow, not clear. Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times. That is true meditation. ... The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn't avoid the world. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
362:Truth is cosmically total: synergetic. Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, with no exceptions. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
363:It might be comforting to assume that intolerance is an aberration within Islam but discrimination against Christians or any other non-Muslim is in fact integral to orthodox Muslim teaching, and the more profound issue to the serious-minded is not the existence of sectarianism but its extent. ~ Michael Coren, #NFDB
364:With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
365:The profound psychological benefits of play are integral to healthy cultures, communities, and individuals, including a direct relationship to work productivity. Engage in some unstructured outdoor physical exertion each day to counter the negative effects of a sedentary, technological existence. ~ Mark Sisson, #NFDB
366:Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
367:And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. 'By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Renunciation,#NFDB
368:National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
369:...the mind is just as immeasurable as the vast universe. An integral being settles his mind just as the vast universe settles itself. He unites his mind with the unnameable Subtle Origin of the multi-universe in which there is no past, present or future. This is how an integral being deals with his mind. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
370:When we’re mainly filtering our experience through the ego, constantly trying to improve or maintain our high self-esteem, we’re denying ourselves the thing we actually want most. To be accepted as we are, an integral part of something much greater than our small selves. Unbounded. Immeasurable. Free. ~ Kristin Neff, #NFDB
371:Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business, namely, his own character and conduct. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
372:Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me. ~ Ryan Adams, #NFDB
373:[Into the Badlands] wasn't going to be two days of a splinter unit at the end of the shoot. The action and the martial arts had to be integral to the show. That's what makes it unique, that's what makes it special and different and ground-breaking. No one has attempted this before on American television. ~ Miles Millar, #NFDB
374:Women's position includes so many pre-Islamic customs that have become an integral part of the Shariat. I am fighting that. Triple talaq is not mentioned in the Quran. Of course, there is a controversy; some maintain that the Prophet approved of it. Even if he did, maybe he had social constraints. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer, #NFDB
375:May the deepest spiritual values of the Filipino people continue to find expression in your efforts to provide your fellow citizens with an integral human development. In this way, each person will be able to fulfill his or her potential, and thus contribute wisely and well to the future of this country. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
376:It was the irrational doubt which springs from the isolation and powerlessness of an individual whose attitude toward the world is one of anxiety and hatred. This irrational doubt can never be cured by rational answers; it can only disappear if the individual becomes and integral part of a meaningful world. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
377:So long as there are employers who attack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the right but also the duty of their employees - who are, after all, an integral part of our people - to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the individual. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
378:plot structure and character arc are integral to one another. In his classic guide Story, Robert McKee says: We cannot ask which is more important, structure or character, because structure is character; character is structure. They’re the same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the other. ~ K M Weiland, #NFDB
379:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
380:Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen are expressions of a mentality which feels completely at home in this universe, and which sees man as an integral part of his environment. Human intelligence is not an imprisoned spirit from afar but an aspect of the whole intricately balanced organism of the natural world [...]. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
381:At the Integral stages of development, the entire universe starts to make sense, to hang together, to actually appear as a uni-verse—a “one world”—a single, unified, integrated world that unites not only different philosophies and ideas about the world, but different practices for growth and development as well. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
382:Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. ~ Henry Jenkins, #NFDB
383:Human beings are born and begin their evolution through the great spiral of consciousness, moving from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to perhaps integral, and from there perhaps into genuinely transpersonal domains. But for every person that moves into integral or higher, dozens are born into the archaic. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
384:The mature person perceives the fruitlessness of rigid, external methodologies; Remembering this, he keeps his attitude unstructured at all times and thus is always free to pursue the Integral Way. He studies the teachings of the masters. He dissolves all concepts of duality. He pours himself out in service to others. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
385:Una ecología integral implica dedicar algo de tiempo para recuperar la serena armonía con la creación, para reflexionar acerca de nuestro estilo de vida y nuestros ideales, para contemplar al Creador, que vive entre nosotros y en lo que nos rodea, cuya presencia «no debe ser fabricada sino descubierta, develada» ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
386:All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, “Sri Aurobindo’s Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita”, #NFDB
387:It now seems clear that a capacity to learn would be an integral feature of the core design of a system intended to attain general intelligence, not something to be tacked on later as an extension or an afterthought. The same holds for the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty and probabilistic information. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
388:In grade school I was taught that the United States is a melting pot. People from all over the world come here for freedom and to pursue a better life. They arrive with next to nothing, work incredibly hard, learn a new language and new customs, and in a generation they become an integral part of our amazing nation. ~ Jeff Hawkins, #NFDB
389:The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
390:We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in. ~ Hans Arp, #NFDB
391:By their dependence on the spoken word for information, people were drawn together into a tribal mesh . . . the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written. . . . Audile-tactile tribal man partook of the collective unconscious, lived in a magical integral world patterned by myth and ritual, its values divine.3 ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
392:Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
393:To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
394:There's this really amazing quote from Jim Jarmusch about celebrating your theft that I think has become more and more prominent in music: "It's not where you got it from, it's where you take it." To me, that's just an integral part of why I even bother making music. I don't mind that I've created an identity around what I do. ~ Alan Palomo, #NFDB
395:To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
396:A beetle will chase after an opening of light, while a cockroach will scatter at a crack of it. How are we different from insects? Nobody is purely good or purely evil. Most of us are in-between. There are moths that explore the day and butterflies that play at night. Polarity is an integral part of nature — human or not human. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
397:Right now-whether you're in writing courses getting "paid" in credit for writing, or burdened and distracted by earning a living and changing diapers-figure out how to make writing an integral part of your life. Publication is good, and gives you the courage to go on, but publication is not as important as the act of writing. ~ Janet Burroway, #NFDB
398:A noted cancer specialist in Boston said he believed that if some simple and inexpensive replacement for Chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer were found tomorrow, all US medical schools would teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, so integral a part of their hospital revenues is oncology, the medical specialty of cancer treatment ~ Barry Lynes, #NFDB
399:Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom. ~ Paul Kurtz, #NFDB
400:They told me I'd have to be there for the entire shooting of the movie which was two and a half months and again, I was surprised. Most movies I'd worked on before took only a day or so, so I realized this was a pretty big deal. I got to the set and was involved in a very integral way, which was a fun experience to be a part of. ~ Mike Vallely, #NFDB
401:In light of the hypersexuality of humans, chimps, and bonobos, one wonders why so many insist that female sexual exclusivity has been an integral part of human evolutionary development for over a million years. In addition to all the direct evidence presented here, the circumstantial case against the narrative is overwhelming. ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
402:The Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us bearings that guide us as stewards of his creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers matters concerning the environment and its protection intimately linked to the theme of integral human development. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
403:Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
404:Following the Universal Way means practicing selflessness and extending virtue to the world unconditionally. In this way one not only eliminates the heavy contamination accumulated throughout many lifetimes but may also bring about the possibility of restoring one's original divine nature and become an integral being of the multi-universe. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
405:Linguistic diversity is integral to the cultural diversity that ensures some humans will survive in the event of one of the periodic global catastrophes. Local indigenous languages hold the keys to to survival because they contain the nouns, the names of the plants, insects, birds and mammals important locally to human survival. ~ Leslie Marmon Silko, #NFDB
406:The first thing I want to make clear is that this violence, this terrorism, is not cultural. It isn’t integral either to Arab or Muslim culture. I’ve done too many briefings for senators and congressmen who think that all ‘towelheads’ carry a pistol and a grenade. If you can’t see beyond this stereotype, then we might as well stop now. ~ Steven Gould, #NFDB
407:I am honoured to be asked to take on this role, especially as it comes at such an integral time for our relationship with South Africa and the African continent. There shall be many new challenges and opportunities ahead and I look forward to embracing them with great anticipation [on becoming the UK's high commissioner to South Africa] ~ Paul Boateng, #NFDB
408:IMPORTANT Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used a as a substitute or an excuse. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
409:The first thing I want to make clear is that this violence, this terrorism, is not cultural. It isn't
integral either to Arab or Muslim culture. I've done too many briefings for senators and congressmen who think that all 'towelheads' carry a pistol and a grenade. If you can't see beyond this stereotype, then we might as well stop now. ~ Steven Gould,#NFDB
410:God thus excludes the world; he is only its cause; in no sense is he effect, of himself or anything else. Pantheism (better, "pandeism," for again it is not really the theos that is described) means that God is the integral totality of ordinary cause-effects, and that there, is no super-cause independent of ordinary causes and effects. ~ Charles Hartshorne, #NFDB
411:The ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
412:Death Is Potential To That Man
548
Death is potential to that Man
Who dies—and to his friend—
Beyond that—unconspicuous
To Anyone but God—
Of these Two—God remembers
The longest—for the friend—
Is integral—and therefore
Itself dissolved—of God—
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
413:For her part, the Church always works for the integral development of every person. In this sense, she reiterates that the common good should not be simply an extra, simply a conceptual scheme of inferior quality tacked onto political programmes. The Church encourages those in power to be truly at the service of the common good of their peoples. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
414:Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), #NFDB
415:Sometimes as actors and artists, we don't really get to be an effective and integral part of the promotional process, other than doing interviews. With Twitter and Facebook now, and all of this stuff, it really allows us to play and have fun, vis-à-vis the pictures that I send out on Twitter every day, or little videos, or whatever it is. ~ Jennifer Love Hewitt, #NFDB
416:The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. it is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
417:I recently lost someone. Someone so integral to me, it’s like a part of me is gone. And now I don’t know how to be anymore. If there’s even a me without her. It’s like she was my sun, and then my sun went out. Imagine if the real sun went out. Maybe there’d still be life on Earth, but would you still want to live here? Do I still want to live here? ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
418:Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image. The social practice confronted by an autonomous spectacle is at the same time the real totality which contains that spectacle. But the split within this totality mutilates it to the point that the spectacle seems to be its goal. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
419:Integral theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all of human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that is able to accommodate the gifts of all previous worldviews, including those which have been historically at odds: science and religion, Eastern and Western schools of thought, and pre-modern, modern and post-modern worldviews. ~ Daily Evolver, #NFDB
420:I think there are great roles for women in television because there is time to allow those characters to evolve. Even if you're the wife or the girlfriend or whatever it is that we women are, playing those things on TV, they are much more drawn out and there are greater arcs for the role. The roles are more integral to the complexity of the story. ~ Linda Cardellini, #NFDB
421:Claro que si uno tuviera un receptor con paso de banda estrecha, y escuchara solo un mínimo margen de frecuencias, estaría obligado a aceptar la constante de tiempo larga. Jamás podríamos detectar una modulación rápida. Eso era una simple consecuencia del Teorema Integral de Fourier, estrechamente vinculado con el Principio de Incertidumbre de Heisenberg. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
422:But in the dynamic space of the living Rocket, the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled..."Meters per second" will integrate to "meters." The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It never did fall. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
423:If you and I were living in a Universe that was not alive, conscious, and fully aware of us, it might be the case that “things just happen.” However, we are an integral part of a Universe that is fully alive, fully conscious, and totally aware of us—a Universe that provides exactly what we need to achieve our full potential. You are the Universe…a part of it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
424:It was hard to imagine him in love. I knew that he and my mother must have once felt passion, since that was what love entailed, but I was grateful that over time the madness had evolved into something more like friendship or a business partnership, something I myself could be an integral part of. Even seeing my father recollect passion was disconcerting. ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
425:What I want people to realize is that “transitioning” is not the end of the journey. Yes, it’s an integral part of revealing who we are to ourselves and the world, but there’s much life afterward. These stories earn us visibility but fail at reporting on what our lives are like beyond our bodies, hormones, surgeries, birth names, and before-and-after photos. ~ Janet Mock, #NFDB
426:Cities allow us to extract some of the transactional services that were assumed to be an integral, gendered aspect of traditional marriage and enjoy them as actual transactional service, for which we pay. This dynamic also permits women to function in the world in a way that was once impossible, with the city serving as spouse and, sometimes, true love. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
427:But in the dynamic space of the living Rocket , the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled...'Meters per second ' will integrate to 'meters.' The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It never did fall. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
428:WILL, KNOWLEDGE and love are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the divine. The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore, as we have seen, be the foundation of an integral Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #NFDB
429:According to theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent upon God's beliefs, desires and creative acts. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural considerations; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude. ~ Quentin Smith, #NFDB
430:Men will be drawn back into family life only when they are convinced that being a good husband and father is a manly thing to do. That parental duty and sacrifice are masculine virtues. That marital love and fidelity are not female standards imposed on men externally but an integral part of the male character. Something inherent and original, created by God. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
431:Suffering naturally gives rise to doubt. How can one believe in God in the face of such horrendous suffering as slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree? Under these circumstances, doubt is not a denial but an integral part of faith. It keeps faith from being sure of itself. But doubt does not have the final word. The final word is faith giving rise to hope. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
432:Eliminate mental muddiness and obscurity; keep your mind crystal clear. Allow your pure original insight to emerge. Quiet your emotions and abide in serenity. Don't go crazy with the worship of idols, images, and ideas; this is like putting a new head on top of the head you already have. Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
433:The Marikana tragedy calls to mind earlier instances of violence. At Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 1, 1886, and then at Fourmies, in northern France, on May 1, 1891, police fired on workers striking for higher wages. Does this kind of violent clash between labor and capital belong to the past, or will it be an integral part of twenty-first-century history? ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
434:My house has one integral living space and I am sitting on the couch facing the TV, while she is perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my laptop open in front of her. We have adopted these same positions so many times over the years, it’s like we have worn a groove in time. I imagine us suspended here for ever, like tiny figures in a doll’s house. ~ Tammy Cohen, #NFDB
435:Self esteem,' said Levin, cut to the quick by his brother's words, 'is something I do not understand. If I had been told at the university that others understood integral calculus and I did not — there you have self esteem. But here one should first be convinced that one needs to have a certain ability in these matters and, chiefly, that they are all very important. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
436:It wasn't enough to just build a team culture. To have sustained success, we needed a winning organizational culture, and I knew that by working closely with the leadership group to define and set the culture, we would be able to have that. I needed the owner and leaders to buy in and be an integral part of the process. Their buy-in needed to be as deep as the players ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
437:Why do men cling to a religion?
Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#NFDB
438:We like to look for patterns and find connections in unrelated events. This way we can explain them to ourselves. Life seems neater, or at least less messy. We need to feel we are in control: it is integral to our self-esteem. We also know, though we deny it, that we are not in control. So we settle for the illusions of control. What if we stopped fooling ourselves? ~ Jessica Zafra, #NFDB
439:As integral as religion was to his sense of self, it was not until he reached West Point and combined his spiritual discipline with Blaik’s military discipline that his coaching persona began to take its mature form. Everything he knew about organizing a team and preparing it to play its best, Lombardi said later, he learned at West Point. “It all came from Red Blaik. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
440:tapasya :::
Tapasya: a discipline aiming at the realisation of the Divine.
Mental tapasya: the process leading to the goal.
Vital tapasya: the vital undergoes a rigorous discipline in order to transform itself.
Integral tapasya: the whole being lives only to know and serve the Divine.
Perfect tapasya: that which will reach its goal. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
441:In reality, there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its own inner spontaneity. Every being has its own voice. Every being declares itself to the entire universe. Every being enters into communion with other beings. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
442:The 10th Annual Webby Awards represent an extraordinary opportunity to celebrate the evolution of the web from an esoteric medium to the driving force shaping popular culture, business, and society today, .. As the web enters its second decade as an integral part of everyday life, our expanded categories recognize those who are pushing the web in exciting new directions. ~ Tiffany Shlain, #NFDB
443:Martin Malia: «El socialismo integral no es un ataque contra abusos específicos del capitalismo, sino contra la realidad. Es una tentativa de abolir el mundo real, un intento condenado a largo plazo, pero que durante un determinado período consigue crear un mundo surrealista definido por esta paradoja: la ineficacia, la penuria y la violencia se presentan como el bien supremo.» ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
444:The chief difficulty of modern theoretical physics resides not in the fact that it expresses itself almost exclusively in mathematical symbols, but in the psychological difficulty of supposing that complete nonsense can be seriously promulgated and transmitted by persons who have sufficient intelligence of some kind to perform operations in differential and integral calculus. ~ Celia Green, #NFDB
445:It is a meaningful thing for a scientist of the stature of Ibn Sina, certainly one of the best scientific minds in the whole history of mankind, to often resort to prayer to seek God's help in solving his philosophical and scientific problems. And it is also perfectly understandable why the purification of the soul is considered an integral part of the methodology of knowledge. ~ Osman Bakar, #NFDB
446:Perhaps the best place to begin with an integral approach to business is with.. oneself. In the Big Three of self, culture, and world, integral mastery starts with self. How do body and mind and spirit operate in me? How does that necessarily impact my role in the world of business? And how can I become more conscious of these already operating realities in myself and in others? ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
447:Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
448:Some of those under your supervision will catch on quickly, others not. Understanding that patience is an integral part of good teaching and effective leadership allowed me to accept the varying speeds at which people learn and to accommodate, within reason, those differences. Patience became an asset for me rather than a liability. I came to understand that good things take time. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
449:There are some monuments where the land is so widespread, they just encompass as much as possible. And the integral part of the - the precious part, so to speak - I guess all land is precious, but the part that the people uniformly would not want to spoil, will not be despoiled. But there are parts of the monument lands where we can explore without affecting the overall environment. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
450:Every single day, someone asks Mr. Stetman why we have to learn algebra. You can tell this causes him great personal pain. Mr. Stetman loves algebra. He is poetic about it, in an integral-number sort of way. He talks about algebra the way some guys talk about their cars. Ask him why algebra and he launches into a thousand and one stories why algebra. None of them makes sense. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
451:Atâta vreme cât mă aflu în fața computerului și scriu, am impresia ca viața mea îmi aparține integral. Nu o împart decât cu ecranul devenit un fel de oglindă abisală a ființei mele și cu tastatura pe care îmi alunecă degetele. De când am învățat să scriu după metoda oarbă, adică fără să mă uit la taste, existența mea a devenit un fel de pâlnie: mă scurg direct din creierul meu pe ecran. ~ Matei Vi niec, #NFDB
452:I remember the feeling even now; an inescapable stickines of each other like magnets on the fridge. It's funny how someone can be such an integral part of your life, like you laugh at the same jokes and eat your ice cream cones the same way and share your toys and dreams and everything but your heartbeats, and then one day - nothing. You share nothing. It's like none of it ever happened. ~ Sarah Ockler, #NFDB
453:It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man? ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
454:The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen and the highest knowledge in which the One Purusha is known (so'ham asmi) is described as the kalyan.atama form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, Integral Yoga and Other Paths -IV,#NFDB
455:When he looked at me with his clear kind, candid eye, he looked at me out of a tradition thirteen thousand years old: a way of thought and way of life so old, so well established, so integral and coherent as to give a human being the unselfconsciousness, the authority, the completeness of a wild animal, a great strange creature who looks straight at you out of his eternal present.... ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
456:After all, it is quite normal for us to owe a debt of gratitude to our parents and grandparents (or the people standing in for them), even if the treatment we experienced at their hands was sheer unadulterated torture. This is an integral part of morality, as we understand it. But it is a species of morality that consigns our genuine feelings and our own personal truth to an unmarked grave. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
457:I don’t think we can forget, Catherine, nor should we. Experiences and memories—both good and bad—are an integral part of who we are. If we try to forget them, we’re trying to forget a part of ourselves, and how is that a good thing? Perhaps the trick to moving forward isn’t forgetting. It’s learning to use those memories as a means of becoming stronger and better versions of ourselves. ~ Rachael Anderson, #NFDB
458:When he looked at me with his clear, kind, candid eyes, he looked at me out of a tradition thirteen thousand years old: a way of thought and and way of life so old, so well established, so integral and coherent as to give a human being the unselfconsciousness, the authority, the completeness of a wild animal, a great strange creature who looks straight at you out of his eternal present.... ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
459:The Swiss National Bank’s removal of the franc’s peg to the euro last week had far-reaching consequences because we were all taken by surprise. The fact that it would (and should) happen eventually was not lost on the market, but the SNB was as late as last week end talking tough and telling the market that the floor was an integral part of Swiss monetary policy – until it suddenly wasn’t any more. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
460:Water and air, rain and clouds, they too have been here for ever, but they are such an integral part that their ancientness is never apparent in our thoughts or emotions, contrary to lightning, which only occur now and then, during brief intervals which we are at once familiar with and foreign to, just as we are at once familiar with and foreign to ourselves and the world we are a part of. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
461:Human beings have a variety of intelligences, such as cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. Most people excel in one or two of those, but do poorly in the others. This is not necessarily or even usually a bad thing; part of Integral wisdom is finding where one excels and thus where one can best offer the world one's deepest gifts. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
462:Since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since giving up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon. It becomes abnormal or unhealthy only when something interferes with the giving-up process, with the result that the depression is prolonged and cannot be resolved by completion of the ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
463:ORIENTACIÓN AL MARKETING INTEGRAL. La última de estas orientaciones es la que entiende la actividad de marketing de las empresas de una manera integral, aplicándose sus prácticas a todos los niveles de interacción con todos los actores con que se relaciona: proveedores, intermediarios, clientes, competidores, entidades financieras, poderes públicos, medios de comunicación, personal, accionistas, etc. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
464:By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
465:Desire acts as a honey trap to the unwary male, luring him into unworthy and catastrophic enterprises. The beauty of the Narnian witches isn't ancillary to their evil, but integral to it, one of the weapons in their arsenal. Evil must, after all, appear attractive if it's going to be tempting, and from there it's only a small step further to the conclusion that feminine beauty is inherently wicked. ~ Laura Miller, #NFDB
466:The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it-that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
467:Transparente ajung să fie acțiunile când devin operaționale, când se subordonează procesului calculabil, direcționabil și controlabil. Transparente devin imaginile atunci când devin pornografice, eliberate de orice dramaturgie, coregrafie și scenografie, de orice profunzime hermeneutică, de sens. Transparente devin lucrurile atunci când își leapădă singularitatea și se exprimă integral prin preț. ~ Byung Chul Han, #NFDB
468:It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
469:Christopher Bache has been a professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University for thirty years and more recently adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He was director of transformative learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His teaching focuses on Eastern religions, psychology of religion, and transpersonal psychology. Bache is the author of three books. ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
470:The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. ~ Vladimir Lenin, #NFDB
471:It is impossible – now, at this point in the long journey of human culture – to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful… ~ Howard Barker, #NFDB
472:The first thing is time, and the fact that we live in it. Our existence and experience are dependent on the passing of time, and on change. No, not dependent — dependent is too weak a word. Time and change are integral to who we are, the foundation of our consciousness, and its warp and weft as well. I can’t imagine what it would mean to be conscious without passing through time and being aware of it. ~ Greta Christina, #NFDB
473: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609 [yoga is:],#NFDB
474:There is nothing like Integral Dreaming in the literature. This is an ambitious undertaking and its readers will gain an in-depth understanding of dreams and dreaming that they will find nowhere else. The ‘five movements’ of Integral Dream Practice will encourage many readers to follow the steps outlined, and integrate dreamwork into their own lives. This book will be an instant classic in the field. ~ Stanley Krippner, #NFDB
475:The southern leaders perceived the transcontinental as the means of extending their plantation economy westward, replicating the same kind of small-town America characteristic of the antebellum South and, crucially, retaining the slave labor that was integral to their way of life: “The South saw land in a traditional light, as home and heritage, not as a natural resource to benefit capital and state. ~ Christian Wolmar, #NFDB
476:It is impossible - now, at this point in the long journey of human culture - to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful... ~ Howard Barker, #NFDB
477:Loneliness is the inability to share your story, your Unique Self story. For most people, the move beyond loneliness requires us to share our story with a significant other. For the spiritual elite, the receiving of our own story - and the knowing that it is an integral part of the larger story of All-That-Is - is enough. But for most human beings, loneliness is transcended through contact with another person. ~ Marc Gafni, #NFDB
478:Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
479:It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, #NFDB
480:Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It’s not oversharing, it’s not purging, it’s not indiscriminate disclosure, and it’s not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process. We can’t ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
481:Water and air, rain and clouds, they too have been here for ever, but they are such an integral part of life that their ancientness is never apparent in our thoughts or emotions, contrary to lightning and thunder, which only occur now and then, during brief intervals which we are at once familiar with and foreign to, just as we are at once familiar with and foreign to ourselves and the world we are a part of. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
482:My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays-integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit. ~ Andy Goldsworthy, #NFDB
483:In the light of all this biblical testimony it seems to me clear that the “baptism” of the Spirit is the same as the promise or gift of the Spirit and is as much an integral part of the gospel of salvation as is the remission of sins. Certainly we must never conceive “salvation” in purely negative terms, as if it consisted only of our rescue from sin, guilt, wrath and death. We thank God that it is all these things. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
484:Es fundamental buscar soluciones integrales que consideren las interacciones de los sistemas naturales entre sí y con los sistemas sociales. No hay dos crisis separadas, una ambiental y otra social, sino una sola y compleja crisis socio-ambiental. Las líneas para la solución requieren una aproximación integral para combatir la pobreza, para devolver la dignidad a los excluidos y simultáneamente para cuidar la naturaleza. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
485:I hate to tell you, dragon, but that's an integral part of the whole usiness," he whispered. "If you're afraid to touch me then we're not going to get very far."
She lifted her head to look at him. "I thought I could lie back and let you ravish me," she said with complete honesty.
He shook his head, the smile hovering around his lips, his eyes intent. "This is a cooperative effort, my love. You have to do your part. ~ Anne Stuart,#NFDB
486:The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum-total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
487:Courtesy has nothing to do with the matter, High Lord Ben Holiday. Playing games is a way of life with cats. We tease, we taunt, and we do exactly as we please, not as others would have us do. Playing games is an integral part of our personae. Those who wish to have any sort of relationship with us must expect as much. They must understand that participation in our games is necessary if they wish communication on any level. ~ Terry Brooks, #NFDB
488:I would hope that wherever I was I would be me. I have been influenced by some wonderful people who showed me that there is an integral relationship between faith and life at home. Evil is evil, repression is repression anywhere. And if it is not consistent with what one believes is God's will, then I would hope that one would be able to witness it, and there are wonderful people who do so in very great risks to themselves. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
489:...to do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections and we say that the perfections are 1.Sincerity or Transparency 2.Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine) 3.Devotion or Gratitude 4.Courage or Inspiration 5.Endurance or Perseverance
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,#NFDB
490:The people who consumed the most lutein, a specific type of antioxidant, had one-half the rate of cataracts as the people who consumed the least lutein. Lutein is an interesting chemical because, in addition to being readily available in spinach, along with other dark leafy green vegetables, it also is an integral part of the lens tissue itself. 49,50 Similarly, those who consumed the most spinach had 40% fewer cataracts. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
491:for the most part, I rarely look at the journals I have kept for the greater part of a lifetime. The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing. My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
492:When life has lost its meaning, a pilgrim will risk everything to get back in touch with life. This is why relics, such as a tooth of the Buddha, the dried blood of Christ, or a Shakespeare folio, are objects that must be touched as an integral part of the pilgrimage. This is what the risk is for, the confirmation that the mystery exists at all in a modern world seemingly determined to undermine the sacred as mere superstition. ~ Phil Cousineau, #NFDB
493:Concern for the fate of the great rivers of the earth must lead us to reflect soberly on the model of development which our society is pursuing. A purely economic and technological understanding of progress, to the extent that it fails to acknowledge its intrinsic limitations and to take into consideration the integral good of humanity, will inevitably provoke negative consequences for individuals, peoples and creation itself. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
494:Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
495:Even though we are the most privileged and richest human beings there have been so far, in terms of the stability and length of our lives and the cultural resources available to us, we’re not as happy as we should be. I’d like to see politics more oriented toward the question of happiness; certainly I’d like to see religion more concerned with making integral, happy people and raising the quality of personal life in our culture. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
496:Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else revolves. This mystic whirling lends unity to his thoughts and actions; it helps him find or invent the cosmic harmony. For some this center is love, for others kindness or beauty, others the thirst for knowledge or the longing for gold and power. They examine the relative value of all else and subordinate it to this central passion. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
497:Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
498:The ultimate answer may perhaps be found again in a complementarity: as we elevate pluralism to our creative principle, we embed the totality of human history meaningfully into the dynamics of an overall evolution which acts as an unfolding unity. As we realize ourselves as wholes, we become an integral aspect of a universal whole. As we live to the fullest extent, we overcome cosmic cold and loneliness. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
499:So long as there are employers who attack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the right but also the duty of their employees - who are, after all, an integral part of our people - to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the individual. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
500:This brings up yet another, far more important misconception: that being comically generative and having a sense of humor are one and the same thing. The former is among the least important things in the world, while the latter is among the most. One is a handy social tool, the other an integral component of human survival. It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does. ~ David Rakoff, #NFDB
501:People in great need were quick to find blame in themselves, quick to assume the burden of guilt for things they in truth had no control over and could not hope to change. It was, she had begun to understand, integral to the very nature of belief, of faith. A need that could not be answered by the self was then given over to someone or something greater than oneself, and this form of surrender was a lifting of a vast, terrible weight. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
502:I cannot see why it is necessary that every deduction from algebra should be bound to certain conventions incident to an earlier stage of mathematical learning, even supposing them to have been consistently used up to the point in question. I should not care if any one thought this treatise unalgebraical, but should only ask whether the premises were admissible and the conclusions logical. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
503:I knew that I was writing for an American audience and that if I sold foreign rights, they would retranslate the book to make it make sense to that language. But one thing that was really important to me was not to italicize any of the words in the languages that were in the stories, because I feel like those foreign words felt just as important and integral to the story as everything else, so I wanted it all to just exist as its own thing. ~ Molly Antopol, #NFDB
504:The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil. ~ Brian Aldiss, #NFDB
505:What does it take to build something so that it’s really easy to make comfortable little modifications in a way that once you’ve made them, they feel integral with the nature and structure of what is already there? You want to be able to mess around with it and progressively change it to bring it into an adapted state with yourself, your family, the climate, whatever. This kind of adaptation is a continuous process of gradually taking care. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
506:The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil. ~ Brian W Aldiss, #NFDB
507:I want studios that make story-based games to start taking their stories more seriously. And that doesn't mean hiring a big shot writer from Hollywood; it means that story becomes integral to making your game. I don't see how you can achieve that without having an in-house writer that sits next to the designer, helping them make their levels, talking with the engineers about where we can tell the story more dynamically, pushing at technology. ~ Neil Druckmann, #NFDB
508:The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
509:There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
510:In self-transcendence we reach not only beyond our own limits as individuals, but also beyond the limits of mankind. The fascination held by the evolution of mankind pales in comparison with the fascination held by a universal evolution whose integral aspect we are. In such an attitude, we would not only further the conditions for our own life, but also the conditions of all life which we are capable of influencing. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
511:Our bodies are installation art that we curate publicly. Our bodies are the first message those around us receive. Our bodies are our physical bookmarks that hold space for us in the world. Our bodies are magnificent houses for everything else that we are. Our bodies are a part of us, just as our kindness, talents, and passion are a part of us. Yes, we are so much more than our outer shells, but our outer shells are an integral part of our being, too. ~ Jes Baker, #NFDB
512:NLP subliminals have long since been used in advertising and marketing, and yet people are still ignorant about it because the government keeps the information suppressed since it is an integral part of their arsenal for marketing their own agenda to a socially engineered population. Attorneys who are aware of it use it to manipulate the minds of the jury, and even the mind of the judge if he doesn’t have the knowledge to defend himself against it. ~ Cathy O Brien, #NFDB
513:..[The] disclosure of the incest secret initiates a profound crisis for the family usually...the abuse has been going on for a number of years and has become an integral part of family life. Disclosure disrupts whatever fragile equilibrium has been maintained, jeopardizes the functioning of all family members, increases the likelihood of violent and desperate behavior, and places everyone, but particularly the daughter, at risk for retaliation. ~ Judith Lewis Herman, #NFDB
514:When writing my Leg book, I drew heavily on the detailed journals I had kept as a patient in 1974. Oaxaca Journal, too, relied heavily on my handwritten notebooks. But for the most part, I rarely look at the journals I have kept for the greater part of a lifetime. The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
515:Nuestro viaje a través de los Pasos puede ser el trabajo más difícil que hayamos emprendido, pero las recompensas y la curación que recibimos no tienen medida. Con el tiempo, los Pasos se vuelven parte integral de nuestra vida diaria al practicar estos principios en todas las áreas de nuestra vida. A continuación hacemos la lista de los Doce Pasos que son el programa recomendado de Co-Dependientes Anónimos para la recuperación personal de la codependencia ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
516:The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
517:C. J. Martes, healer and author, has helped clients in more than forty countries for nearly twenty years. In 2004 she developed Akashic Field Therapy (AFT), an integral method of quantum healing that helps individuals identify and then remove subconscious negative patterns and beliefs at the mental, physical, and spiritual level. Her work blends A-field (Akashic Field) Theory, Behavioral and Integral Psychology, Vibrational Medicine, and Western science. ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
518:fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral presence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine Force of an integral Being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of Falsehood and Evil [623],#NFDB
519:Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief. ~ Romain Rolland, #NFDB
520:Working an integral or performing a linear regression is something a computer can do quite effectively. Understanding whether the result makes sense—or deciding whether the method is the right one to use in the first place—requires a guiding human hand. When we teach mathematics we are supposed to be explaining how to be that guide. A math course that fails to do so is essentially training the student to be a very slow, buggy version of Microsoft Excel. ~ Jordan Ellenberg, #NFDB
521:They consider people who don't know Hamlet from Macbeth to be Philistines, yet they might merrily admit that they don't know the difference between a gene and a chromosome, or a transistor and a capacitor, or an integral and differential equation. These concepts might seem difficult. Yes, but so, too, is Hamlet. And like Hamlet, each of these concepts is beautiful. Like an elegant mathematical equation, they are expressions of the glories of the universe. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
522:Ultimately, love is only possible for humans insofar as they can achieve some comprehension of their place and their duties and their values and their significance within the whole of life, of society, of spirituality, of history, of nature. In all merely partial or fragmentary perspectives, there necessarily remain undigested irrational factors, surds that one is merely tolerating and not truly respecting as essential and integral to the whole of what we are. ~ Kenny Smith, #NFDB
523:All knowledge is ultimately the knowledge of God, through himself, through Nature, through her works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge,#NFDB
524:the case of Askone twenty years ago. First they were sold some of your goods and then your people asked for complete freedom of missionary effort in order that the goods might be run properly; that Temples of Health be set up. There was then the establishment of religious schools; autonomous rights for all officers of the religion and with what result? Askone is now an integral member of the Foundation’s system and the Grand Master cannot call his underwear his own. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
525:By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
526:The means of realisation is to be found in an integral Yoga, a union in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire conseceration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of the divine work.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
527:The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
528:I find nothing in the Gospel of Thomas that contradicts any of Jesus’s teachings in the canonical gospels. Rather, it rounds them out metaphysically and creates a newfound sense of awe as we see just how original and subtle his understanding really is. He is the first truly integral teacher to appear on this planet. As we take a fresh look at these teachings at once familiar and strange, we’re catapulted forward again along a path that rings with the power of truth. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, #NFDB
529:Paul thanked God for the Corinthian believers. During the Thanksgiving holiday, we focus on our blessings and express our gratitude to God for them. But thanks should be expressed every day. We can never say thank you enough to parents, friends, leaders, and especially to God. When thanksgiving becomes an integral part of your life, you will find that your attitude toward life will change. You will become more positive, gracious, loving, and humble. Whom do you need to thank today? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
530:The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general... The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
531:Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati and Alicia DeSantola noted in “Start-Ups That Last,” this approach doesn’t scale: “Improvisation is integral to young ventures; it’s how they make discoveries. However, as firms grow they need a framework of plans and goals to guide them. That way they can keep trying new things and reacting to dynamic markets, but with an eye toward larger objectives and sustaining the business. Otherwise improvisation essentially amounts to aimless riffing. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
532:It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind. ~ King Hussein I, #NFDB
533:A human life has seasons much as the earth has seasons, each time with its own particular beauty and power. And gift. By focusing on springtime and summer, we have turned the natural process of life into a process of loss rather than a process of celebration and appreciation. Life is neither linear nor stagnant. It is movement from mystery to mystery. Just as a year includes autumn and winter, life includes death, not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen, #NFDB
534:Men were drawn to civilization; only the most severe ascetic among them relished isolation. Penitent hermits craved seclusion. Being away from the squalor of humanity was an integral part of their spiritual monasticism. They could talk more readily to God in the silence of their mountaintop cave or their desert isolation. It was easier to believe that the voice you heard responding to your queries issued from a divine trumpet if there were no other souls nearby. But he was a soldier. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
535:And Thou, O Lord, who art all this made one and much more, O sovereign Master, extreme limit of our thought, who standest for us at the threshold of the Unknown, make rise from that Unthinkable some new splendour, some possibility of a loftier and more integral realisation, that Thy work may be accomplished and the universe take one step farther towards the sublime Identity, the supreme Manifestation.
And now my pen falls mute and I adore Thee in silence.*
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 270,#NFDB
536:Thus, the very high developmental stance of pluralism—the product of at least six major stages of transformation—turns around and denies the very path that produced its own noble stance. It extends an egalitarian embrace to every stance, no matter how shallow or narcissistic. Thus, the more egalitarianism is implemented, the more it invites, indeed encourages, the Culture of Narcissism. And the Culture of Narcissism is the antithesis of the integral culture, the opposite of a world at peace. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
537:I... subjoin references to those parts of the work for which I have not been indebted to my knowledge of what has been written before me: much of what is cited is probably not new, indeed it is dangerous for any one at the present day to claim anything as belonging to himself; several things which I once thought to have entered in this list have been since found (either by myself, or by a friend to whom I referred it) in preceding writers. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
538:In accordance with that definite property of the ‘common integral vibration,’ or the ‘white ray,’ during the process of its transformations about which I have just spoken and which was already familiar to the learned Babylonian painters, each of its ‘center-of-gravity vibrations’ or one of the separate colors of the ‘white ray’ always ensues from another and is transformed into a third, for example, the color orange is obtained from red, and in turn passes into yellow, and so on and so forth. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
539:Professor Goldziher also shows, in his "Mythology Among the Hebrews," [99:5] that the story of the creation was borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babylonians. He also informs us that the notion of the bôrê and yôsêr, "Creator" (the term used in the cosmogony in Genesis) as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into use by the prophets of the captivity. "Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon. ~ Thomas William Doane, #NFDB
540:A civilization is integral and healthy to the extent [that] it is founded on the "invisible" or "underlying" religion, the religio perennis, that is, to the extent [that] its expressions or forms are transparent to the Non-Formal and tend toward the Origin, thus conveying the recollection of a lost Paradise, but also - and with all the more reason - the presentiment of a timeless Beatitude. For the Origin is at once within us and before us; time is but a spiral movement around a motionless Center. ~ Frithjof Schuon, #NFDB
541:...Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know. And even the survivors who have decided to bear witness confirm it in their way: They almost all say that their experience can't be related in words, and yet, as witnesses, they're morally compelled to resort to them. Their silence, except if it is ontologically integral to their disposition, would not help truth triumph. It would only open the road to oblivion and, as one survivor put it, enable the executioner to kill his victims a second time. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
542:And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 67,#NFDB
543:..I sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
544:Perhaps the single most powerful event facing humanity today is a great awakening on a planetary scale that has been millennia in the making. We humans are in the midst of a profound advance as a species to a higher form of global consciousness that has been emerging across cultures, religions and worldviews through the centuries. This awakening of global consciousness is nothing less than a shift, a maturation, from more egocentric patterns of life to a higher form of integral and dialogic patterns of life. ~ Ashok Gangadean, #NFDB
545:The intellectual climate has become increasingly unfavorable to the study of the relations between religion and culture in the modern world and the modern university. For theology has long since lost its position as a dominant faculty in the university and as an integral part of the general educational curriculum. It continues to exist on sufferance only as a specialized ecclesiastical study designed for the clergy. Consequently the student in a modern university may be totally ignorant of religion. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
546:In a 2006 article in Management Science, Alan MacCormack and Carliss Baldwin document an example of a product that successfully evolved from an integral to a modular architecture.21 When the software was put into the public domain as open source, the commercial firm that owned the copyright invested significant resources to make the transition. This was critical because the software could not have been maintained by distributed teams of volunteer developers if it had not been broken into smaller subsystems. ~ Geoffrey G Parker, #NFDB
547:Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Nellie McKay, #NFDB
548:The question is wholly other, deeper and equally relevant to all: whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human "I." ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
549:We should remember that the Declaration of Independence is not merely a historical document. It is an explicit recognition that our rights derive not from the King of England, not from the judiciary, not from government at all, but from God. The keystone of our system of popular sovereignty is the recognition, as the Declaration acknowledges, that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' Religion and God are no alien to our system of government, they're integral to it. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
550:We should remember that the Declaration of Independence is not merely a historical document. It is an explicit recognition that our rights derive not from the King of England, not from the judiciary, not from government at all, but from God. The keystone of our system of popular sovereignty is the recognition, as the Declaration acknowledges, that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' Religion and God are no alien to our system of government, they're integral to it. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
551:Our main source of psychic energy in the future will depend on our ability to understand this symbol of evolution in an acceptable context of interpretation. Only in the context of an emergent universe will the human project come to an integral understanding of itself. We must, however, come to experience the universe in its psychic as well as in its physical aspect. We need to experience the sequence of evolutionary transformations as moments of grace, and also as celebration moments in our new experience of the sacred. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
552:Mientras el carácter escaso es inherente a los recursos, una escasez no lo es. La carencia de los recursos simplemente significa que no hay suficiente para satisfacer completamente los deseos de todos. Sólo en el Edén había lo suficiente. Una escasez, sin embargo, significa que hay personas dispuestas a pagar el precio actual del producto pero que no lo pueden encontrar. El precio es parte integral de una escasez, aunque las personas crean erróneamente que, durante una escasez, hay menos disponibilidad física de recursos. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
553:That which stirs within, slows or quickens, goes deep or dies out. When I speak of spirit, I am not speaking of something related to or given by a force outside ourselves. I am speaking of the force that is ourselves. The experience of living in this world, bound by a body, space, and time, woven into the fabric of human history, human connection and human life. This is the force that feels, and thinks and gives us consciousness at all. It is the deepest, most elemental, most integral part of who we are; it is who we are. ~ Marya Hornbacher, #NFDB
554:Yet would the ideal working of an integral Yoga be a movement, even from the beginning, integral in its process and whole and many-sided in its progress. In any case our present preoccupation is with a Yoga, integral in its aim and complete movement, but starting from works and proceeding by works althrough at each step more and more moved by a vivifying divine love and more and more illumined by a helping divine knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga Of Divine Works, Self-Surrender In Works - The Way Of The Gita, 93,#NFDB
555:My mother was a continual source of wisdom and great advice...she taught me that there is always a way around a problem-you've just got to find it. Keep trying doors; one will eventually open. She also taught me to accept failure as part and parcel of life. It's not the opposite of success; it's an integral part of success. I talk a lot about learning to become fearless in your approach to life. But fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's all about getting up one more time than you fall down. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
556:The main reason we don’t know as much about the modern human story in Africa is lack of research. Human history over the last tens of thousands of years in Africa is an integral part of the story of our species. Focusing on Africa as the place where our species originated, while it might seem to highlight the importance of Africa, paradoxically does Africa a disservice by drawing attention away from the question of how populations that remained in Africa got to be the way they are today. With ancient and modern DNA, we can rectify ~ David Reich, #NFDB
557:At present, when people become aware of this [common metaphorical] imagery, they tend to think of it as merely a surface dressing of isolated metaphors - as a kind of optional decorative paint that is sometimes added to ideas after they are formed, so as to make them clear to outsiders. But really such symbolism is an integral part of our thought-structure. It does crucial work on all topics, not just in a few supposedly marginal areas such as religion and emotion, where symbols are known to be at home, but throughout our thinking. ~ Mary Midgley, #NFDB
558:Today, these same public-sector unions have themselves become part of an elite that uses the political system to protect its own self-interests. As we will see in Part IV, the quality of American public administration has declined markedly since the 1970s, in no small measure because of these unions’ ability to limit merit as a basis for hiring and promotion. They are an integral part of the contemporary Democratic Party’s political base, making most Democratic politicians loath to challenge them. The result is political decay. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
559:I have throughout introduced the Integral Calculus in connexion with the Differential Calculus. ...Is it always proper to learn every branch of a direct subject before anything connected with the inverse relation is considered? If so why are not multiplication and involution in arithmetic made to follow addition and precede subtraction? The portion of the Integral Calculus, which properly belongs to any given portion of the Differential Calculus increases its power a hundred-fold... ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
560:My mother was a continual source of wisdom and great advice...she taught me that there is always a way around a problem-you've just got to find it. Keep trying doors; one will eventually open. She also taught me to accept failure as part and parcel of life. It's not the opposite of success; it's an integral part of success.
I talk a lot about learning to become fearless in your approach to life. But fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's all about getting up one more time than you fall down. ~ Arianna Huffington,#NFDB
561:The complete use of pure reason brings us finally from physical to metaphysical knowledge. But the concepts of metaphysical knowledge do not in themselves fully satisfy the demand of our integral being. They are indeed entirely satisfactory to the pure reason itself, because they are the very stuff of its own existence. But our nature sees things through two eyes always, for it views them doubly as idea and as fact and therefore every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
562:The effects of heat are subject to constant laws which cannot be discovered without the aid of mathematical analysis. The object of the theory is to demonstrate these laws; it reduces all physical researches on the propagation of heat, to problems of the integral calculus, whose elements are given by experiment. No subject has more extensive relations with the progress of industry and the natural sciences; for the action of heat is always present, it influences the processes of the arts, and occurs in all the phenomena of the universe. ~ Joseph Fourier, #NFDB
563:No ignoro que, en el campo de la política y del pensamiento, algunos rechazan con fuerza la idea de un Creador, o la consideran irrelevante, hasta el punto de relegar al ámbito de lo irracional la riqueza que las religiones pueden ofrecer para una ecología integral y para un desarrollo pleno de la humanidad. Otras veces se supone que constituyen una subcultura que simplemente debe ser tolerada. Sin embargo, la ciencia y la religión, que aportan diferentes aproximaciones a la realidad, pueden entrar en un diálogo intenso y productivo para ambas. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
564:We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. … Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels - can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
565:I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus ... The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning to make, serves to clarify them mutually, and what they have in common contains very often their true metaphysics; this is why that metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers. The spirit arrives at the results as if by instinct; it is only on reflecting upon the route that it and others have followed that it succeeds in generalising the methods and in discovering its metaphysics. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace, #NFDB
566:The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T4],#NFDB
567:The aim of a complete course of development is to divest the basic structures of any sense of exclusive self, and thus free the basic needs from their contamination by the needs of the separate self sense. When the basic structures are freed from the immortality projects of the separate self, they are free to return to their natural functional relationships .... when hungry, we eat; when tired, we sleep. The self has been returned to the Self, all self-needs have been met and discarded; and the basic needs alone remain. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 253, #NFDB
568:The complete use of pure reason brings us finally from physical to metaphysical knowledge. But the concepts of metaphysical knowledge do not in themselves fully satisfy the demand of our integral being. They are indeed entirely satisfactory to the pure reason itself, because they are the very stuff of its own existence. But our nature sees things through two eyes always, for it views them doubly as idea and as fact and therefore every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience. ~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, #NFDB
569:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,#NFDB
570:We', human beings,[...] are nodes in a network of exchanges [...] through which we pass images, tools, information, and knowledge.
But we are also an integral part of the world that we perceive; we are not external observers. We are situated within it. Our view of it is from within its midst. We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.
As our knowledge has grown, we have learned that our being is only a part of the universe, and a small part at that. ~ Carlo Rovelli,#NFDB
571:As much as I've been blessed to do, this is for me when I want to do what I really want to do as far as helping people. Obviously helping people with disabilities, I want - my desire is to in my lifetime be a very integral part of getting this country and the world completely accessible to everyone with any disability. There should be nowhere that we can't go, and there should be nothing that we can't do. Considering that we have the disability, whichever one it might be, we will be so on point with being able to do that we need little to no assistance. ~ Stevie Wonder, #NFDB
572:Freud, Jung thought, had been a great discoverer of facts about the mind, but far too inclined to leave the solid ground of "critical reason and common sense." Freud for his part criticized Jung for being gullible about occult phenomena and infatuated with Oriental religions; he viewed with sardonic and unmitigated skepticism Jung's defense of religious feelings as an integral element in mental health. For Freud, religion was a psychological need projected onto culture, the child's feeling of helplessness surviving in adults, to be analyzed rather than admired. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
573:When one is in a morbid state of health, one's dreams are often characterized by an unusual vividness and brilliance, and also by an extremely lifelike quality. Sometimes the scene that is conjured up is a monstrous one, yet the setting and the entire process of its representation are so lifelike and executed with details that are so subtle, astonishing, yet correspond in an artistic sense to the integral nature of the whole, that the dreamer himself could never invent them while awake, not even if he were an artist of the order of Pushkin or Turgenev. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
574:...the capacity to identify with others is definitely not gained all at once or from the start. The mind has to increase its capacity for inclusiveness through a slow and arduous growth process, and thus this capacity gets a little bigger (moving from egocentric to ethnocentric—from "me" to "us"), then a little bigger (from ethnocentric to worldcentric—from "us" to "all of us"), and a little bigger still (from worldcentric to integral, which starts to include even other species, resulting eventually in a "cosmic consciousness"—from "all of us" to "all of reality). ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
575:The collection of all real or complex numbers that are integral linear combinations of 1 and τd is closed under addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and is therefore a ring, which we denote by Rd. That is, Rd is the set of all numbers of the form a + bτd where a and b are ordinary integers. These rings Rd are our first, basic, examples of rings of algebraic integers beyond that prototype, , and they are the most important rings that are receptacles for quadratic irrationalities. Every quadratic irrational algebraic integer is contained in exactly one Rd. ~ Timothy Gowers, #NFDB
576:we are faced with critical choices and endowed with the responsibility of preserving life wherever it is found: we can act in ways that are life-affirming or not. If you want to make noise that drowns out meaningful vocalizations integral to the healthy functioning of ecosystems, that does not affirm life. When we drive down the street with a straightpipe motorcycle, all we’re confirming is the shallowness of our own existence. Mostly we make noise to show our presence, to give us the illusion of dominance, to say that we’re here, that we’re at the top of the heap. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
577:Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. An then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct - precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives. ~ Arkady Strugatsky, #NFDB
578:All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
579:During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima. ~ Max Born, #NFDB
580:We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being.*2 We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
581:But since it is from the Ignorance that we proceed to the Knowledge, we have had first to discover the secret nature and full extent of the Ignorance. If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many-sided self-ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution,#NFDB
582:Paradise or no paradise, I have the very definite impression that the people of this vicinity are striving to live up to the grandeur and nobility which is such an integral part of the setting. They behave as if it were a privilege to live here, as if it were by an act of grace they found themselves here. The place itself is so overwhelmingly bigger, greater, than anyone could hope to make it that it engenders a humility and reverence not frequently met with in Americans. There is nothing to improve on in the surroundings, the tendency is to set about improving oneself. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
583:We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being.*2 We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
584:enactment ::: no experience is innocent and pregiven, rather it is brought forth or enacted in part by the activity of the subject doing the experiencing thus one activity, paradigm or injunction will bring forth a particular set of experiences. experiences that are not themselves .... but rather are co-created and co-enacted by the paradigm or activity itself and accordingly one paradigm does not give the correct view of the world and therefore as if it did to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other paradigms. ~ Advanced Integral, L1, slide30 enactment, #NFDB
585:I was in a worse situation than a slave: at least a slave is not always shackled in chains, has some limited freedom, and doesn’t have to listen to some interrogator’s bullshit every day. I often compared myself with a slave. Slaves were taken forcibly from Africa, and so was I. Slaves were sold a couple of times on their way to their final destination, and so was I. Slaves suddenly were assigned to somebody they didn’t choose, and so was I. And when I looked at the history of slaves, I noticed that slaves sometimes ended up an integral part of the master’s house. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi, #NFDB
586:we’re using a simplified half dozen major stages: crimson archaic (the earliest transition stage from the great apes), magenta magic (or impulsive), red magic-mythic (or power), amber mythic (or ethnocentric traditional values), orange rational (or modern values), green pluralistic (or postmodern values), and turquoise integral (or the first truly synthesizing and integrating level). I have further simplified and summarized these as egocentric (archaic and magic), ethnocentric (mythic), worldcentric (orange modern and green postmodern), and kosmocentric (or truly integral). ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
587:If the independent, isolated nuclear family unit is, in fact, the structure into which human beings most naturally configure themselves, why do contemporary societies and religions find it necessary to prop it up with tax breaks and supportive legislation while fiercely defending it from same-sex couples and others proposing to marry in supposedly “nontraditional” ways? One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all—apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection? ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
588:Although one of the points of an Integral approach to any problem is to language that issue in a s large a number of levels as possible (Magic, Mythic, Rational, Pluralistic, Integral, and Super-Integral—and this includes the “conveyor belt” of spirituality), this doesn’t mean to cavalierly overlook Integral itself. The Integral level is a prerequisite for “Integral We” practices (although anybody can be invited to those practices; but realize that an “Integral” depth of the “We” will not be achieved in any group the majority of whose individuals are not themselves at Integral). ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
589:The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice -- all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
590:A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
591:way of the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. ... An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 78,#NFDB
592:I learned to teach grammar. And then I realized that we can't separate these two things. We have to do them together because they're integral. That's when I learned how important grammar is, that part of the understanding process is grammatical. That's how I taught myself to write prose. I keep learning and learning. I'd come into my class and say, "Guess what I found out last night. Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time." I learned that grammar was not arbitrary, that it served a purpose, that it helped to form the way we through, that it could be freeing as well as restrictive. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
593:The Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p. 114, #NFDB
594:Em diversas jurisdições, espanta a quantidade de passos requeridos para constituir uma nova empresa: licenças comerciais, registros de empregos, cobrança de impostos, treinamento obrigatório etc. Além do custo do cumprimento dessas normas, há o ônus psicológico de: 1) ter de aprender quais são todas elas; e 2) se preocupar com a possibilidade de ter deixado escapar uma delas e ser responsabilizado por isso. Na maioria dos lugares, a ignorância sobre as leis não é uma defesa válida, mas as leis atuais se tornaram tão abstratas e complexas que o pleno conhecimento delas é um trabalho de tempo integral ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
595:Am I more afraid
Of taking a chance and
learning I'm somebody
I don't know, or of risking
new territory,
only to find I'm the same
old me? There is comfort
in the tried and true.
Breaking ground
might uncover a sinkhole,
one impossible to climb out
of. And setting sail in
uncharted waters
might mean capsizing into
a sea monster's jaws.
Easier to turn my back on
these things
than to try tjem and fail.
And yet, a whisper insists
I need to know if they are or
aren't integral to me.
Status quo is a swamp.
And stagnation is slow death. ~ Ellen Hopkins,#NFDB
596:In the past, we got to know others because we had no option but to ask them for help – and were ourselves asked for help in turn. Charity was an integral part of premodern life. It was impossible to avoid moments when we would have to request money from a near-stranger or to hand it out to a vagabond beggar in a world without a health-care system, unemployment insurance, public housing or consumer banking. The approach on the street of a sick, frail, confused or homeless person did not immediately inspire passers-by to look away and assume that a government agency would take care of the problem. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
597:Apart from murder and rape, the most horrendous crimes punished by civilized authority stem back to the 'unpardonable sin'of kingship: disobedience to the sovereign. Murderous coercion was the royal formula for establishing authority, securing obedience, and collecting booty, tribute, and taxes. At bottom, every royal reign was a reign of terror. With the extension of kingship, this underlying terror formed an integral part of the new technology and the new economy of abundance. In short, the hidden face of that beautiful dream was a nightmare, which civilization has so far not been able to throw off. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
598:Experience has convinced me that the proper way of teaching is to bring together that which is simple from all quarters, and, if I may use such a phrase, to draw upon the surface of the subject a proper mean between the line of closest connexion and the line of easiest deduction. This was the method followed by Euclid, who, fortunately for us, never dreamed of a geometry of triangles, as distinguished from a geometry of circles, or a separate application of the arithmetics of addition and subtraction; but made one help out the other as he best could. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
599:truck…Black soliders returning from American’s wars abroad were tarred and feathered…Black soldiers returning from America’s wars in uniform were castrated and lynched…Brave Black soldiers had their medals of honor retracted and denied So Truman passed a law not for Black people…we have always been better than the country we served…but to tell the whites who thought it more important to be white than united…that Black people are an integral if not essential part of this nation…And we are to be accepted…and honored…for the historic good wishes and sacrifices we offered America…Not only fifty years ago ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
600:The importance of the bureaucratic link and the source of power-the divine king-and the actual human machines that performed the works of construction or destruction can hardly be exaggerated: all the more because it was the bureaucracy that collected the annual taxes and tributes that supported the new social pyramid and forcibly assembled the manpower that formed the new mechanical fabric. The bureaucracy was, in fact, the third type of 'invisible machine'-one might call it a communications-machine-co-existing with the military and labor machines, and an integral part of the final totalitarian structure. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
601:For the first time, she felt it: this was the freedom her brother had sought.
There was life in London. There was life in her. And desire. A flame leapt in her, defiant of the bounds in which she'd imprisoned it.
How could desire be wrong - the question seized her - if each living being contained it? Each creature was born with the unthinking need to draw each next breath, find each next meal. Mustn't desire then be integral - a set of essential guideposts on the map of life's purpose? And mightn't its very denial then be a desecration?
The thought were heretical, and they were her own. ~ Rachel Kadish,#NFDB
602:Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
603:Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot - we are introduced to the all-pervading Spiritual domain that the growing tip of our honored ancestors were the first to discover. And they were good enough to leave us a general map to that infinite domain, a map called the Great Nest of Being, a map of our own interiors, an archeology of our own Spirit. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 190, #NFDB
604:Every meaningful cultural act -- wherever it takes place -- is unquestionably good in and of itself, simply because it exists and because it offers something to someone. Yet can this value 'in itself' really be separated from 'the common good'? Is not one an integral part of the other from the start? Does not the bare fact that a work of art has meant something to someone -- even if only for a moment, perhaps to a single person -- already somehow change, however minutely, the overall condition for the better? ... Can we separate the awakening human soul from what it always, already is -- an awakening human community? ~ V clav Havel, #NFDB
605:much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being.*2 We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
606:much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being.*2 We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
607:It now seems clear that a capacity to learn would be an integral feature of the core design of a system intended to attain general intelligence, not something to be tacked on later as an extension or an afterthought. The same holds for the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty and probabilistic information. Some faculty for extracting useful concepts from sensory data and internal states, and for leveraging acquired concepts into flexible combinatorial representations for use in logical and intuitive reasoning, also likely belong among the core design features in a modern AI intended to attain general intelligence. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
608:Conceptual integrity does require that a system reflect a single philosophy and that the specification as seen by the user flow from a few minds. Because of the real division of labor into architecture, implementation, and realization, however, this does not imply that a system so designed will take longer to build. Experience shows the opposite, that the integral system goes together faster and takes less time to test. In effect, a widespread horizontal division of labor has been sharply reduced by a vertical division of labor, and the result is radically simplified communications and improved conceptual integrity. ~ Frederick P Brooks Jr, #NFDB
609:What do people think of when they talk about their lives? Do they really see them as an integral whole, as a chronological sequence of events; as something logical, purposeful, completed? What moments do they remember, and how do they remember them? As words? As a series of images and sounds? My life crumbles into a series of pictures, unconnected scenes which comes to mind only occassionally and at random. But there are key events, the acts of chance or fate, which later enable me to construct a logical whole of my life. One such moment was meeting Jose. The other was my decision to see our love through to the very end. ~ Slavenka Drakuli, #NFDB
610:In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
611:To prevent lower-income African Americans from living in neighborhoods where middle-class whites resided, local and federal officials began in the 1910s to promote zoning ordinances to reserve middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes that lower-income families of all races could not afford. Certainly, an important and perhaps primary motivation of zoning rules that kept apartment buildings out of single-family neighborhoods was a social class elitism that was not itself racially biased. But there was also enough open racial intent behind exclusionary zoning that it is integral to the story of de jure segregation. ~ Richard Rothstein, #NFDB
612:We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being. We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
613:We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being. We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
614:Our political system today does not engage the best minds in our country to help us get the answers and deploy the resources we need to move into the future. Bringing these people in—with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources—is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve the problems we face, before it’s too late. Our goal must be to find a new way of unleashing our collective intelligence in the same way that markets have unleashed our collective productivity. “We the people” must reclaim and revitalize the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
615:It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could have easily have been found already written in a book: but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed ; thus it will stay firmly and forever lodged in your mind. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
616:Google, for example, states, “[Our] affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.” Amazon has a similar policy, simply requiring that employees register the dog and be responsible for good canine citizenship (barking and peeing are no-no’s). Other large companies with dog-friendly policies include Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Clif Bar, the Humane Society headquarters, Build-A-Bear Workshop headquarters, and the software maker Autodesk. And, of course, many small businesses around the country. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
617:Liberalism, which Luxemburg called by its more appropriate name—“opportunism”—is an integral component of capitalism. When the citizens grow restive, it will soften and decry capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms are used to stymie resistance and then later, when things grow quiet, revoked. The last century of labor struggles in the United States is an example of Luxemburg’s observation. “Social reform,” Luxemburg wrote, “does not constitute an invasion into capitalist exploitation, but a regulating, an ordering of this exploitation in the interest of capitalist society itself.”85 ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
618:Reading, like other types of art appreciation, is intensely personal. So what appeals to people is going to depend on who they are. It depends on what is happening in their life at any given moment. On what has happened to them over the course of their personal history and what makes them feel any number of things. The value of art, when it comes to being appreciated by the beholder makes the person consuming it part of that process. Failing to appreciate that integral part of the process is done at your own peril.
[*Pulls Ranty Pants Up* In Which Lauren Dane Discusses Art, Publishing, Trash and Writing What you Want, Blog Post, May 16, 2013] ~ Lauren Dane,#NFDB
619:Fifty years and several other threats and aid suspensions later, Pakistan continues to nurture a sentimental opposition to aid, while seeking foreign assistance remains an integral part of the economic strategy pursued by successive governments, both military and civilian. There are reasons Pakistan’s economic managers have not given up on external aid despite rising remittances. Although remittances enhance the country’s foreign exchange reserves, they are spent by millions of individuals and do not enhance the government’s treasury. Only aid provides budget support in hard currency and can be used for buying military equipment that Pakistan constantly needs. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
620:For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded sidetracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation, 444, [T1], #index,#NFDB
621:The following Treatise... has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios... the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit... ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
622:In Webvan’s case premature scaling was an integral part of the company culture and the prevailing venture capital “get big fast” mantra. Webvan spent $18 million to develop proprietary software and $40 million to set up its first automated warehouse before it had shipped a single item. Premature scaling had dire consequences since Webvan’s spending was on a scale that ensures it will be taught in business school case studies for years to come. As customer behavior continued to differ from the predictions in Webvan’s business plan, the company slowly realized it had overbuilt and over-designed. The business model made sense only at the high volumes predicted on the spreadsheet. ~ Steve Blank, #NFDB
623:There is a mathematical underpinning that you must first acquire, mastery of each mathematical subdiscipline leading you to the threshold of the next. In turn you must learn arithmetic, Euclidian geometry, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, certain special functions of mathematical physics, matrix algebra, and group theory. For most physics students, this might occupy them from, say, third grade to early graduate school—roughly 15 years. Such a course of study does not actually involve learning any quantum mechanics, but merely establishing the mathematical framework required to approach it deeply. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
624:As with everything else in the gospels, the story of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and execution was written for one reason and one reason only: to prove that he was the promised messiah. Factual accuracy was irrelevant. What mattered was Christology, not history. The gospel writers obviously recognized how integral Jesus’s death was to the nascent community, but the story of that death needed elaborating. It needed to be slowed down and refocused. It required certain details and embellishments on the part of the evangelists. As a result, this final, most significant episode in the story of Jesus of Nazareth is also the one most clouded by theological enhancements and flat-out fabrications. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
625:This discourse of human rights, it's a very good format for TV--the great atrocity analysis and condemnation industry. Who comes out smelling sweet in the atrocity analysis? States have invested themselves with the right to legitimise violence--so who gets criminalised and delegitimised? The resistance. ... Human rights take the history out of justice. ... The idea of justice--even just dreaming of justice--is revolutionary. The language of human rights tends to accept a status quo that is intrinsically unjust--and then tries to make it more accountable. But then, of course, the catch-22 is that violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
626:All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
627:Psychologists often make a distinction between mistakes where we already know the right answer and mistakes where we don’t. A medication error, for example, is a mistake of the former kind: the nurse knew she should have administered Medicine A but inadvertently administered Medicine B, perhaps because of confusing labeling combined with pressure of time. But sometimes mistakes are consciously made as part of a process of discovery. Drug companies test lots of different combinations of chemicals to see which have efficacy and which don’t. Nobody knows in advance which will work and which won’t, but this is precisely why they test extensively, and fail often. It is integral to progress. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
628:El fracaso del amor romántico como solución a los problemas humanos forma parte integral de la frustración del hombre moderno… Ninguna relación humana puede sobrellevar la carga de la divinidad… Por mucho que la idealicemos e idolatremos [a la pareja amada], refleja inevitablemente la decadencia y la imperfección… Después de todo, ¿qué es lo que queremos cuando elevamos a nuestra pareja sentimental a este rango? Queremos librarnos de nuestros errores, de nuestra sensación de no ser nadie. Queremos ser justificados, saber que nuestra existencia no ha sido en vano. Queremos la redención, nada más y nada menos. Como no hace falta decir, las parejas humanas no nos pueden dar tales cosas. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
629:In all reality I never “leave home.” My backyard has just grown progressively bigger and more globular until now the whole world is my spherical backyard. “Where do you live?” and “What are you?” are progressively less sensible questions. “At present I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth,” and “I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category, a highbred specialization. I am not a thing—a noun. I am not flesh. At eighty-five, I have taken in over a thousand tons of air, food, and water, which temporarily became my flesh and which progressively dissassociated from me. You and I seem to be verbs—evolutionary processes. Are we not integral functions of the Universe?” ~ Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, #NFDB
630:To take the last issue, the difficult issue, first. The first great Dharma systems, East and West, all arose, without exception, in the so-called “axial period” (Karl Jaspers), that rather extraordinary period beginning around the 6th century B.C. (plus or minus several centuries), a period that saw the birth of Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Moses, Plato, Patanjali—a period that would soon give way, over the next few centuries, to include Ashvaghosa, Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Jesus, Philo, Valentinus…. Virtually all of the major tenets of the perennial philosophy were first laid down during this amazing era (in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity….) ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Life, right-bucks, #NFDB
631:The highest truth, the integral self-knowledge is not to be gained by this self-blinded leap into the Absolute but by a patient transit beyond the mind into the Truth-consciousness where the Infinite can be known, felt, seen, experienced in all the fullness of its unending riches. And there we discover this Self that we are to be not only a static tenuous vacant Atman but a great dynamic Spirit individual, universal and transcendent. That Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind's abstract generalisations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendours.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, The Object Of Knowledge [296],#NFDB
632:The ecological complexities of existence overwhelm the human mind, even though some of that richness is an integral part of man's own nature. It is only by isolating some little part of that existence for a short time that it can be momentarily grasped: we learn only from samples. By separating primary from secondary qualities, by making mathematical description the test of truth, by utilizing only a part of the human self to explore only a part of its environment, the new science successfully turned the most significant attributes of life into purely secondary phenomena, ticketed for replacement by the machine. Thus living organisms, in their most typical functions and purposes, became superfluous. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
633:Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
634:...only very few - only humans, as far as we know - achieve the second level of transcendent movement. Through this, the environment is de-restricted to become the world as an integral whole of manifest and latent elements. The second step is the work of language. This not only builds the 'house of being' - Heidegger took this phrase from Zarathustra's animals, which inform the convalescent: 'the house of being rebuilds itself eternally'; it is also the vehicle for the tendencies to run away from that house with which, by means of its inner surpluses, humans move towards the open. It need hardly be explained why the oldest parasite in the world, the world above, only appears with the second transcendence. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
635:In the universe are recognized ether or spirit, force or intelligence, and matter. Matter may act upon the ether and the ether upon matter; but ether acts most effectively upon ether, and matter upon matter. The original man, in whom intelligence and other forces acted through a purely spiritual or ether body, could impress matter and be impressed by it only in part. The man was imperfect because he did not touch directly the world of matter, and could know only in part the phenomena of the material world, which forms an integral part of the universe. In the words of Joseph Smith, "Spirit and element inseparably connected, receiveth a fullness of joy, and when separated, man can not receive a fullness of joy."[A] [Footnote ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
636:These operations were victorious but also extremely humbling; the takeaways—both good and bad—vast. The Battle of Ramadi provided a litany of lessons learned, which we were able to capture and pass on. The greatest of these was the recognition that leadership is the most important factor on the battlefield, the single greatest reason behind the success of any team. By leadership, we do not mean just the senior commanders at the top, but the crucial leaders at every level of the team—the senior enlisted leaders, the fire team leaders in charge of four people, the squad leaders in charge of eight, and the junior petty officers that stepped up, took charge, and led. They each played an integral role in the success of our team. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
637:In the classic theological formulation, God is one in being and three in person. Both are equally real, equally ultimate, and equally integral to God’s nature. That might sound paradoxical until you realize it is a way of saying that ultimate reality includes a perfect balance of both individuality and relationship. Or, as philosophers say, it includes both unity and diversity, both the one and the many. Each of the three persons of the Trinity is individually unique, yet they are so united they form a single deity. In the same way, writes John Wyatt, “each human person is unique, yet made for relationship with others. Personhood is not something we can have in isolation—in Christian thinking it is a relational concept.”76 ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
638:Many people who celebrate the arts and the humanities, who applaud vigorously the tributes to their importance in our schools, will proclaim without shame (and sometimes even joke) that they don’t understand math or physics. They extoll the virtues of learning Latin, but they are clueless about how to write an algorithm or tell BASIC from C++, Python from Pascal. They consider people who don’t know Hamlet from Macbeth to be Philistines, yet they might merrily admit that they don’t know the difference between a gene and a chromosome, or a transistor and a capacitor, or an integral and a differential equation. These concepts may seem difficult. Yes, but so, too, is Hamlet. And like Hamlet, each of these concepts is beautiful. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
639:Our insistence on being different from everything around us is one of the greatest mistakes of mankind. We stubbornly maintain an illusory distinction that sets us apart from rock and ice, water and fire, plant and animal. Both religion and rationality try to explain it through an elaborate vocabulary of separation—soul, atman, spirit, ghosts in the machine or simply the idea of selfhood. We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain. In ~ Stephen Alter, #NFDB
640:The decadence which did occur in the Islamic world belongs to a much later period of Islamic history than is usually claimed. This fact would be fully substantiated if the integral history of Islamic science and civilization were to be written one day. Unfortunately to this day such a detailed history does not exist and moreover much of the scholarly work that has been done in this field has been carried out by Western scholars who have been naturally primarily interested in those aspects of the Islamic sciences that have influenced the West. It remains the task of Muslims scholars and scientists to look upon the whole of this scientific tradition from the point of view of Islam and the inner dynamics of Islamic history itself. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
641:Tenga en cuenta que todas las generaciones anteriores han actuado bajo el supuesto de que poseían todas las herramientas importantes para comprender el universo, y todas se equivocaban, sin excepción. Imagine que intenta construir una teoría del arco iris antes de comprender la óptica, o intenta comprender el rayo antes de conocer la electricidad, o abordar la enfermedad de Parkinson antes de descubrir los neurotransmisores. ¿Parece razonable pensar que somos los primeros que han tenido la suerte de nacer en la generación perfecta, una generación que por fin ha alcanzado una ciencia integral? ¿O parece más probable creer que dentro de cien años la gente pensará en nosotros y se preguntará cómo podíamos vivir ignorando lo que ellos saben? ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
642:finalidad de la educación es el pleno desarrollo de la personalidad integral del individuo. En este desarrollo pueden distinguirse como mínimo dos grandes aspectos: el desarrollo cognitivo y el desarrollo emocional. El rol tradicional del profesor, centrado en la transmisión de conocimientos, está cambiando. La obsolescencia del conocimiento y las nuevas tecnologías conllevan a que la persona adquiere conocimientos en el momento que los necesita. En este marco, la dimensión de apoyo emocional del profesorado en el proceso de aprendizaje pasa a ser esencial. En el siglo XXI probablemente se pase de rol tradicional del profesor instructor centrado en la materia a un educador que orienta el aprendizaje del estudiante, al cual presta apoyo emocional ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
643:The intimate connection between Christianity and Judaism - between the Old Israel and the New - is the central theme of the Catholic liturgy, so that the Two Testaments or Covenants are shown as integral parts of one divine experience. It is not merely that Israel was for more than a thousand years the unique vehicle of divine revelation, it is also that in the tradition of Israel a unique relation was established between God and man and human society and history, a relation which was not broken by the defection of Israel but was carried on and extended in the Christian Church and its history. Thus the Old and the New Testaments or Covenants form a single integrated development which has no parallel among the religions of the world. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
644:Through a series of connections, it was arranged for us to pick up boxes of documents detailing George Bush, Sr.’s Watchtower cocaine and heroin routes. Retired Brigadier General Russell Bowen was once an integral part of this operation. He worked directly under Bush until he turned whistleblower through his 1991 book The Immaculate Deception, The Bush Crime Family Exposed4. It was widely known that the Mexican and Caribbean drug ops I had worked under MK Ultra mind control tied directly in with Watchtower. These documents and evidences could prove invaluable to us since General Bowen was leaving the country in disgust and frustration with the lack of justice. Bush, Sr. had locked him up in a Federal Prison until he agreed to leave the country. ~ Cathy O Brien, #NFDB
645:Poets could speak knowingly of metaphors; if life is walking, then running is a life’s entire span speeded up, and to act out birth to death in a single day, over and over again, has the flavour of perfect habit, for it mimicks undeniable truths. Small deaths paying homage to the real one. We choose them in myriad forms and delight in the ritual. I could run until I wear out. Every joint, every bone and every muscle. I could run until my heart groans older than its years, and finally bursts. I could damn the poets and make the metaphor real. We are all self-destructive. It is integral to our nature. And we will run even when there’s nowhere to run to, and nothing terrible to run from. Why? Because to walk is just as meaningless. It just takes longer. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
646:Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, “I’m starving.” Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say “starving” was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
647:The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [63] [T7],#NFDB
648:And the German society of eighty million people had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become engrained in Eichmann's mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
649:the threefold character of the union :::
The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
650:Dr. George Boole, author of The Laws of Thought had introduced himself in the year 1842 to Mr. De Morgan by a letter on the Differential and Integral Calculus then recently published. His character and pursuits were in many points like those of the author who found great pleasure in his correspondence and friendship. ...In 1847, his attention having been drawn to the subject by the publication of Mr. De Morgan's Formal Logic, he published the Mathematical Analysis of Logic and in the following year communicated... a paper on the Calculus of Logic. His great work, An Investigation into the Laws of Thought... was a development of the principle laid down in the Calculus... ~ Augustus De Morgan, Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, Memoir of Augustus De Morgan (1882) Section VII. From 1846-1855 , #NFDB
651:three paths as one :::
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#NFDB
652:I ache sometimes. I ache with the need for human connection. Contact. Physical contact, mental contact. The desire to touch and be touched, but also to touch someone in a less adjacent way. To touch someone’s life. To be a part of it. To be pulled in and accepted and a part of something. A tile in a mosaic that everyone agrees is stunning to behold. But then I find myself becoming part of such an ecosystem — an integral thread in a tightly-woven tapestry — and cringe with the responsibility. Their woes are my woes. Their tension is my tension. As soon as I have the thing I want so much from afar, I shrink away from the whole ordeal; happy to have been a part of something, but even happier to go and be my own entity again. A table for one. A queen-sized bed pulling half duty. ~ Colin Wright, #NFDB
653:...nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan... the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The method of Lagrange... had taken deep root in elementary works; it was the sacrifice of the clear and indubitable principle of limits to a phantom, the idea that an algebra without limits was purer than one in which that notion was introduced. But, independently of the idea of limits being absolutely necessary even to the proper conception of a convergent series, it must have been obvious enough to Lagrange himself, that all application of the science to concrete magnitude, even in his own system, required the theory of limits. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
654:The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in the relative and attracting it, as one's highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his-or her-numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together. The mind's door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62,#NFDB
655:Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feeling, at once faithful, discrete, and superlative. Living things in contact with the air must acquire a cuticle, and it is not urged against cuticles that they are not hearts; yet some philosophers seem to be angry with images for not being things, and with words for not being feelings. Words and images are like shells, no less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more open to observation. I would not say that substance exists for the sake of appearance, or faces for the sake of masks, or the passions for the sake of poetry and virtue. Nothing arises in nature for the sake of anything else; all these phases and products are involved equally in the round of existence. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
656:There was to be nothing special about it, nothing that savored of a religious Order, no special rule, no distinctive habit. She, and those who joined her, would simply be poor--there was no choice on that score, for they were that already--but they would embrace their poverty, and the life of the proletariat in all its misery and insecurity and dead, drab monotony. They would live and work in the slums, lose themselves, in the huge anonymous mass of the forgotten and the derelict, for the only purpose of living the complete, integral Christian life in that environment--loving those around them, sacrificing themselves for those around them, and spreading the Gospel and the truth of Christ most of all by being saints, by living in union with Him, by being full of His Holy Ghost, His charity. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
657:Postmodern/Pluralistic stage, a small percentage (two or three percent) began to show characteristics that were literally unprecedented in human history. Graves called the emergence of this even newer level “a monumental leap in meaning,” and Maslow referred to it as the emergence of “Being values.” Where all the previous stages (Magic, Mythic, Rational, and Pluralistic) had operated out of a sense of lack, scarcity, and deficiency, this new level—which various researchers began calling “integrated,” “integral,” “autonomous,” “second tier,” “inclusive,” “systemic”—acted out of a sense of radical abundance, as if it were overflowing with goodness, truth, and beauty. It was as if somebody put a billion dollars in its psychological account, and all it wanted to do was share it, so full it was. ~ Frederic Laloux, #NFDB
658:This is McDonough and Braungart’s argument that “Waste = Food,” that is, that we must consider waste as an integral part of any natural system and that “effectiveness” is more critical to the success of an ecosystem than “efficiency.” Like Bataille, the authors privilege useless abundance and profligacy over meanstoanend instrumentalism. And in this way, their argument is closer to Bataille’s in that they recognize that there is a human need for things that surpass utility or efficiency, such as beauty, creativity, fantasy, and enjoyment. They write, Imagine a fully efficient world…Mozart would hit the piano with a twobyfour. Van Gogh would use one color…And what about efficient sex? An efficient world is not one we envision as delightful. In contrast to nature, it is downright parsimonious (65) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
659:We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned. (Hamilton’s staunch abolitionism formed an integral feature of this economic vision.) He has also emerged as the uncontested visionary in anticipating the shape and powers of the federal government. At a time when Jefferson and Madison celebrated legislative power as the purest expression of the popular will, Hamilton argued for a dynamic executive branch and an independent judiciary, along with a professional military, a central bank, and an advanced financial system. Today, we are indisputably the heirs to Hamilton’s America, and to repudiate his legacy is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
660:research suggests that in areas near the U.S.-Mexico border, only one-tenth of paid domestic labor is on the books. The BLS puts the yearly average housekeeping wage at $19,570, which is both below the poverty line for a family of three and no doubt inflated by underreporting. Domestic workers without immigration papers not only lack the so-called protection of the law; they’re constantly vulnerable to deportation. So much for Lyotard’s “doing away with all privileges of place.” As Evan Calder Williams writes, “the days and bodies of humans are still far cheaper than any automation, provided money knows where to look. And it always has.” White supremacy and the gender division aren’t archaisms that capital will puree into a flow of neutered beige singularities; they’re labor relations, and integral ones. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
661:An easy direct calculation shows that d dt exp[!g(t)][$(t) ! a] = 0, so, indeed, exp[!g(t)][$(t) ! a] = $(0) ! a. Taking t = 1, exp[!2"in($; a)][$(1) ! a] = $(0) ! a, or, exp[!2"in($; a)] = 1, which implies that n($; a) is indeed integral. The function is obviously continuous, and being integer, it is constant on connected components. Clearly also, it tends to 0 as a tends to +, so it is identically 0 on the unbounded component. ! The next result is an immediate corollary of the invariance of path integrals of analytic functions under homotopy.Proposition. If $0 and $1 are paths which are homotopic in C \ {a} for some point a, then n($0; a) = n($1; a). Cauchy’s Integral Formula. Let $ a piecewise smooth curve in a region G which is null homotopic there, and let f be an analytic function on G. Then n($; a) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
662:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct" the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry - including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology-all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
663:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry — including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology—all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
664:If any religion can be said to be integral to the day-to-day workings of Vienna, it would be a religion based on the consumption of coffee, and its temples, the coffeehouses. Granted, there are coffee-consuming cultures all over the world, and places where it is done in greater quantity — perhaps even places where it is more integral to the general harmony, like Seattle, or research stations in Antarctica — but the one thing Vienna held as its catechism was that if you’re going to drink coffee, you must do it in style. The first aspect considered when opening a Vienna coffeehouse is atmosphere; it must look as if the facility has been in continuous operation since Napoleon’s occupation at the latest, and once the doors were opened, the owners would never admit to the contrary. The preferred decor is Comfortable ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
665:«si bien es cierto que la desigual distribución de la población y de los recursos disponibles crean obstáculos al desarrollo y al uso sostenible del ambiente, debe reconocerse que el crecimiento demográfico es plenamente compatible con un desarrollo integral y solidario»[28]. Culpar al aumento de la población y no al consumismo extremo y selectivo de algunos es un modo de no enfrentar los problemas. Se pretende legitimar así el modelo distributivo actual, donde una minoría se cree con el derecho de consumir en una proporción que sería imposible generalizar, porque el planeta no podría ni siquiera contener los residuos de semejante consumo. Además, sabemos que se desperdicia aproximadamente un tercio de los alimentos que se producen, y «el alimento que se desecha es como si se robara de la mesa del pobre»[29] ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
666:Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quiet, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, p. 106., #NFDB
667:All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,#NFDB
668:Many people who celebrate the arts and the humanities, who applaud vigorously the tributes to their importance in our schools, will proclaim without shame (and sometimes even joke) that they don’t understand math or physics. They extoll the virtues of learning Latin, but they are clueless about how to write an algorithm or tell BASIC from C++, Python from Pascal. They consider people who don’t know Hamlet from Macbeth to be Philistines, yet they might merrily admit that they don’t know the difference between a gene and a chromosome, or a transistor and a capacitor, or an integral and a differential equation. These concepts may seem difficult. Yes, but so, too, is Hamlet. And like Hamlet, each of these concepts is beautiful. Like an elegant mathematical equation, they are expressions of the glories of the universe. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
669:A sound study-library must be a top priority. For many, such a library has been unimportant and the result has been an impoverished ministry, lacking depth, breadth, and stimulation. An excellent library is constructed by deliberate acquisition rather than “accidental” accumulation. Since an expository preacher's library is an integral part of his pulpit work, it should be assembled with an eye toward the highest quality.4 A preliminary indication of what a core library is not will help understand what it should be: 1. It is not a collection of inferior books donated to the preacher by well-meaning friends and listeners. 2. It is not an accumulation of books offered on sale or at discount prices. 3. It is not simply a collection of materials that are highly recommended or found on standard lists of bibliographies. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
670:Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
671:My specific... object has been to contain, within the prescribed limits, the whole of the student's course, from the confines of elementary algebra and trigonometry, to the entrance of the highest works on mathematical physics. A learner who has a good knowledge of the subjects just named, and who can master the present treatise, taking up elementary works on conic sections, application of algebra to geometry, and the theory of equations, as he wants them, will, I am perfectly sure, find himself able to conquer the difficulties of anything he may meet with; and need not close any book of Laplace, Lagrange, Legendre, Poisson, Fourier, Cauchy, Gauss, Abel, Hindenburgh and his followers. or of any one of our English mathematicians, under the idea that it is too hard for him. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
672:Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujya-mukti, by which it can become free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #NFDB
673:That position comes down to this. The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion requiring, say, a physics for their complete explanation. The world is also a series of meaningful signs requiring a hermeneutics for their decipherment. Whatever they are, UFOs “vibrate in phase” with our forms of consciousness and culture. We thus cannot even conceive of them outside or independent from their observation. This most basic of facts puts into serious doubt the adequacy of any traditional scientific method. Such methods, after all, work from an ideal of complete objectivity, which in turn demands an effort to eliminate all interference with the observer. But what if the observer is the very mode of the apparition? What if the observer is an integral part of the experiment? ~ Jeffrey J Kripal, #NFDB
674:The U.S. media’s shallow lens dates back to 1952, when Christine Jorgensen became the media’s first “sex change” darling, breaking barriers and setting the tone for how our stories are told. These stories, though vital to culture change and our own sense of recognition, rarely report on the barriers that make it nearly impossible for trans women, specifically those of color and those from low-income communities, to lead thriving lives. They’re tried-and-true transition stories tailored to the cis gaze. What I want people to realize is that “transitioning” is not the end of the journey. Yes, it’s an integral part of revealing who we are to ourselves and the world, but there’s much life afterward. These stories earn us visibility but fail at reporting on what our lives are like beyond our bodies, hormones, surgeries, birth names, and before-and-after photos. ~ Janet Mock, #NFDB
675:Every temptation proves a crossroad where we must choose between the high road and the low road. On some occasions it is a trial of agonizing frustration. On other occasions, it is a mere annoyance, a nuisance of minor proportions. but in each case there is some element tot uneasiness, anxiety, and spiritual tugging--ultimately a choosing that forces us to take sides. Neutrality is a nonexistent condition in this life. We are always choosing, always taking sides. That is part of the human experience--facing temptations on a daily, almost moment-by-moment basis--facing them not only on the good days but on the days we are down, the days we are tired, rejected, discouraged, or sick. Every day of our lives we battle temptation--and so did the Savior. It is an integral part of the human experience, faced not only by us but also by him. He drank from the same cup. ~ Tad R Callister, #NFDB
676:agricultural production has lost all its autonomy in the major industrialized nations and as part of a global economy. It is no longer the principal sector of the economy, nor even a sector characterized by any distinctive features (aside from underdevelopment). Even though local and regional features from the time when agricultural production dominated haven’t entirely disappeared, it has been changed into a form of industrial production, having become subordinate to its demands, subject to its constraints. Economic growth and industrialization have become self-legitimating, extending their effects to entire territories, regions, nations, and continents. As a result, the traditional unit typical of peasant life, namely the village, has been transformed. Absorbed or obliterated by larger units, it has become an integral part of industrial production and consumption. ~ Henri Lefebvre, #NFDB
677:The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of shortcuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 45,#NFDB
678:Keep creating new chapters in your personal book and never stop re-inventing and perfecting yourself. Try new things. Pick up new hobbies and books. Travel and explore other cultures. Never stay in the same city or state for more than five years of your life. There are many heavens on earth waiting for you to discover. Seek out people with beautiful hearts and minds, not those with just beautiful style and bodies. The first kind will forever remain beautiful to you, while the other will grow stale and ugly. Learn a new language at least twice. Change your career at least thrice, and change your location often. Like all creatures in the wild, we were designed to keep moving. When a snake sheds its old skin, it becomes a more refined creature. Never stop refining and re-defining yourself. Transformations are an integral part of life. Just look at the seasons or the weather. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
679:As a militant, she is an integral part of all liberations. She must be farsighted, not limited to a blow-by-blow interaction. She foresees that her liberation will do more than modify power relations or toss the ball over to the other camp; she will bring about a mutation in
human relations, in thought, in all praxis: hers is not simply a class struggle, which she carries forward into a much vaster movement. Not that in order to be a woman-in-struggle(s) you have to leave the class struggle or repudiate it; but you have to split it open, spread it out, push it forward, fill it with the fundamental struggle so as to prevent the class
struggle, or any other struggle for the liberation of a class or people, from operating as a form of repression, pretext for postponing the inevitable, the staggering alteration in power relations and in the production of individualities ~ H l ne Cixous,#NFDB
680:For me it is an internal law to do good. In my whole life I have endeavored to realize high moral
values; I have always believed in moral ideas, and as a pedagogue and a father I have always
disseminated them. I could not live otherwise than what I profess. Striving for harmony between
words and actions, needing to put ideas into practice, is an integral part of my moral concept
and practice. Because of this every kind of small-souled reaction, vengeance, or trickery is far
from me - for me openness is an internal command. Although I know that this book will “incite”
many to attack, I know that people will criticize and offend me, and I have exposed myself to
hostile action, but nevertheless I am taking this step - not following the counsel of the wise king
Solomon: “Do not be too virtuous, and do not reason too much: why must you confuse
yourself? ~ L szl Polg r,#NFDB
681:I have said that from a young age children should be taught to respect good health, physical strength and balance. The great importance of beauty must also be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of culture from the very beginning of its existence can realise its own harmony and thus become fit to manifest beauty. When we speak of the other aspects of an integral education, we shall see what inner conditions are to be fulfilled so that this beauty can one day be manifested. ~ The Mother, On Education, Physical Education, #NFDB
682:The United States tried to establish a modern, Weberian state during the Progressive Era and New Deal. It succeeded in many respects: the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the armed services, and the Federal Reserve are among the most technically competent, well-run, and autonomous government bodies anywhere in the world. But the overall quality of American public administration remains very problematic, precisely because of the country’s continuing reliance on courts and parties at the expense of state administration. Part of the phenomenon of decay has to do with intellectual rigidity. The idea that lawyers and litigation should be such an integral part of public administration is not a view widely shared in other democracies, and yet it has become such an entrenched way of doing business in the United States that no one sees any alternatives. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
683:To A Child
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree
And unselfconscious as the beeAnd yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build;
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!
In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange divinity still kept.
Being, that now absorbs you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shred into perplexing bits,Oh, contradictions of the wits!
And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
may make you poet, too, in timeBut there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!
~ Christopher Morley,#NFDB
684:For me, the flow of information was an apt metaphor. As surfing became my obsession at a young age, my innovation had been to remap my tactile sense into the water around me. Sitting on my surfboard, bobbing up and down between the swells, I could feel the pressure, shape, and temperature of the water’s surface around me through my skin. The thousands of neurons attached to each hair follicle could sense even tiny subsurface eddies and water currents. After nearly twenty years of dedicated practice, my brain had neuroplastically reformatted to devote a large part of itself to my water-sense, and I now had the most highly attuned tactile array of any pssi-kid, or for that matter anyone else in the world. Sitting with my eyes closed, I could feel the water moving and undulating around me as a perfectly natural and integral part of my body. I was one with the water, and it was one with me. ~ Matthew Mather, #NFDB
685:But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His selfmanifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or atmost attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #NFDB
686:It is not true, out of geometry, that the mathematical sciences are, in all their parts those models of finished accuracy which many suppose. The extreme boundaries of analysis have always been as imperfectly understood as the tract beyond the boundaries was absolutely unknown. But the way to enlarge the settled country has not been by keeping within it, but by making voyages of discovery, and I am perfectly convinced that the student should be exercised in this manner; that is, that he should be taught how to examine the boundary, as well as how to cultivate the interior. ...allowing all students whose capacity will let them read on the higher branches of applied mathematics, to have each his chance of being led to the cultivation of those parts of analysis on which rather depends its future progress than its present use in the sciences of matter. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
687:extreme zombie fighting” kit. Tactical boots and tacticals. Firefighting bunker gear. Nomex head cover tucked under the collar of the bunker gear. Full face respirator. Helmet with integrated visor. Body armor with integral MOLLE. Knee, elbow and shin guards. Nitrile gloves. Tactical gloves. Rubber gloves. Assault pack with hydration unit. Saiga shotgun on friction strap rig. A .45 USP in tactical fast-draw holster. Two .45 USP in chest holsters. Fourteen Saiga ten-round 12-gauge magazines plus one in the weapon. Nine pistol magazines in holster plus three in weapons. Kukri in waist sheath. Machete in over-shoulder sheath, right. Halligan tool in over-shoulder sheath, left. Tactical knife in chest sheath. Tactical knife in waist sheath. Bowie knife in thigh sheath. Calf tactical knife times two. A few clasp knives dangling in various places. There was the head of a teddy bear peeking out of her assault pack. ~ John Ringo, #NFDB
688:The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary, Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one third of his time to a useful work. All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #NFDB
689:These are not fables. You will touch with your hands, you will see with your own eyes, the Azoth, the Mercury of Philosophers, which alone will suffice to obtain for you our Stone. … Darkness will appear on the face of the Abyss; Night, Saturn and the Antimony of the Sages will appear; blackness, and the raven's head of the alchemists, and all the colors of the world, will appear at the hour of conjunction; the rainbow also, and the peacock's tail. Finally, after the matter has passed from ashen-colored to white and yellow, you will see the Philosopher's Stone, our King and Dominator Supreme, issue forth from his glassy sepulcher to mount his bed or his throne in his glorified body... diaphanous as crystal; compact and most weighty, as easily fusible by fire as resin, as flowing as wax and more so than quicksilver … the color of saffron when powdered, but red as rubies when in an integral mass... ~ Heinrich Khunrath, in Amphitheatrum, #NFDB
690:Organized political power backed by coercive weapons is the source of both property and productivity: first of all in the cultivation of the land, using sunpower, and then at later stages in every other mode of production. Mechanical productivity, linked to widening markets, spell profit; and without the dynamic stimulus of profit-that is, money power-the system could not so rapidly expand. This perhaps explains why cruder forms of the megamachine, which favored the military caste rather than the merchant and industrial producer, and relied on tribute and pillage, remained static, and in the end unproductive and unprofitable to the point of repeated bankruptcy. Finally, no less an integral part of the power system is publicity (prestige, panache), through which the merely human directors of the power complex-the military, bureaucratic, industrial, and scientific elite-are inflated to more than human dimensions in order better to maintain authority. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
691:burden and advantage to an Integral Yoga; :::
...The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impedimenta. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; ... Our compensation is that even if the path is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and baffling arduous, yet after a certain point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the Powers that oppose us.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 74,#NFDB
692:The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, not in these more outward things, but in its power to open up easily higher ranges and powers of thought, emotion, will by which the soul grows in height, range and self-mastery. Especially, withdrawing from the distraction of sensible things, it can, in a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion, prepare itself by a free reasoning, thought, discrimination or more intimately, more finally, by an ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 26, Samadhi, pg. 503,#NFDB
693:She wanted George with some uncorrelated sector of Her Gart, she wanted George to correlate for her, life here, there. She wanted George to define and to make definable a mirage, a reflection of some lost incarnation, a wood maniac, a tree demon, a neuropathic dendrophile...She wanted George to make the thing an integral, herself integrity. She wanted George to make one of his drastic statements that would dynamite her world away for her. She wanted this, but even as she wanted it she let herself sink further, further, she saw that her two hands reached toward George like the hands of a drowned girl. She knew she was not drowned. Where others would drown-lost, suffocated in this element-she knew that she lived. She had no complete right yet to this element, hands struggled to be pulled out. White hands waved above the water like sea spume or inland-growing pond flowers...She wanted George to pull her out, she wanted George to push her in, let Her be drowned utterly. ~ H D, #NFDB
694:Separation of function is not to be despised, but neither should it be exalted. Separation is not an unbreakable law, but a convenience for overcoming inadequate human abilities, whether in science or engineering. As D'Arcy Thompson, one of the spiritual fathers of the general systems movement, said: As we analyze a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divided the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teaching of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgement and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral.10 The ~ Gerald M Weinberg, #NFDB
695:I started keeping journals when I was fourteen and at last count had nearly a thousand. They come in all shapes and sizes, from little pocket ones which I carry around with me to enormous tomes. I always keep a notebook by my bedside, for dreams as well as nighttime thoughts, and I try to have one by the swimming pool or the lakeside or the seashore; swimming too is very productive of thoughts which I must write, especially if they present themselves, as they sometimes do, in the form of whole sentences or paragraphs…
But for the most part, I rarely look at the journals I have kept for the greater part of a lifetime.
The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing.
My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself. ~ Oliver Sacks,#NFDB
696:To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence. To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
697:Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
698:an all-inclusive concentration is required for an Integral Yoga :::
Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the emotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also; but this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised concentration of the whole being in all its parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve its purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to impose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential character of the sadhana and its character must determine its practice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
699:a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness: - it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#NFDB
700:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #NFDB
701:We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication--we guild these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, and yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward blackishness. For someone with my cast of mind and mood, medication is an integral element of this wall: without it, I would be constantly beholden to the crushing movements of the mental sea; I would, unquestionably, be dead or insane.
But love is, to me, the ultimately more extraordinary part of the breakwater wall: it helps to shut out the terror and awfulness, while, at the same time, allowing in life and beauty and vitality. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,#NFDB
702:The phenomena we encountered in the previous chapters, from e-mail usage to travel patterns, hint that burstiness is deeply linked to human will and intelligence. Prioritizing only reinforces this impression, since it is our preferences that determine whether an action item is seen to immediately or indefinitely be postponed. This would suggest that bursts require the ability to set priorities. But from this perspective, the results discussed above are rather humbling. They indicate that burstiness is not something we invented but was in use well before intelligent life ever emerged on Earth. There's nothing smooth or random int he way life expresses itself, but bursts dominate at all time scales, from milliseconds to hours in our cells; from minutes to weeks in our activity patterns; from weeks to years when it comes to diseases; from millenia to millions of years in evolutionary processes. Bursts are an integral part of the miracle of life, signatures of the continuous struggle for adaptation and survival. ~ Albert L szl Barab si, #NFDB
703:It is important to recognize that our efforts at communal property restitution,” Stuart Eizenstat told a House committee, “are integral to the rebirth and renewal of Jewish life” in Eastern Europe. Allegedly to “promote the revival” of Jewish life in Poland, the World Jewish Restitution Organization is demanding title over the 6,000 prewar communal Jewish properties, including those currently being used as hospitals and schools. The prewar Jewish population of Poland stood at 3.5 million; the current population is several thousand. Does reviving Jewish life really require one synagogue or school building per Polish Jew? The organization is also laying claim to hundreds of thousands of parcels of Polish land valued in the many tens of billions of dollars. “Polish officials fear,” Jewish Week reports, that the demand “could bankrupt the nation.” When Poland’s Parliament proposed limits on compensation to avert insolvency, Elan Steinberg of the WJC denounced the legislation as “fundamentally an anti-American act.”80 ~ Norman G Finkelstein, #NFDB
704:So there was nothing new in the suddenly transracial spirit that saw the country, in 2008, reaching "for the best part of itself." It had done so before—and then promptly retrenched in the worst part of itself. To see this connection, to see Obama's election as part of a familiar cycle, you would have had to understand how central the brand of white supremacy was to the country. I did not. I could remember, as a child, the nationalists claiming the country was built by slaves. But this claim was rarely evidenced and mostly struck me as an applause line or rhetorical point. I understood slavery as bad and I had a vague sense that it had once been integral to the country and that the dispute over it had, somehow, contributed to the Civil War. But even that partial sense ran contrary to the way the Civil War was presented in popular culture, as a violent misunderstanding, an honorable duel between wayward brothers, instead of what it was—a spectacular chapter in a long war that was declared when the first Africans were brought chained to American shores. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
705:Many cultural stories worldwide present the domination system as the only human alternative. Fairy tales romanticize the rule of kings and queens over “common people.” Classics such as Homers Illiad and Shakespeare’s kings trilogy romanticize “Heroic violence.” Many religious stories present men’s control, even ownership, of women as normal and moral.
These stories came out of the times that oriented much more closely to a “pure” domination system. Along with newer stories that perpetuate these limited beliefs about human nature, they play a major role in how we view our world and how we live in it. But precisely because stories are so important in shaping values, new narratives can help change unhealthy values.
Of particular importance are new stories about human nature. We need new narratives that give us a more complete and accurate picture of who we are and who we can be - stories that show that our enormous capacities for consciousness, creativity and caring are integral to human evolution, that these capacities are what make us distinctively human. ~ Riane Eisler,#NFDB
706:
Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere that if one surrenders to the Divine Grace, it will do everything for us. Therefore, what value has tapasya?
If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all that he has written on that subject. You will then see that he has apparently said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything, and understood a little, one perceives that all the contradictions complement each other and are organised and unified into an integral synthesis. Here is another quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will show you that your question is based on ignorance. There are many others which you can read with interest and which will make your intelligence more supple: 'If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude; it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.' 16 December 1964
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, 308,#NFDB
707:Correct it may be, but at its core quantum physics departs from classical physics in a very discomfiting way. Integral to quantum physics is the fundamental role played by the observer in choosing which of a plenitude of possible realities will leave the realm of the possible and become actual. For at its core, quantum physics challenges the ontology that permeated the scientific enterprise for centuries, the premise that a real world—independent of human choice and interference—is out there, uninfluenced by our observation of it. Quantum physics makes the seemingly preposterous claim (actually, more than claim, since it has been upheld in countless experiments) that there is no “is” until an observer makes an observation. Quantum phenomena seem to be called into existence by the very questions we ask nature, existing until then in an undefined fuzzy state. This feature of the quantum world led the American physicist John Archibald Wheeler to say that the world comes into being through our knowledge of it—or, as Wheeler put it, we get “its from bits” (bits of knowledge). ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
708:This concentration proceeds by the Idea, using thought, form and name as keys which yield up to the concentrating mind the Truth that lies concealed behind all thought, form and name; for it is through the Idea that the mental being rises beyond all expression to that which is expressed, to that of which the Idea itself is only the instrument. By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Integral Knowledge, Concentration [321],#NFDB
709:) Promover, con base en los informes obtenidos, la reparación integral y colectiva de las comunidades y regiones, y en general a las víctimas de las distintas violaciones en el marco de la violencia política. e) Por parte de los órganos jurisdiccionales, contribuir desde su actividad al esclarecimiento de los crímenes de guerra o lesa humanidad y graves violaciones de los derechos humanos y al DIH, por obra de las y estructuras legales e ilegales, organizaciones macrocriminales o de agentes del Estado, procurando determinar el paradero y situación de las víctimas y colaborando con la información acopiada y de contextos al esclarecimiento de las presuntas responsabilidades. f) Recomendar reformas institucionales, legales, educativas y otras, como garantías de prevención y no repetición, con el fin de que sean procesadas y atendidas por medio de iniciativas constitucionales, legislativas, políticas o administrativas. g) Formular recomendaciones encaminadas a crear confianza en los cambios positivos que el proceso de paz impulsa y de estimular el tránsito hacia la reconciliación nacional ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
710:If God did not arrange [the world] this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follow. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. A creation ex nihilo would be completely in God's control. Independent forces cannot be created forces, and created forces cannot be independent.
Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it--past and future--cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. In such a case, how could we be sure that God's observations are accurate? How could we be sure that these independent forces will not later show an unsuspected twist that will falsify God's predictions?
And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and thus he would be a dependent knower. These objections are insurmountable. We can consistently believe in creation, omnipotence, omniscience, and the divine decree. But we cannot retain sanity and combine any one of these with free will. ~ Gordon H Clark,#NFDB
711:By their dependence on the spoken word for information, people were drawn together into a tribal mesh … the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written.… Audile-tactile tribal man partook of the collective unconscious, lived in a magical integral world patterned by myth and ritual, its values divine.* Up to a point, maybe. Yet three centuries earlier, Thomas Hobbes, looking from a vantage where literacy was new, had taken a less rosy view. He could see the preliterate culture more clearly: “Men lived upon gross experience,” he wrote. “There was no method; that is to say, no sowing nor planting of knowledge by itself, apart from the weeds and common plants of error and conjecture.” A sorry place, neither magical nor divine. Was McLuhan right, or was Hobbes? If we are ambivalent, the ambivalence began with Plato. He witnessed writing’s rising dominion; he asserted its force and feared its lifelessness. The writer-philosopher embodied a paradox. The same paradox was destined to reappear in different guises, each technology of information bringing its own powers and its own fears. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
712:I want to use this practice:
Whenever I express my views, thoughts or anything I deeply believe, I will welcome any opposing view or thought. I will listen with caring attention to what the other says, accepting it no matter how different or antagonistic it seems to be.
I will also deeply and sincerely thank them.
I will abstain from feeling accused or judged.
I will acknowledge the other as my shadow, an integral part of me who has accepted to relate with me.
I believe that a vision in order to manifest requires its opposite, the other polarity.
If my vision is truly holistic, I am not in a condition to oppose any alternative vision.
I intend to learn to accept what appears to be opposite, no matter how unpleasant or contrary it is. I believe that only in the paradox of this acceptance, in releasing the urge to be right, unity can be experienced and manifested.
I have tried all other options, and they have not worked, and this is the only I have left.
And for this purpose I am open to be patient, promoting the gestation of this healing process, for I know that all is one. ~ Franco Santoro,#NFDB
713:There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam. All variety of ideologies, philosophies, and teachings from the oldest time up to now can be reduced to one of these three basic world views. The first takes as its starting point the existence of the spirit, the second the existence of matter, and the third the simultaneous existence of spirit and matter. If only matter exists, materialism would be the only consequent philosophy. On the contrary, if the spirit exists then man also exists, and man's life would be senseless without a kind of religion and morality. Islam is the name for the unity of spirit and matter, the highest form of which is man himself. The human life is complete only if it includes both the physical and the spiritual desires of the human being. All man's failures are either because of the religious denial of man's biological needs of the materialistic denial of man's spiritual desires. ~ Alija Izetbegovi, #NFDB
714:The theme of his life’s work was his effort to bridge this gap. The way to do it was simply to refuse to see anything in isolation. Everything, as he saw it, existed within a context, outside of which it was unintelligible. Moreover, every problem existed within a context, outside of which it was unsolvable. Agriculture, thus, cannot be understood or its problems solved without respect to context. The same applied even to an individual plant or crop. And this respect for context properly set the standard and determined the methodology of agricultural science: The basis of research was obviously to be investigation directed to the whole existence of a selected crop, namely, “the plant itself in relation to the soil in which it grows, to the conditions of village agriculture under which it is cultivated, and with reference to the economic uses of the product”; in other words research was to be integral, never fragmented. 11 If nothing exists in isolation, then all problems are circumstantial; no problem resides, or can be solved, in anybody’s department. A disease was, thus, a symptom of a larger disorder. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
715:There are two answers. One is that all technologies are in a sense simultaneously mechanistic and organic. if you examine a technology from the top down, you see it as an arrangement of connected parts interacting and intermeshing with each other to some purpose. In this sense it becomes a clockwork device-it becomes mechanistic. If you examine it mentally from the bottom up, however, from how these parts are put together, you see these as integral parts-integral organs-forming a higher, functioning, purposed whole. it becomes a functioning body-it becomes organic. Whether a technology is mechanistic or organic therefore depends on your point of view. The other answer is purely biological: technologies are acquiring properties we associate with living organisms. As they sense and react to their environment, as they become self-assembling, self-configuring, self-healing, and "cognitive," they more and more resemble living organisms. The more sophisticated and "high-tech" technologies become, the more they become biological. We are beginning to appreciate that technology is as much metabolism as mechanism. ~ W Brian Arthur, #NFDB
716:I’m not going to the ball.” “Of course you are,” Everett argued before Abigail had the chance. “My mother is counting on you being there, and I’d look at it as a great privilege if you’d honor me with a dance.” “I don’t know how to dance. And I never intended on attending the ball. I thought I was simply supposed to escort the children, and then stay with them as they peeked through a banister. Although . . . I do think that window off the side terrace might be a better choice, given that it’s far away from where any guests will be.” Everett narrowed his eyes as much as he could, which wasn’t much, since they’d taken to swelling. “I’m not comfortable with the idea of you hiding in the shadows, Millie. You’ve become an integral part of my family, and as such, I’d like you at the ball.” Millie drew herself up and suddenly looked rather fierce. “If you’ve forgotten, this is Caroline’s ball. She’s been looking forward to it for months, which means it would not be fair to her to have me anywhere near the ballroom. My presence would only ruin her evening, and I’m sorry, but I won’t be responsible for that.” Everything ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
717:Temporary and foster or foster/adopt family. With regard to kinship adoption, and all other adoptions, it is important that the original/emergency foster placement of a child be temporary, and that those parents be part of a team that will work together with the birth family, kin connections, and professionals to determine—as quickly as possible—whether the child will be moved to a kin placement, or moved to another foster family that has been determined to be an appropriate family for that particular child, should the placement become permanent. All parents in this position should know that in fostering a child, providing a bridge family, and making a permanent kinship connection, they are doing a great deal to foster health and healing. If they should become the permanent family of that child, they will have understood the need for the more positive connections to birth family and community. If they should be a bridge to a placement with birth parents or kin, they should be honored and respected as extended family in that process, having played an integral role in providing safety and continuity for that child. ~ Joyce Maguire Pavao, #NFDB
718: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 Principle of the Integral Yoga, 610 [T3],#NFDB
719: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,#NFDB
720:Kim Il-sung had promised North Koreans three bowls of rice every day. Rice, especially white rice, was a luxury in North Korea. It was a magnanimous promise that was impossible to fulfill for all but the elite. However, the public distribution system did supply the population with a mixture of grains in amounts that were carefully calibrated in accordance with rank and work. Coal miners doing hard labor were to get 900 grams of grain daily, while factory workers like Mrs. Song got 700 grams. The system also dispensed other staples in the Korean diet, such as soy sauce, cooking oil, and a thick red bean paste called gochujang. On national holidays, such as the Kim family birthdays, there might be pork or dried fish. The best part was the cabbage, distributed in the autumn for making kimchi. The spicy preserved cabbage is the Korean national dish, the only vegetable product in the traditional diet during the long winters and as integral to the culture as rice. The North Korean regime understood you couldn’t keep Koreans happy without kimchi. Each family got 70 kilograms (154 pounds) per adult and 50 kilos (110 pounds) per child, ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
721:When feminist theorizing of prostitution frames the practice as ordinary work which enables women to express ‘choice’ and ‘agency’, and represents trafficked women in debt bondage as simply ‘migrating for labour’, it serves to normalize the industry and support its growth. It air brushes the harms that girls and women suffer in prostitution and makes it very difficult for feminist activists to oppose the construction of prostitution industries as an ordinary part of economic development, and demand dignified work for women. Such theorizing also supports the campaign by the prostitution industry, sex work organizations and some governments to legalize or decriminalize prostitution. For the industry to prosper, toleration is good, but legalization is better. Thus the approaches that feminist theorists choose to take have important implications. The growth of the industry multiplies the harms that are an integral part of prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation whether ‘legal’ or not. The sex industry cannot be quarantined, set apart from the rest of the society for men to abuse the women caught within the industry in seclusion. ~ Sheila Jeffreys, #NFDB
722:
An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin
Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science
Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body
The Mother - Mother's Agenda
Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution
T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body
Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy
Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, #reading list,#NFDB
723:Quigley’s quest for simplicity in history did not preclude his recognition of its complexity. Instead of surrendering to historical complexity as an insurmountable obstacle and retreating to an historicism that would obviate the development of paradigms, Quigley confronted complexity head-on and sought to recognize it as an integral part of historical method. He realized that while reductionism is possible with the physical sciences, any such attempt at dissecting an historical phenomena and isolating and analyzing only one factor as an independent variable is impossible in the social sciences. Thus, Quigley studied the whole context of a phenomena, a method developed by the theoretical biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy termed “general systems theory” 10 This “generalism” became known as “holisticism” and operationalized as “macrohistory.” By “holisticism”, Quigley meant that the “whole” of reality held greater meaning than the sum of its parts, thus scholars should tend towards general studies to understand general and comparative historical concepts and paradigms rather than the hyperspecialization pervading the discipline of history.11 ~ Carroll Quigley, #NFDB
724:Knowledge does not abolish faith but gives it a more inward meaning. He who "knows" theoretically does indeed enjoy metaphysical certainty, but such certainty does not yet penetrate his whole being; it is as if, instead of believing a description, one saw the object described but without the sight of it implying either a detailed knowledge or a possession of the object, for a single visual perspective does not of course teach us the whole nature of the thing seen; thus there is certainty regarding the object as such in this case, but uncertainty regarding its integral nature. To "know" an object perfectly means to "possess" it, "become" it, "be" it; if the sight of an object is very much more than an abstract belief in its existence, the realization of the object will likewise be infinitely more than the sight of it; metaphysical certainty thus stands in a sense between belief--"faith" in the ordinary sense of the word--and the realization of union. As long as a man is not delivered from the chains of existence, there is always an element of "faith" in his "knowledge"; otherwise there would be nothing separating him from the Reality "known" or "to be known". ~ Frithjof Schuon, #NFDB
725: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,#NFDB
726:The thing about emotional pain is that no matter how horrible it is, there are usually options. Pain would prefer you not know that, of course, as pain is the ultimate attention whore, but the reality is that pain’s going to do its work regardless of what you do or how you react. Pain cripples the best of us, but if you’re lucky and it doesn’t obliterate you entirely, it can be used as a cathartic weapon. At best, pain can be morphed into a vehicle for understanding and healing, and ultimately, hopefully, enlightenment, transcendence and peace. Sometimes, though, the best we can hope for is a little of both, a kind of imperfect destruction. For me, those avenues are necessities for survival and an integral part of the process of creating the things I create through my writing. I cannot be passive in my pain any more than I can be passive in my joy. I need to confront and use it—weaponized through language, thought, emotion and soul—to shine a light on that pain, but also, more importantly, my humanity. I run not from the fire, but directly into it, because I’m burning anyway. And in those moments, though it may often feel that way, I’m not alone. And neither are you. ~ Greg F Gifune, #NFDB
727:An organic world picture cannot, however, deny entropy. It must accept as given the breaking down processes that accompany all vital activities: indeed, they are no less an integral part of life, no less a contrapuntal contribution to its creativity than the orderly, constructive, upbuilding functions; for the two processes can no more be separated than body and soul, brain and mind, until they are arrested in death. But there is latent energy in the mind that in rare moments by-passes these organic limitations and ignores or defies the ultimate terminus of death: this reveals itself as the impulse to transcendence. The recognition as a species that man possesses a deep longing to overcome his organic limitations, and that this aspiration may give significance even to the most distressing moments of existence, has been the benign gift of religion, and accounts, surely, for the hold it has had over the mass of mankind. This office is all the more singular because it frequently flouts the requirements for organic maintenance, reproduction, and survival: hence it cannot be derived from animal needs as so many other human functions, not least those of technics, can be derived. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
728:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18, #NFDB
729:It proceeds by a personal effort to a conversion through a divine influence and possession; but this divine grace, if we may so call it, is not simply a mysterious flow or touch coming from above, but the all-pervading act of a divine presence which we come to know within as the power of the highest Self and Master of our being entering into the soul and so possessing it that we not only feel it close to us and pressing upon our mortal nature, but live in its law, know that law, possess it as the whole power of our spiritualised nature. The conversion its action will effect is an integral conversion of our ethical being into the Truth and Right of the divine nature, of our intellectual into the illumination of divine knowledge, our emotional into the divine love and unity, our dynamic and volitional into a working of the divine power, our aesthetic into a plenary reception and a creative enjoyment of divine beauty, not excluding even in the end a divine conversion of the vital and physical being. It regards all the previous life as an involuntary and unconscious or half-conscious preparatory growing towards this change and Yoga as the voluntary and conscious
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
730:When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.11 Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups. ~ Shawn Achor, #NFDB
731:An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokyalmukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sadharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p.47-8,#NFDB
732:All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
733:My first female lover was a Jewish woman. She was butch, but not in a swaggering macho way- she could pass as a yeshiva boy, pale and intense. Small, almost fragile, she exuded a powerful sense of herself. She had not been to a synagogue in years, but kept the law of kashrut, and taught me my first prayers in Hebrew. She cooked, she read, she ironed her dress shirts and polished her boots meticulously, and admired femme women enormously. She was also the first person ever- including myself- to bring me to multiple orgasms. She taught me to ask for what I wanted in bed, then encouraged me to expect it from her and future lovers. She taught me to get her off with fingers, tongue, lips, sex toys, and my voice. She showed me how to masturbate in different positions, and fisted me during my menstrual cramps to provide an internal massage- and to demonstrate that a sexual act without orgasm was also an acceptable, intimate act. She never separated sexuality from the rest of her life; it was as integral to her as her Judaism.
This was how I wanted to be. Not just sexually, although certainly that way too. This is how I wanted to move through the world.
-- Karen Taylor (from "Daughters of Zelophehad") ~ Lawrence Schimel,#NFDB
734:It was in postwar Paris that Mandelbrot began this quest in earnest. Uncle Szolem urged him to attend the École Normale Supérieure, France’s most rarefied institution of higher learning, where Mandelbrot had earned entry at the age of twenty (one of only twenty Frenchmen to do so). But the aridly abstract style of mathematics practiced there was uncongenial to him. At the time, the École Normale—dite normale, prétendue supérieure, says the wag—was dominated in mathematics by a semisecret cabal called Bourbaki. (The name Bourbaki was jocularly taken from a hapless nineteenth-century French general who once tried to shoot himself in the head but missed.) Its leader was André Weil, one of the supreme mathematicians of the twentieth century (and the brother of Simone Weil). The aim of Bourbaki was to purify mathematics, to rebuild it on perfectly logical foundations untainted by physical or geometric intuition. Mandelbrot found the Bourbaki cult, and Weil in particular, “positively repellent.” The Bourbakistes seemed to cut off mathematics from natural science, to make it into a sort of logical theology. They regarded geometry, so integral to Mandelbrot’s Keplerian dream, as a dead branch of mathematics, fit for children at best. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
735:all is the method of God's workings; all life is Yoga :::
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognize in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of the might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and there for right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Conditions of the Synthesis [47] [T1],#NFDB
736:Loretta closed her eyes and braced herself. Whatever it was the other Indian was saying, he was clearly arguing in her behalf. There hovered in the air a charged expectancy, turbulent, tingling along her nerve endings to the core of her, so that, for a suspended moment, she felt a peculiar sense of oneness with the man above her, perceiving his tumultuous emotions, his indecision, as if she were an integral part of him. He wanted to spill her blood with a primal ferocity, but something, perhaps the Almighty Himself, stayed his hand.
Sensing reprieve, grasping for it with eager disbelief, she lifted her lashes in confusion to see the same emotion reflected in his cobalt eyes.
He began to tremble, as if the lance weighed a thousand pounds. And suddenly she knew that as much as he longed to murder her, a part of him couldn’t, wouldn’t throw the lance. It made no sense. She could see nothing but hatred written on his chiseled face. He had surely killed hundreds of times and would kill again.
Slowly he lowered his arm and stared at her as if she had bested him in some way. Then, so quickly she couldn’t be sure she saw it, pain flashed across his face. “So you’re sweet?” His smile dripped ice. “We shall see, woman, we shall see. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
737:Buckminster Fuller, the discoverer/inventor of the geodesic dome, at age thirty-two contemplated suicide for a few hours one night at the edge of Lake Michigan, as the story goes, after a series of business failures that left him feeling he had made such a mess of his life that the best move would be for him to remove himself from the scene and make things simpler for his wife and daughter. Apparently everything he had touched or undertaken had turned to dust in spite of his incredible creativity and imagination, which were only recognized later. However, instead of ending his life, Fuller decided (perhaps because of his deep conviction in the underlying unity and order of the universe, of which he knew himself to be an integral part) to live from then on as if he had died that night.
Being dead, he wouldn't have to worry about how things worked out any longer for himself personally and would be free to devote himself to living as a representative of the universe. The rest of his life would be a gift. Instead of living for himself, he would devote himself to asking, "what is it on this planet (which he referred to as Spaceship Earth) that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won't happen unless I take responsibility for it? ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,#NFDB
738:For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, - of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.
It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 85-86, [T1],#NFDB
739:The sadhaka of the integral Yoga will make use of all these aids according to his nature; but it is necessary that he should shun their limitations and cast from himself that exclusive tendency of egoistic mind which cries, "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.
On the contrary, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.
Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man's unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
740:The result of this one-sided patriarchal stance, demonstrable in all areas of life, is an un integrated man who is attacked by his repressed side and often enough overwhelmed by it. This transpires not only in the fate of the individual man as seduction by a "lower" anima, but equally through seduction by a compensatory ideology, for example materialism, to which "spirit" men are especially susceptible.
The man wants to remain exclusively masculine and out of fear rejects the transformative contact with a woman of equal status. Negativizing the Feminine in the patriarchate prevents the man from experiencing woman as a thou of equal but different status, and hence from coming to terms with her. The consequence of the patriarchal male's haughtiness toward women leads to the inability to make any genuine contact with the Feminine, i.e., not only in a real woman but also with the Feminine in himself, the unconscious. Whenever an integral relationship to the Feminine remains undeveloped, however, this means that, due to his fear, the male is unable to break through to his own wholeness that also embraces the Feminine. Thus the patriarchal culture's separation from the Feminine and from the unconscious becomes one of the essential causes for the crisis of fear in which the patriarchal world now finds itself. ~ Erich Neumann,#NFDB
741:I believe I told you I love you.” “Aye, you did, at that. Although you could have sounded a wee bit happier about it.” “Should I say it again?” “Aye, I’d like to hear it.” “Very well.” Her lips twitched, but she didn’t release the sheet. “I love you, Ewan Alexander Ardmore Macrae. I must be as mad as my father, but you’ve carved a place in my heart that belongs to you alone.” He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s better.” She cast him a sidelong glance. Dear Lord, she’d caught herself an enviable specimen of a man, even if he was far too inclined to tease. “Your turn, Lord Lyle.” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “You won’t let me out of this, will you?” “No.” His hand crept to the edge of the sheet, until she slapped it away. “I’m gey eager to see what’s under there.” “You know what you have to do first. Think of this as blackmail.” “Och, you’ll make a braw countess, Charlotte Warren.” “So?” His smile faded, and he kissed her with a depth of emotion that caught her by surprise. She shivered under the wordless worship of his lips. There was passion—as he’d said, passion was integral to their love—but there was also tenderness, and care, and something that felt like reverence. By the time he raised his head, she was boneless with longing and radiant with happiness. After that kiss, he didn’t have to say the words. She knew he loved her. Dazzled ~ Anna Campbell, #NFDB
742:Studs Terkel was waiting for a number 146 bus alongside two well-groomed business types. "This was before the term yuppie was used," he explains. "But that was what they were. He was in Brooks Brothers and Gucci shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal under his arm. She was a looker. I mean stunning - Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus and carrying Vanity Fair."
Terkel, who is 95, has long been a Chicago icon, every bit as accessible and integral to the cultural life of the Windy City as Susan Sontag was to New York. He had shared the bus stop with this couple for several mornings but they had always failed to acknowledge him. "It hurts my ego," he quips. "But this morning the bus was late and I thought, this is my chance." The rest of the story is his.
"I say, 'Labour Day is coming up.' Well, it was the wrong thing to say. He looks toward me with a look of such contempt it's like Noel Coward has just spotted a bug on his collar. He says, 'We despise unions.' I thought, oooooh. The bus is still late. I've got a winner here. Suddenly I'm the ancient mariner and I fix him with my glittering eye. 'How many hours a day do you work?' I ask. He says, 'Eight.' 'How comes you don't work 18 hours a day like your great-great-grandfather did? You know why? Because four guys got hanged in Chicago in 1886 fighting for the eight-hour day ... For you. ~ Gary Younge,#NFDB
743:One of the most terrible losses man endures in his lifetime is not even noticed by most people, much less mourned. Which is astonishing, because what we lose is in many ways one of the essential qualities that sets us apart from other creatures. I'm talking about the loss of the sense of wonder that is such an integral part of our world when we are children. However, as we grow older, that sense of wonder shrinks from cosmic to microscopic by the time we are adults. Kids say "Wow!" all the time. Opening their mouths fully, their eyes light up with genuine awe and glee. The word emanates not so much from a voice box as from an astonished soul that has once again been shown that the world is full of amazing unexpected things.
When was the last time you let fly a loud, truly heartfelt "WOW?"
NOt recently I bet. Because generally speaking wonder belongs to kids, with the rare exception of falling madly in love with another person, which invariably leads to a rebirth of wonder. As adults, we are not supposed to say or feel Wow, or wonder, or even true surprise because those things make us sound goofy, ingenuous, and childlike. How can you run the world if you are in constant awe of it?...
The human heart has a long memory though and remembers what it was like to live through days where it was constantly surprised and delighted by the world around it. ~ Jonathan Carroll,#NFDB
744:So you understand about Steve?” she blurted into the darkness, unable to stop her confessions to this man she didn’t really know but somehow felt was integral to her life. “I wasn’t nice when I woke up from the coma: I cried uncontrollably. Raged. Had hysterical fits of temper. He didn’t even blink when I’d lashed out or yelled at him to go away. He just stayed right by my side. My whole world was in upheaval, my family in chaos, and he was like an unmovable rock.” Mitch’s fingers squeezed hers, but he said nothing, so she went on. “It endeared him to my family in a way nothing else could have. My mom, in particular, treated him like a son. Steve grew up in a very bad home. All he ever wanted was a normal family, so mine adopted him. I didn’t want to make them unhappy, not after . . .” She swallowed, unable to think about the rest. The real reason she was going straight to hell with no chance at redemption. Mitch pulled her closer. “So, can you see? Do you understand why I couldn’t leave him?” “I understand, Maddie.” His voice was a soft, sure whisper in the darkness. “Why couldn’t I love him the way I should?” It was the same question she’d asked herself millions of times. No matter how hard she’d tried, she’d been unable to talk herself into it. “Because life’s not that neat.” No, it wasn’t, which made her wonder what kind of disaster lurked around the corner. ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
745:The lumbering bagos and topheavy
four-wheelers form a moving slalom course for Hiro on his black
motorcycle.
All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for
the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like
overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools,
portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers,
they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a
blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them,
altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't
what it used to be.
The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse
abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that fourwheel-
drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving
just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty
years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their
bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense
lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will
melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the
bottom, sucking the biomass down with it. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
746:demonstrating that the first of these, the integral fast reactor, was safe even under the circumstances that destroyed Three Mile Island 2 and would prove disastrous at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), an even more advanced concept developed at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is fueled by thorium. More plentiful and far harder to process into bomb-making material than uranium, thorium also burns more efficiently in a reactor and could produce less hazardous radioactive waste with half-lives of hundreds, not tens of thousands, of years. Running at atmospheric pressure, and without ever reaching a criticality, the LFTR doesn’t require a massive containment building to guard against loss-of-coolant accidents or explosions and can be constructed on such a compact scale that every steel mill or small town could have its own microreactor tucked away underground. In 2015 Microsoft founder Bill Gates had begun funding research projects similar to these fourth-generation reactors in a quest to create a carbon-neutral power source for the future. By then, the Chinese government had already set seven hundred scientists on a crash program to build the world’s first industrial thorium reactor as part of a war on pollution. “The problem of coal has become clear,” the engineering director of the project said. “Nuclear power provides the only solution. ~ Adam Higginbotham, #NFDB
747:Imaginearea solicită integral atenția. Atunci când se găsește în zona imaginației, mintea suportă tot atâtea întreruperi câte suportă un genist când dezamorsează o bombă, un bucătar când duce un platou greu în brațe ori un om de afaceri care își pregătește ședința pentru a doua zi dimineață. Un copil care stă pe podea în mijlocul unui haos și se joacă cu trei păpuși și un vas de apă, sau unul care aleargă pe afară și sare din boschet în boschet, este la fel de serios angajat în activitatea lui ca orice adult. Probabil chiar mai serios. Jocul lui este munca lui. Dacă îl ridicăm de pe podea sau îl chemăm în casă pentru a se spăla sau schimba de haine înainte ca jocul să se încheie, îl întrerupem din muncă. Suntem noi capabili să împăcăm obediența noastră față de fantasma ceasului și a realității sale cu realitatea fantasmei copilului?
Ghinda este obsesională. Ea este toată concentrare și numai concentrare, nediluată, asemenea unei picături de parfum. Comportamentul unui copil desfășoară ceea ce este comprimat. Copilul se joacă cu codul germinativ care îl împinge la aceste activități obsesive. Prin forța propriei concentrări copilul își câștigă spațiu și experiență pentru homunculusul adevărului său înnăscut și-i permite adevărului să se exprime în diferite stiluri, forme și funcții pe care le poate realiza doar obsesiv, repetitiv și exhaustiv. E nevoie de curtoazie. E nevoie să ciocănim la ușă înainte de a intra. ~ James Hillman,#NFDB
748: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#NFDB
749:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],#NFDB
750:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#NFDB
751:You’ve probably had a similar experience with someone you know. I’ve already recounted the stories of three of my closest friends—one in high school, one in college, and one in seminary—who seemed so dedicated to serving the Lord, and yet all of them eventually turned their backs on Him. One became a dope-smoking rock-concert promoter, and another became a Buddhist. These were not casual acquaintances, but friends at a very close level. I was sure they shared my passion for the true gospel as much as they shared my love for sports. These three young men proved to me that you can profess Christ and not know Him. You can think you’re a Christian and later see clearly that you’re not; you can certainly deceive other people. Seeing these seemingly intelligent, dedicated, strong Christians abandon their beliefs forced me to think about who is really a Christian and what being a Christian really means. Their actions portrayed them as fellow soldiers of Christ, but in the end their hearts exposed them as traitors. Spiritual defectors are an integral part of the story of Christianity, both past and present. They’re in your life and mine, just as they were in Jesus’ life. They shouldn’t surprise you, defeat you, disappoint you, or cause you to despair. Jesus’ insights on spiritual defectors in John 6, and the reaction to His teaching about the issue, give us one of the most compelling and enlightening stories of His ministry. It’s worth considering closely. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
752:Integral Psychology presents a very complex picture of the individual. As he did previously in The Atman Project, at the back of the book Wilber has included numerous charts showing how his model relates to the work of a hundred or so different authors from East and West.57
57. Wilber compares the models of Huston Smith, Plotinus, Buddhism, Stan Grof, John Battista, kundalini yoga, the Great Chain of Being, James Mark Baldwin, Aurobindo, the Kabbalah, Vedanta, William Tiller, Leadbeater, Adi Da, Piaget, Commons and Richards, Kurt Fisher, Alexander, Pascual-Leone, Herb Koplowitz, Patricia Arlin, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Jan Sinnot, Michael Basseches, Jane Loevinger, John Broughton, Sullivan, Grant and Grant, Jenny Wade, Michael Washburn, Erik Erikson, Neumann, Scheler, Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Steiner, Don Beck, Suzanne Cook-Greuter, Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, Kohlberg, Torbert, Blanchard-Fields, Kitchener and King, Deirdre Kramer, William Perry, Turner and Powell, Cheryl Armon, Peck, Howe, Rawls, Piaget, Selman, Gilligan, Hazrat Inayat Khan, mahamudra meditation, Fowler, Underhill, Helminiak, Funk, Daniel Brown, Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, St. Palamas, classical yoga, highest tantra yoga, St Teresa, Chirban, St Dionysius, Patanjali, St Gregory of Nyssa, transcendental meditation, Fortune, Maslow, Chinen, Benack, Gardner, Melvin Miller, Habermas, Jean Houston, G. Heard, Lenski, Jean Gebser, A. Taylor, Jay Early, Robert Bellah, and Duane Elgin. ~ Frank Visser, Ken Wilber Thought as Passion,#NFDB
753:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],#NFDB
754:the psychic being :::
... it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark of the Divine which supports this obscure mass of our nature and around it grows the psychic being, the formed soul or the real Man within us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begin to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.
As in the works of knowledge, so in dealing with the workings of the heart, we are obliged to make a preliminary distinction between two categories of movements, those that are either moved by the true soul or aid towards its liberation and rule in the nature and those that are turned to the satisfaction of the unpurified vital nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 150,#NFDB
755:Faking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don’t believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling. There are fake beliefs, fake opinions, fake kinds of expertise. There is also fake emotion, which comes about when people debase the forms and the language in which true feeling can take root, so that they are no longer fully aware of the difference between the true and the false. Kitsch is one very important example of this. The kitsch work of art is not a response to the real world, but a fabrication designed to replace it. Yet both producer and consumer conspire to persuade each other that what they feel in and through the kitsch work of art is something deep, important and real.
Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention — in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. In an important sense, therefore, faking is not something that can be intended, even though it comes about through intentional actions. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but his pretence is merely a continuation of his lying strategy. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a high culture works, and how it can become corrupted. ~ Roger Scruton,#NFDB
756:A divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral Yoga
For a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral Yoga
If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka Of Integral yoga
If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: Renunciation
Sadhaka of Integral yoga
To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother’s Love,#NFDB
757:challenge for the Integral Yogin :::
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 78, [T9],#NFDB
758:We are all of us exposed to grief: the people we love die, as we shall ourselves in due course; expectations are disappointed and ambitions are thwarted by circumstance. Finally, there are some who insist upon feeling guilty over the ill they have done or simply on account of the ugliness which they perceive in their own souls. A solution of a kind has been found to this problem in the form of sedatives and anti-depressant drugs, so that many human experiences which used to be accepted as an integral part of human life are now defined and dealt with as medical problems. The widow who grieves for a beloved husband becomes a 'case', as does the man saddened by the recollection of the napalm or high explosives he has dropped on civilian populations. One had thought that guilt was a way, however indirect, in which we might perceive the nature of reality and the laws which govern our human experience; but it is now an illness that can be cured.
Death however, remains incurable. Though we might be embarrassed by Victorian death-bed scenes or the practices of mourning among people less sophisticated than ourselves, the fact of death tells us so much about the realities of our condition that to ignore it or try to forget it is to be unaware of the most important thing we need to know about our situation as living creatures. Equally, to witness and participate in the dying of our fellow men and women is to learn what we are and, if we have any wisdom at all, to draw conclusions which must in their way affect our every thought and our every act. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,#NFDB
759:I have run in the sun and felt the power of it. I have run for the tape, run against the clock, I have run with thousands and run with only myself for company. I have run around and around the track over and over again and run with no idea where I was going. I have run for no particular reason to any particular place. I have run to help my heart’s efficiency; I have run because my heart ached. I have run fast and felt more alive than ever and I have run to bury or fight something deep within. I have run when I knew I needed to and I have run when I knew I shouldn’t have. I have loathed running and I have praised running. I have run for a personal record and made it and I have run giving everything I had and come up just a bit short. I have run and let laughter and storytelling roll the miles away. I have felt the pounding of every single step in silent solitude. I have run enough to know that we sometimes feel like an old pair of shoes and sometimes we feel like new ones. I have run enough to know the difference between a hard, cold head wind and a brisk steady wind at our back. I have run enough to know that once you get out a certain distance you had better be able to get back. I have had runner friends who have poured out their guts to me about my place in their life, some who just said thanks or said nothing at all. I am simply a runner who has failed and succeeded, faded and surged, hoped, dreamed! Running has given me my greatest ideas, thoughts and moments of joy. To feel the “flow”, that feeling of peace, joy, timelessness, focus and clarity is an integral part of the human experience. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
760:the vital
the life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul of man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of nature. The vital part of man is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and governed by the spiritual light and power. The vital has three main parts:
higher vital
the mental vital and emotional vital taken together. The mental vital gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations or other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest.
central vital or vital proper
dynamic, sensational and passionate, it is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passion of various kinds and the field of many vital energies.
lower vital
made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc. The material vital is that part of the lower vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane. ~ Integral Yoga; Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice,#NFDB
761:"The indictment [the Western/modern question, 'Why be moral?'] also issued from a gross underrating of the 'moral' force that was regarded within the Islamic tradition as an essential and integral part of the 'law.' At the foundation of this underrating stood the observer's ideological judgement about religion (at least the Islamic religion), a judgment of repugnance, especially when religion as a moral and theological force is seen to be fused with law. The judgement, in other words, undercuts a proper apprehension of the role of modernity as a legal form, of its power and force. Historical evidence [in modernity/Enlightenment thought and its intellectual progeny] was thus made to fit into what makes sense to us, not what made sense to a culture that defined itself -- systematically, teleologically, and existentially -- in different terms. This entrenched repugnance for the religious -- at least in this case to the 'Islamic' in Muslim societies -- amounted, in legal terms, to the foreclosure of the possibility of considering the force of the moral within the realm of the legal, and vice versa. Theistic teleology, eschatology, and socially grounded moral gain, status, honor, shame, and much else of a similar type were reduced in importance, if not totally set aside, in favor of other explanations that 'fit better' within our preferred, but distinctively modern, countermoral systems of value. History was brought down to us, to the epistemological here and now, according to our own terms, when in theory no one denies that it was our historiographical set of terms that ought to have been subordinated to the imperatives of historical writing. ~ Wael B Hallaq, #NFDB
762:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#NFDB
763:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,#NFDB
764:A prohibition on the hoarding or possession of gold was integral to the plan to devalue the dollar against gold and get people spending again. Against this background, FDR issued Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933, one of the most extraordinary executive orders in U.S. history. The blunt language over the signature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks for itself: I, Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . declare that [a] national emergency still continues to exist and . . . do hereby prohibit the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the . . . United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations.... All persons are hereby required to deliver, on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal reserve bank . . . or to any member of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them.... Whoever willfully violates any provision of this Executive Order . . . may be fined not more than $10,000 or . . . may be imprisoned for not more than ten years. The people of the United States were being ordered to surrender their gold to the government and were offered paper money at the exchange rate of $20.67 per ounce. Some relatively minor exceptions were made for dentists, jewelers and others who made “legitimate and customary” use of gold in their industry or art. Citizens were allowed to keep $100 worth of gold, about five ounces at 1933 prices, and gold in the form of rare coins. The $10,000 fine proposed in 1933 for those who continued to hoard gold in violation of the president’s order is equivalent to over $165,000 in today’s money, an extraordinarily large statutory fine. Roosevelt followed up with a ~ James Rickards, #NFDB
765:In the one hundred thirty years since Petrie published his seminal studies of the pyramids and temples of Egypt, the hand tools and building and sculpting tools used by men and women have improved exponentially in capability and efficiency and hard drives are better known as integral devices in a computer.
Yet we are taught that during the three thousand years that the ancient Egyptians flourished on this planet, the tools used by men and women did not change. How could this be? The finely crafted and precise boxes inside the pyramids at Giza were supposedly created in the fourth dinasty, 2500 BCE, or forty-five hundred years ago. The finely crafted and precise boxes inside the rock tunnels of the Serapeum were supposedly created in the eighteenth dynasty, 1550-1200 BCE, or thirty-five hundred years ago. We are asked to believe that in a one-thousand-year span, the ancient Egyptians did not make any significant improvement in their tools and methods for cutting hard igneous rock. We, however, have examined the results of their labor, and it is clear that the Egyptians were not stupid people. In fact, they were geniuses in their accomplishments, yet we are to accept that while they tapped into the awesome power of the human spirit and creativity, they did not ask, over the course of a full millennium, how they could do their job better--how they could demand less pain and strain from their workforce, how they could do more with less effort, how they could reduce injuries and provide workers with more time off. If there is any mystery to ancient Egypt, it is why a paradigm that was established one hundred thirty years ago still holds force among many Egyptologists and archaeologists. ~ Christopher Dunn,#NFDB
766:[the first aid, shastra, the lotus of the eternal knowledge:]
The supreme Shastra of the Integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.
Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids [53] [T1],#NFDB
767:The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.
But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so.
Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by.
We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed ~ Emma Restall Orr,#NFDB
768:The Western Front was at all times, according to this view, the decisive theatre of the war, and all the available forces should continually have been concentrated there. The only method of waging war on the Western Front was by wearing down the enemy by ‘killing Germans in a war of attrition.’ This we are assured was always Sir Douglas Haig’s scheme; he pursued it unswervingly throughout his whole Command. Whether encouraged or impeded by the Cabinet, his policy was always the same: ‘Gather together every man and gun and wear down the enemy by constant and if possible by ceaseless attacks.’ This in the main, it is contended, he succeeded in doing, with the result, it is claimed, that in August, 1918, the enemy, at last worn down, lost heart, crumpled, and finally sued for peace. Viewing the events in retrospect, Colonel Boraston invites us to see, not only each of the various prolonged offensives as an integral operation, but the whole four years, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, as if they were one single enormous battle every part of which was a necessary factor in the final victory. We wore the enemy down, we are told, upon the Somme in 1916, we wore him down at Arras in the spring, we continued to wear him down at Passchendaele in the winter of 1917. If the army had been properly reinforced by the politicians we should have persisted in wearing him down in the spring of 1918. Finally, as the fruits of all this process of attrition and ‘killing Germans’ by offensive operations, the enemy’s spirit was quelled, his man power was exhausted, and the war was won. Thus a great design, measured, foreseen and consciously prepared, reached its supreme accomplishment. Such is the theory. These views are supported in the two important ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
769:If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximities which finally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds.
Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justifications for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call ‘stimuli’— namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the ‘true’ world. ‘How could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and fitted well enough into its superstructure.’ But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as Kant said with profound insight, could not be associated. By placing them on the same footing, that of the unique object, synopsis makes continuity and resemblance between them possible. An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,#NFDB
770:"The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analogous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief." ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
771:"The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analogous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief." ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
772:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divineWill and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T2],#NFDB
773:I understood slavery as bad and I had a vague sense that it had once been integral to the country and that the dispute over it had somehow contributed to the civil war. But even that partial sense ran contrary to the way the civil war was presented in the popular culture, as a violent misunderstanding, an honorable dual between wayward brothers instead of what it was. A spectacular chapter in a long war that was declared when the first Africans were brought chained to American shores. When it comes to the civil war, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext of our arguments, are in defiance of its painful truths. It is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature, or that The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film. Both emerged from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which seven hundred fifty thousand American soldiers were killed, more than all American soldiers kill in all other American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding African slavery. That war was inaugurated, not reluctantly, but lustily by men who believe property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to be an edict of god, and so delivered their own children to his maw. And when that war was done the now defeated god lived on honored through the human sacrifice of lynching and racist programs. The history breaks the myth. And so, the history is ignored and fictions are weaved in to our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom, and transform banditry into chivalry. And so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
774:In Broadway, I suddenly found myself face to face with William de la Touche Clancey.
"Well!" A long drawn-out syllable, in which fear and condescension were unpleasantly mingled. "What is the young Old Patroon about to turn his hand to next?"
"The Vauxhall Gardens, I should think." My dislike of Clancey is almost physical. Yet I stare at him with fascination; note that his protuberant eyes are yellowish; that he scratches himself compulsively; that his tongue darts in and out of his mouth like a lizard's catching flies.
"Of the delicious nymphs you sport with there?"
"Of the delicious fauns, too — and their goatish friends."
"Uh-huh..." A long, drawn-out attempt at sounding amused failed of its object. "I hope you realize that your editor's unholy passion for the Negro grows more embarrassing each day. If I were he I should beware. He might simply vanish one dark night."
"Murdered? Or sold into slavery?" Clancey recently delighted his admirers by proposing that since the institution of slavery has been an integral part of every high civilization (and peculiarly well-adapted to those nations that follow the word as well as the spirit of Old and New Testaments), poor whites should be bought and sold as well as blacks.
"I don't believe that poor sick Mr. Leggett would command a high price in the bazaar. Only his diseased mind would have a certain morbid interest to the special collector. You, on the other hand, ought to fetch a pretty price."
"More than the usual two dollars you pay?" Two dollars is the current rate for a male prostitute.
"Much more! Why, just for those pink Dutch cheeks alone!" It would be nice to record that I thought to something terminal to say but in my rage I could think of absolutely nothing and so left him with the last word. ~ Gore Vidal,#NFDB
775:the aim of our yoga :::
The aim set before our Yoga is nothing less than to hasten this supreme object of our existence here. Its process leaves behind the ordinary tardy method of slow and confused growth through the evolution of Nature. For the natural evolution is at its best an uncertain growth under cover, partly by the pressure of the environment, partly by a groping education and an ill-lighted purposeful effort, an only partially illumined and half-automatic use of opportunities with many blunders and lapses and relapses; a great portion of it is made up of apparent accidents and circumstances and vicissitudes, - though veiling a secret divine intervention and guidance. In Yoga we replace this confused crooked crab-motion by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution which is planned to carry us, as far as can be, in a straight line towards the goal set before us. In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal, an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of a new birth; there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force - and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this new birth that we make our aim: a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, 89-90,#NFDB
776:On August 16, 2012, the South African police intervened in a labor conflict between workers at the Marikana platinum mine near Johannesburg and the mine’s owners: the stockholders of Lonmin, Inc., based in London. Police fired on the strikers with live ammunition. Thirty-four miners were killed.1 As often in such strikes, the conflict primarily concerned wages: the miners had asked for a doubling of their wage from 500 to 1,000 euros a month. After the tragic loss of life, the company finally proposed a monthly raise of 75 euros.2 This episode reminds us, if we needed reminding, that the question of what share of output should go to wages and what share to profits—in other words, how should the income from production be divided between labor and capital?—has always been at the heart of distributional conflict. In traditional societies, the basis of social inequality and most common cause of rebellion was the conflict of interest between landlord and peasant, between those who owned land and those who cultivated it with their labor, those who received land rents and those who paid them. The Industrial Revolution exacerbated the conflict between capital and labor, perhaps because production became more capital intensive than in the past (making use of machinery and exploiting natural resources more than ever before) and perhaps, too, because hopes for a more equitable distribution of income and a more democratic social order were dashed. I will come back to this point. The Marikana tragedy calls to mind earlier instances of violence. At Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 1, 1886, and then at Fourmies, in northern France, on May 1, 1891, police fired on workers striking for higher wages. Does this kind of violent clash between labor and capital belong to the past, or will it be an integral part of twenty-first-century history? ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
777:The call for justice was a protest as fierce as those of the biblical prophets and of Jesus, and the similarity of the call was no coincidence. As with early Judaism and early Christianity, early Islam would be rooted in opposition to a corrupt status quo. Its protest of inequity would be an integral part of the demand for inclusiveness, for unity and equality under the umbrella of the one god regardless of lineage, wealth, age, or gender. This is what would make it so appealing to the disenfranchised, those who didn't matter in the grand Meccan scheme of things, like slaves and freedmen, widows and orphans, all those cut out of the elite by birth or circumstance. And it spoke equally to the young and idealistic, those who had not yet learned to knuckle under to the way things were and who responded to the deeply egalitarian strain of the verses. All were equal before God, the thirteen-year-old Ali as important as the most respected graybeard, the daughter as much as the son, the African slave as much as the highborn noble. It was a potent and potentially radical re-envisioning of society.
This was a matter of politics as much as of faith. The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. All three, that is, were originally driven by ideals of justice and egalitarianism, rejecting the inequities of human power in favor of a higher and more just one. No matter how far they might have strayed from their origins as they became institutionalized over time, the historical record clearly indicates that what we now call the drive for social justice was the idealistic underpinning of monotheistic faith. ~ Lesley Hazleton,#NFDB
778:They are more inward looking by nature, and for them the outward movement into form is minimal. They would rather return home than go out. They have no desire to get strongly involved in or change the world. If they have any ambitions, they usually don’t go beyond finding something to do that gives them a degree of independence. Some of them find it hard to fit into this world. Some are lucky enough to find a protective niche where they can lead a relatively sheltered life, a job that provides them with a regular income or a small business of their own. Some may feel drawn toward living in a spiritual community or monastery. Others may become dropouts and live on the margins of a society they feel they have little in common with. Some turn to drugs because they find living in this world too painful. Others eventually become healers or spiritual teachers, that is to say, teachers of Being. In past ages, they would probably have been called contemplatives. There is no place for them, it seems, in our contemporary civilization. On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet. I call them the frequency-holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through “just being.” In this way, they endow the seemingly insignificant with profound meaning. Their task is to bring spacious stillness into this world by being absolutely present in whatever they do. There is consciousness and therefore quality in what they do, even the simplest task. Their purpose is to do everything in a sacred manner. As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
779:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#NFDB
780:An integral part of a public offering is a “road show,” during which company leaders pitch their prospects to bankers and investment gurus. Brin and Page refused to see themselves as supplicants. According to Lise Buyer, the founders routinely spurned any advice from the experienced financial team they’d hired to guide them through the process. “If you told them you couldn’t do something a certain way, they would think you were an idiot,” she says. The tone of the road-show presentations was set early, as Brin and Page introduced themselves by first names, an opening more appropriate for bistro waiters than potential captains of industry. And of course they weren’t attired like executives—the day of their presentation of Google’s case to investors was one more in a lifetime of casual dress days for them. Google had prepared a video to promote the company, but viewers considered it amateurish. It was poorly lit and wasn’t even enlivened by the customary upbeat musical sound track. Though anyone who read the prospectus should have been prepared for that, some investors had difficulty with the heresy that Google was willing to forgo some profits for its founders’ idealistic views of what made the world a better place. On the video Brin cautioned that Google might apply its resources “to ameliorate a number of the world’s problems.” Probably the low point of the road show was a massive session involving 1,500 potential investors at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. Brin and Page caused a firestorm by refusing to answer many questions, cracking jokes instead. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Some investors sitting in the ballroom began speculating with each other whether the executives had spent any time practicing the presentation, or if they were winging it.” The latter was in fact the case—despite the desperate urging of Google’s IPO team, Page and Brin had refused to perform even a cursory run-through. ~ Steven Levy, #NFDB
781:It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roots he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal, smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.
One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind, which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. ("Smoke Ghost") ~ Fritz Leiber,#NFDB
782:But hell can endure for only a limited period, and life will begin again one day. History may perhaps have
an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it, in the image of what we henceforth know to be
true. Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason
for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead. His most instinctive act of
rebellion, while it affirms the value and the dignity common to all men, obstinately claims, so as to satisfy
its hunger for unity, an integral part of the reality whose name is beauty. One can reject all history and yet
accept the world of the sea and the stars. The rebels who wish to ignore nature and beauty are condemned
to banish from history everything with which they want to construct the dignity of existence and of labor.
Every great reformer tries to create in history what Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Tolstoy knew
how to create: a world always ready to satisfy the hunger for freedom and dignity which every man
carries in his heart. Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions
will have need of beauty. The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with
unity, is also the procedure of rebellion. Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to
acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world? Our answer is yes. This ethic, at once unsubmissive
and loyal, is in any event the only one that lights the way to a truly realistic revolution. In upholding
beauty, we prepare the way for the day of regeneration when civilization will give first place—far ahead
of the formal principles and degraded values of history—to this living virtue on which is founded the
common dignity of man and the world he lives in, and which we must now define in the face of a world
that insults it. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
783:middle vision logic or paradigmatic ::: (1:25) Cognition is described as middle-vision logic, or paradigmatic in that it is capable of co-ordinating the relations between systems of systems, unifying them into principled frameworks or paradigms. This is an operation on meta-systems and allows for the view described above, a view of human development itself. Self-sense at teal is called Autonomous or Strategist and is characterized by the emergent capacity to acknowledge and cope with inner conflicts in needs, ... and values. All of which are part of a multifacted and complex world. Teal sees our need for autonomy and autonomy itself as limited because emotional interdependence is inevitable. The contradictory aspects of self are weaved into an identity that is whole, integrated and commited to generating a fulfilling life.
Additionally, Teal allows individuals to link theory and practice, perceive dynamic systems interactions, recognize and strive for higher principles, understand the social construction of reality, handle paradox and complexity, create positive-sum games and seek feedback from others as a vital source for growth. Values embrace magnificence of existence, flexibility, spontaneioty, functionality, the integration of differences into interdependent systems and complimenting natural egalitarianism with natural ranking. Needs shift to self-actualization, and morality is in both terms of universal ethical principles and recognition of the developmental relativity of those universals. Teal is the first wave that is truly able to see the limitations of orange and green morality, it is able to uphold the paradox of universalism and relativism. Teal in its decision making process is able to see ... deep and surface features of morality and is able to take into consideration both those values when engaging in moral action. Currently Teal is quite rare, embraced by 2-5% of the north american and european population according to sociological research. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-53, Middle Vision Logic,#NFDB
784:The way of integral knowledge supposes that we are intended to arrive at an integral self-fulfilment and the only thing that is to be eliminated is our own unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of the Ignorance. Eliminate the falsity of the being which figures as the ego; then our true being can manifest in us. Eliminate the falsity of the life which figures as mere vital craving and the mechanical round of our corporeal existence; our true life in the power of the Godhead and the joy of the Infinite will appear. Eliminate the falsity of the senses with their subjection to material shows and to dual sensations; there is a greater sense in us that can open through these to the Divine in things and divinely reply to it. Eliminate the falsity of the heart with its turbid passions and desires and its dual emotions; a deeper heart in us can open with its divine love for all creatures and its infinite passion and yearning for the responses of the Infinite. Eliminate the falsity of the thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater faculty of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe. An integral self-fulfilment, - an absolute, a culmination for the experiences of the heart, for its instinct of love, joy, devotion and worship; an absolute, a culmination for the senses, for their pursuit of divine beauty and good and delight in the forms of things; an absolute, a culmination for the life, for its pursuit of works, of divine power, mastery and perfection; an absolute, a culmination beyond its own limits for the thought, for its hunger after truth and light and divine wisdom and knowledge. Not something quite other than themselves from which they are all cast away is the end of these things in our nature, but something supreme in which they at once transcend themselves and find their own absolutes and infinitudes, their harmonies beyond measure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,#NFDB
785:Designori's face had clouded over once more. "Some times," he said resignedly, "it seems to me that we have not only two different languages and ways of expressing ourselves, each of which can only vaguely be translated into the other, but that we are altogether and fundamentally different creatures who can never understand each other. Which of us is really the authentic and integral human being, you or me? Every so often I doubt that either of us is. There were times when I looked up to you members of the Order and Glass Bead Game players with such reverence, such a sense of inferiority, and such envy that you might have been gods or supermen, forever serene, forever playing, forever enjoying your own existences, forever immune to suffering. At other times you seemed to me either pitiable or contemptible, eunuchs, artificially confined to an eternal childhood, child-like and childish in your cool, tightly fenced, neatly tidied playground and kindergarten, where every nose is carefully wiped and every troublesome emotion is soothed, every dangerous thought repressed, where everyone plays nice, safe, bloodless games for a lifetime and every jagged stirring of life, every strong feeling, every genuine passion, every rapture is promptly checked, deflected, and neutralized by meditation therapy. Isn't it artificial, sterilized, didactically pruned world, a mere sham world in which you cravenly vegetate, a world without vices, without passions, without hunger, without sap and salt, a world without family, without mothers, without children, almost without women? The instinctual life is tamed by meditation. For generations you have left to others dangerous, daring, and responsible things like economics, law, and politics. Cowardly and well-protected, fed by others, and having few burdensome duties, you lead your drones' lives, and so that they won't be too boring you busy yourselves with all these erudite specialties, count syllables and letters, make music, and play the Glass Bead Game, while outside in the filth of the world poor harried people live real lives and do real work. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
786:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, - some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, - it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, - if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, - sabdabrahmativartate - beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, - srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#NFDB
787:Orice suflet demn de el însuşi ar dori să trăiască viaţa la Extrem.Cine se mulţumeşte doar cu ceea ce i se dă e un sclav.Iar cei care cer mereu ceva în plus se poartă ca nişte copii.
A-ţi trăi viaţa la Extrem înseamnă a trăi până la limită,dar există trei feluri de a face acest lucru,iar fiecărui suflet cultivat îi revine menirea de a-şi alege una dintre metode.Viaţa poate fi trăită la extrem posedând-o în mod extrem,în periplu odiseic prin toate senzaţiile trăite,prin toate formele energiei exteriorizate.Cu toate acestea,rari sunt,în toate epocile,cei care-şi pot închide ochii obosiţi de suma tuturor obsesilor,cei care au avut parte de tot şi în toate felurile.
Rar sunt cei care pot cere şi pot obţine de la viaţă ca ea să li se dăruiască trup şi suflet şi care să ştie,iubind-o din toată inima,să nu fie geloşi pe ea.Fără îndoială,aşa ceva ar trebui să-şi dorească orice suflet puternic şi elevat.Însă atunci când constată că această dorinţă e imposibil de realizat,că-i lipseşte forţa să poată cuceri părţile Totului,i se prezintă sufletului două căi:una dintre ele este abdicarea totală,abstinenţa riguroasă,completă,şi respingerea,din sfera sensibilităţii,a tuturor lucrurilor pe care el nu le poate poseda integral,în domeniul activităţii şi energiei.În mod suprem e mai bine să nu acţionezi deloc decât să acţionezi inutil,fragmentar,insuficient,aşa cum procedează această imbecilă,superfluă şi strivitoare majoritate a oamenilor.
A doua posibilitate este calea perfectului echilibru,căutarea Limitei în Proporţia Absolută,prin care dorinţa arzătoare de Extrem trece de la voinţă şi emoţie la Inteligenţă,căci cea mai mare ambiţie nu mai este a dori să-ţi trăieşti toată viaţa,nici a încerca să trăieşti toate vieţile,ci ambiţia de-aşi ordona toată viaţa,de a o desăvârşi inteligent în Armonie şi Coordonare.Dorinţa de a înţelege,care pentru atâtea suflete nobile înlocuieşte dorinţa de a acţiona,aparţine sferei sensibilităţii.A înlocui energia cu Inteligenţa,a rupe legătura dintre voinţă şi emoţie,golind de orice interes toate actele vieţii materiale;iată tot ceea ce,odată obţinut,valorează mai mult decât viaţa,pe care e atât de greu să o poseszi în întregime şi atât de trist să o posezi parţial. ~ Fernando Pessoa,#NFDB
788: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,#NFDB
789:El poder de las viejas es inmenso. No es verdad que las manden a esta Casa para que pasen sus últimos días en paz, como dicen ellos. Esto es una prisión, llena de celdas, con barrotes en las ventanas, con un carcelero implacable a cargo de las llaves. Los patrones las mandan a encerrar aquí cuando se dan cuenta de que les deben demasiado a estas viejas y sienten pavor porque estas miserables, un buen día, pueden revelar su poder y destruirlos. Los servidores acumulan los privilegios de la miseria. Las conmiseraciones, las burlas, las limosnas, las ayuditas, las humillaciones que soportan los hacen poderosos. Ellas conservan los instrumentos de la venganza porque van acumulando en sus manos ásperas y verrugosas esa otra mitad de sus patrones, la mitad inútil, descartada, lo sucio y lo feo que ellos, confiados y sentimentales, les han ido entregando con el insulto de cada enagua gastada que les regalan, cada camisa chamuscada por la plancha que les permiten que se lleven. ¿Cómo no van a tener a sus patrones en su poder si les lavaron la ropa, y pasaron por sus manos todos los desórdenes y suciedades que ellos quisieron eliminar de sus vidas? Ellas barrieron de sus comedores las migas caídas y lavaron los platos y las fuentes y los cubiertos, comiéndose lo que sobró. Limpiaron el polvo de sus salones las hilachas de sus costuras, los papeles arrugados de sus escritorios y sus oficinas. Restablecieron el orden en las camas donde hicieron el amor legítimo o ilegítimo, satisfactorio o frustrador, sin sentir asco ante esos olores y manchas ajenos. Cosieron los jirones de sus ropas, les sonaron las narices cuando niños, los acostaron cuando llegaron borrachos y limpiaron vómitos y meados, zurcieron sus calcetines y lustraron sus zapatos, les cortaron las uñas y los callos, les escobillaron la espalda en el baño, los peinaron, les pusieron lavativas y les dieron purgantes y tisanas para la fatiga, el cólico o la pena. Desempeñando estos menesteres, las viejas fueron robándose algo integral de las personas de sus patrones al colocarse en su lugar para hacer algo que ellos se negaban a hacer...y la avidez de ellas crece al ir apoderándose de más cosas, y codician más humillaciones y más calcetines viejos regalados como dádivas, quieren apoderarse de todo. ~ Jos Donoso, #NFDB
790:After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy. Only the thing called ‘communism’ stood in the way, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically. Thus it was that the entire US foreign policy establishment was mobilized to confront this ‘enemy’, and the Marshall Plan was an integral part of this campaign. How could it be otherwise? Anti-communism had been the principal pillar of US foreign policy from the Russian Revolution up to World War II, pausing for the war until the closing months of the Pacific campaign when Washington put challenging communism ahead of fighting the Japanese. Even the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan – when the Japanese had already been defeated – can be seen as more a warning to the Soviets than a military action against the Japanese.19 After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of American foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the alliance with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, certain corporations, and a few other private institutions, the Marshall Plan was one more arrow in the quiver of those striving to remake Europe to suit Washington’s desires: 1. Spreading the capitalist gospel – to counter strong postwar tendencies toward socialism. 2. Opening markets to provide new customers for US corporations – a major reason for helping to rebuild the European economies; e.g. a billion dollars (at twenty-first-century prices) of tobacco, spurred by US tobacco interests. 3. Pushing for the creation of the Common Market (the future European Union) and NATO as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat. 4. Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from any kind of influential role. ~ William Blum, #NFDB
791:Within the framework of bourgeois society (and the capitalist regime) work is lived and undergone by the worker as an alien and oppressive power. Not only do the technical division and the social division of labour overlap and impose themselves on him without his knowing the reasons why, but also he knows that he is not working for himself, either directly or indirectly. Moreover the fragmented character of individual labour is in fact interdependent with the increasingly complete socialization of productive labour. Fragmentation and socialization are the dialectically contradictory aspects of the labour process wherever the productive forces are highly developed. Fragmented labour can only be meaningful and productive within global or total labour. Thus for the worker a dual need develops in respect of his own labour.
"On the one hand, the worker aspires to a knowledge of the system in which he plays an integral part: a firm, and also a global society. And this is already a means of not submitting, a freeing himself from imposed constraints, of mastering necessity. In capitalist firms this confused but real aspiration is answered in a mystifying way by 'human relations' and 'public relations'. Marxists who have criticized these recent, originally American, institutions have made the mistake of merely seeing the ideology they embody, and of ignoring the fact that they correspond to a real social need, born precisely from the socialization of labour. They have disregarded this socialization of labour, imagining that it happens only in socialist regimes, whereas it is in fact also a function of the development of the productive forces. They have not understood that in socialism knowledge satisfies a need which under capitalism is answered by an ideology. Reciprocally, the mistake of the non-Marxist industrial sociologists has been that they have not always shown that these innovations (human relations, etc.) were responding to needs purely in order to harness them, twist them, deflect them from their meaning, by reducing them to the dimensions of the firm and to cooperation with the employers.
"Moreover, the worker craves a sharp break with his work, a compensation He looks for this in leisure seen as entertainment or distraction.
"In this way leisure appears as the non-everyday in the everyday. (61-2) ~ Henri Lefebvre,#NFDB
792:Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
793:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#NFDB
794: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,#NFDB
795:The majority of Buddhists and Buddhist teachers in the West are green postmodern pluralists, and thus Buddhism is largely interpreted in terms of the green altitude and the pluralistic value set, whereas the greatest Buddhist texts are all 2nd tier, teal (Holistic) or higher (for example, Lankavatara Sutra, Kalachakra Tantra, Longchenpa's Kindly Bent to Ease Us, Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka treatises, and so forth).
This makes teal (Holistic), or Integral 2nd tier in general, the lowest deeply adequate level with which to interpret Buddhism, ultimate Reality, and Suchness itself. Thus, interpreting Suchness in pluralistic terms (or lower) would have to be viewed ultimately as a dysfunction, certainly a case of arrested development, and one requiring urgent attention in any Fourth Turning.
These are some of the problems with interpreting states (in this case, Suchness states) with a too-low structure (in short, a severe misinterpretation and thus misunderstanding of the Ultimate). As for interpreting them with dysfunctional structures (of any altitude), the problem more or less speaks for itself. Whether the structure in itself is high enough or not, any malformation of the structure will be included in the interpretation of any state (or any other experience), and hence will deform the interpretation itself, usually in the same basic ways as the structure itself is deformed. Thus, for example, if there is a major Fulcrum-3 (red altitude) repression of various bodily states (sex, aggression, power, feelings), those repressions will be interpreted as part of the higher state itself, and so the state will thus be viewed as devoid of (whereas this is actually a repression of) any sex, aggression, power, feelings, or whatever it is that is dis-owned and pushed into the repressed submergent unconscious. If there is an orange altitude problem with self-esteem (Fulcrum-5), that problem will be magnified by the state experience, and the more intense the state experience, the greater the magnification. Too little self-esteem, and even profound spiritual experiences can be interpreted as "I'm not worthy, so this state-which seems to love me unconditionally-must be confused." If too much self-esteem, higher experiences are misinterpreted, not as a transcendence of the self, but as a reward for being the amazing self I am-"the wonder of being me." ~ Ken Wilber, The Religion Of Tomorrow,#NFDB
796:complexity of the human constitution :::
There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.
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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 74-75,#NFDB
797:The difference between supermind and Big Mind (if we take Big Mind to mean the state experience of nondual Suchness, or turiyatita) is that Big Mind can be experienced or recognized at virtually any lower level or rung. Magic to Integral. In fact, one can be at, say, the Pluralistic stage, and experience several core characteristics of the entire sequence of state-stages (gross to subtle to causal to Witnessing to Nondual), although, of course, the entire sequence, including nondual Suchness, will be interpreted in Pluralistic terms. This is unfortunate in many ways—interpreting Dharma in merely Pluralistic terms (or Mythic terms, or Rational, and so on)—because it is so ultimately reductionistic; but it happens all the time, given the relative independence of states and structures at 1st and 2nd tier.
Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date, has access to all previous structures, all the way back to Archaic—and the Archaic itself, of course, has transcended and included, and now embraces, every major structural evolution going all the way back to the Big Bang. (A human being literally enfolds and embraces all the major transformative unfoldings of the entire Kosmic history—strings to quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to cells, all the way through the Tree of Life up to its latest evolutionary emergent, the triune brain, the most complex structure in the known natural world.) Supermind, in any given individual, is experienced as a type of “omniscience”—the supermind, since it transcends and includes all of the previous structure-rungs, and inherently is conjoined with the highest nondual Suchness state, has a full and complete knowledge of all of the potentials in that person. It literally “knows all,” at least for the individual. ~ Ken Wilber,#NFDB
798:Finally, in terms of overall spiritual intelligence—which we have been briefly tracking—on the other side of the leading edge of evolution we have 3 or 4 higher, at this point mostly potential, levels of development, including levels of spiritual intelligence. Individually, their basic strcture-rungs are referred to as para-mind, meta-mind, overmind, and supermind; collectively, they are called 3rd tier. What all 3rd-tier structures have in common is some degree of direct transpersonal identity and experience. Further, each 3rd-tier structure of consciousness is integrated, in some fashion, with a particular state of consciousness (often, para-mental with the gross, meta-mental with subtle, overmind with causal/Witnessing, and supermind with nondual, although this varies with each individual’s actual history). Previously, in 1sst and 2nd tier, structures and states were relatively independent. One could have a state center of gravity at gross and yet structurally evolve all the way to Integral without fully objectifying the gross stage (i.e., fully making it an object, fully transcending it). But beginning with the 3rd-tier para-mind, whenever you experience that structure, you also implicitly or intuitively understand or experience the gross realm as objectified, which means that state is intimately connected to the structure at this level, which gives rise, or can give rise, to expanded states such as nature mysticism (this can be experienced at earlier levels but not inherently, and is interpreted according to the Views of those lower levels; but at this level becomes an inherent potential). Likewise, because of the conjunction with the gross state, this level often carries variations of the realization that the physical world is not merely physical, but is rather psychophysical in its true nature. This can also evoke flashes of higher state presences, such as Witnessing states or even nondual. And so on with the subtle state and meta-mind; causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind. Those states are all “minimally” connected to those structures, in the sesne that, for example, a person at meta-mind might have already and previously moved his or her state center of gravity to subtle, but if not, the person cannot proceed beyond the meta-mind without doing so at this point. And likewise with causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
799:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.
There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,#NFDB
800:meta-systemic operations ::: As the 1950's and 60s begin to roll around the last stage of first tier emerged as a cultural force. With the Green Altitude we see the emergence of Pluralistic, Multicultural, Post-Modern world-views.
Cognition is starting to move beyond formal-operations into the realm of co-ordinating systems of abstractions, in what is called Meta-systemic Cognition. While formal-operations acted upon the classes and relations between members of classes. Meta-systemic operations start at the level of relating systems to systems. The focus of these investigations is placed upon comparing, contrasting, transforming and synthesizing entire systems, rather than components of one system. This emergent faculty allows self-sense to focus around a heightened sense of individuality and an increased ability for emotional resonance. The recognition of individual differences, the ability to tolerate paradox and contradiction, and greater conceptual complexity all provide for an understanding of conflict as being both internally and externally caused. Context plays a major role in the creation of truth and individual perspective. With each being context dependent and open to subjective interpretation, meaning each perspective and truth are rendered relative and are not able to be judged as better or more true than any other. This fuels a value set that centers on softness over cold rationality. Sensitivity and preference over objectivity.
Along with a focus on community harmony and equality which drives the valuing of sensitivity to others, reconcilation, consensus, dialogue, relationship, human development, bonding, and a seeking of a peace with the inner-self. Moral decisions are based on rights, values, or principles that are agreeable to all individuals composing a society based on fair and beneficial practices. All of this leads to the Equality movements and multiculturalism. And to the extreme form of relativitism which we saw earlier as context dependant nature of all truth including objective facts.
Faith at the green altitude is called Conjunctive, and allows the self to integrate what was unrecognized by the previous stages self-certainty and cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. New features at this level of faith include the unification of symbolic power with conceptual meaning, an awareness of ones social unconscious, a reworking of ones past, and an opening to ones deeper self. ~ Essential Integral, 4.1-52, Meta-systemic Operations,#NFDB
801:Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality. But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, 681,#NFDB
802:To rebuild Detroit, we have to think of a new mode of production based upon serving human needs and the needs of the.… community and not on any get-rich-quick schemes.… If we are going to create hope especially for our young people, we have to stop seeing the city as just a place to which you come for a job or to make a living and start seeing it as the place where the humanity of people is enriched because they have the opportunity to live with people of many different ethnic and social backgrounds. The foundation of our city has to be people living in communities who realize that their human identity or their Love and Respect for Self is based on Love and Respect for others and who have also learned from experience that they can no longer leave the decision as to their present and their future to the market place, to corporations or to capitalist politicians, regardless of ethnic background. We, the People, have to see ourselves as responsible for our city and for each other, and especially for making sure that our children are raised to place more value on social ties than on material wealth.… We have to get rid of the myth that there is something sacred about large-scale production for the national and international market.… We have to begin thinking of creating small enterprises which produce food, goods and services for the local market, that is, for our communities and our city. Instead of destroying the skills of workers, which is what large-scale industry does, these small enterprises will combine craftsmanship, or the preservation and enhancement of human skills, with the new technologies which make possible flexible production and constant readjustment to serve the needs of local customers.… In order to create these new enterprises we need a view of our city which takes into consideration both the natural resources of our area and the existing and potential skills and talents of Detroiters.… We also need a fundamental change in our concept of Schools. Since World War II our schools have been transformed into custodial institutions where our children are housed for 12 years with no function except to study and get good grades so that they can win the certificates that will enable them to get a job.… We have to create schools which are an integral part of the community, in which young people naturally and normally do socially necessary and meaningful work for the community, for example, keeping the school grounds and the neighborhood clean and attractive, taking care of younger children, growing gardens which provide food for the community, etc., etc.5 ~ Grace Lee Boggs, #NFDB
803: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,#NFDB
804:What is the difference between meditation and concentration?
Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being.
Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being.
Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different.
If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation will be more interesting and easieR But one can meditate without concentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration.
Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy?
Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same.
To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,#NFDB
805:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.
Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.
And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,#NFDB
806:It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose.
There is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, - to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 176,#NFDB
807:Sri Aurobindo tells us that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. Therefore it is not merely one of the required qualities, it is the very first indispensable attitude for commencing the yoga.
If you are not decided to make a total surrender, you cannot begin. But to make your surrender total, all the other qualities are necessary: sincerity, faith, devotion and aspiration.
And I add another one : endurance. Because if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged, without giving up under the pretext that it is too difficult, if you are not able to receive blows and continue all the same, to "pocket" them, as it is said,—you receive blows because of your defects : you put them into your pocket and continue to march on without faltering; if you cannot do that with endurance, you will not go very far; at the first turning, when you lose sight of the little habitual life, you despair and give up the game.
The most material form of endurance is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if needed, you will arrive nowhere.
People come to me in despair : "But I thought it had been done, and I have to begin again !" And if they are told, "But it is nothing, you have to begin probably a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times", they lose all courage.
You take one step forward and you believe you are solid, but there will be always something that will bring about the same difficulty a little farther ahead.
You believe you have solved the problem, but will have to solve it again, it will present itself with just a little difference in its appearance, but it will be the same problem.
Thus there are people who have a fine experience and they exclaim, "Now, it is done !" Then things settle down, begin to fade, go behind a veil, and all on a sudden, something quite unexpected, a thing absolutely commonplace, that appears to be of no interest at all, comes before them and closes up the road. Then you lament: "Of what use is this progress that I have made, if I am to begin again !
Why is it so? I made an effort, I succeeded, I arrived at something and now it is as if I had done nothing. It is hopeless". This is because there is still the "I" and this "I" has no endurance.
If you have endurance, you say : "All right, I will begin again and again as long as necessary, a thousand times, ten thousand times, a million times, if necessary, but I will go to the end and nothing can stop me on the way".
That is very necessary.
Now, to sum up, we will put at the head of our list surrender. That is to say, we accept the fact that one must, in order to do the integral yoga, take the resolution of surrendering oneself wholly to the Divine. There is no other way, it is the way. ~ The Mother,#NFDB
808:There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided experience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain caught in the net of appearances or wander confusedly in a chaotic multitude of cosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the price of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited personal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life's hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal. But this knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and metaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental realisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge. This infinite and eternal Self of things is an omnipresent Reality, one existence everywhere; it is a single unifying presence and not different in different creatures; it can be met, seen or felt in its completeness in each soul or each form in the universe. For its infinity is spiritual and essential and not merely a boundlessness in Space or an endlessness in Time; the Infinite can be felt in an infinitesimal atom or in a second of time as convincingly as in the stretch of the aeons or the stupendous enormity of the intersolar spaces. The knowledge or experience of it can begin anywhere and express itself through anything; for the Divine is in all, and all is the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice,#NFDB
809:Our political system today does not engage the best minds in our country to help us get the answers and deploy the resources we need to move into the future. Bringing these people in—with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources—is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve the problems we face, before it’s too late. Our goal must be to find a new way of unleashing our collective intelligence in the same way that markets have unleashed our collective productivity. “We the people” must reclaim and revitalize the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution. The traditional progressive solution to problems that involve a lack of participation by citizens in civic and democratic processes is to redouble their emphasis on education. And education is, in fact, an extremely valuable strategy for solving many of society’s ills. In an age where information has more economic value than ever before, it is obvious that education should have a higher national priority. It is also clear that democracies are more likely to succeed when there is widespread access to high-quality education. Education alone, however, is necessary but insufficient. A well-educated citizenry is more likely to be a well-informed citizenry, but the two concepts are entirely different, one from the other. It is possible to be extremely well educated and, at the same time, ill informed or misinformed. In the 1930s and 1940s, many members of the Nazi Party in Germany were extremely well educated—but their knowledge of literature, music, mathematics, and philosophy simply empowered them to be more effective Nazis. No matter how educated they were, no matter how well they had cultivated their intellect, they were still trapped in a web of totalitarian propaganda that mobilized them for evil purposes. The Enlightenment, for all of its liberating qualities—especially its empowerment of individuals with the ability to use reason as a source of influence and power—has also had a dark side that thoughtful people worried about from its beginning. Abstract thought, when organized into clever, self-contained, logical formulations, can sometimes have its own quasi-hypnotic effect and so completely capture the human mind as to shut out the leavening influences of everyday experience. Time and again, passionate believers in tightly organized philosophies and ideologies have closed their minds to the cries of human suffering that they inflict on others who have not yet pledged their allegiance and surrendered their minds to the same ideology. The freedoms embodied in our First Amendment represented the hard-won wisdom of the eighteenth century: that individuals must be able to fully participate in challenging, questioning, and thereby breathing human values constantly into the prevailing ideologies of their time and sharing with others the wisdom of their own experience. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
810:We come into contact with people only with our exteriors—physically and externally; yet each of us walks about with a great wealth of interior life, a private and secret self. We are, in reality, somewhat split in two, the self and the body; the one hidden, the other open. The child learns very quickly to cultivate this private self
because it puts a barrier between him and the demands of the world. He learns he can keep secrets—at first an excruciating, intolerable burden: it seems that the outer world has every right to penetrate into his self and that the parents could automatically do so if they wished—they always seem to know just what he is thinking and feeling. But then he discovers that he can lie and not be found out: it is a
great and liberating moment, this anxious first lie—it represents the staking out of his claim to an integral inner self, free from the prying eyes of the world. By the time we grow up we become masters at dissimulation, at cultivating a self that the world cannot probe. But we pay a price. After years of turning people away,
of protecting our inner self, of cultivating it by living in a different world, of furnishing this world with our fantasies and dreams—we find that we are hopelessly separated from everyone else. We have become victims of our own art. We touch people on the outsides of their bodies, and they us, but we cannot get at their insides and cannot reveal our insides to them. This is one of the great tragedies of our interiority—it is utterly personal and unrevealable. Often we want to say something unusually intimate to a spouse, a parent, a friend, communicate
something of how we are really feeling about a sunset, who we really feel we are—only to fall strangely and miserably flat. Once in a great while we succeed, sometimes more with one person, less or never with others. But the occasional breakthrough only proves the rule. You reach out with a disclosure, fail, and fall back bitterly into yourself. We emit huge globs of love to our parents and spouses, and the glob slithers away in exchanges of words that are somehow beside the point of what we are trying to say. People seem to keep bumping up against each other with their exteriors and falling away from each other. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer is the modern master of this aspect of the human tragedy. Take even the sexual act—the most intimate merger given to organisms. For most people, even for their entire lives, it is simply a joining of exteriors. The insides melt only in the moment of orgasm, but even this is brief, and a melting is not a communication. It is a physical overcoming of separateness, not a symbolic revelation and justification of one’s interior. Many people pursue sex precisely because it is a mystique of the overcoming of the separateness of the inner world; and they go from one partner to another because they can never quite achieve “it.” So the endless interrogations: “What are you thinking about right now—me? Do you feel what I feel? Do you love me? ~ Ernest Becker,#NFDB
811:Quem fez a primeira pergunta?
Quem fez o mundo?
Se foi Deus, quem fez Deus?
Por que dois e dois são quatro?
Quem disse a primeira palavra?
Quem chorou pela primeira vez?
Por que o Sol é quente?
Por que a Lua é fria?
Por que o pulmão respira?
Por que se morre?
Por que se ama?
Por que se odeia?
Quem fez a primeira cadeira?
Por que se lava roupa?
Por que se tem seios?
Por que se tem leite?
Por que há o som?
Por que há o silêncio?
Por que há o tempo?
Por que há o espaço?
Por que há o infinito?
Por que eu existo?
Por que você existe?
Por que há o esperma?
Por que há o óvulo?
Por que a pantera tem olhos?
Por que há o erro?
Por que se lê?
Por que há a raiz quadrada?
Por que há flores?
Por que há o elemento terra?
Por que a gente quer dormir?
Por que acendi o cigarro?
Por que há o elemento fogo?
Por que há o rio?
Por que há a gravidade?
Por que e quem inventou os óculos?
Por que há doenças?
Por que há saúde?
Por que faço perguntas?
Por que não há respostas?
Por que quem me lê está perplexo?
Por que a língua sueca é tão macia?
Por que fui a um coquetel na casa do Embaixador da Suécia?
Por que a adida cultural sueca tem como primeiro nome Si?
Por que estou viva?
Por que quem me lê está vivo?
Por que estou com sono?
Por que se dão prêmios aos homens?
Por que a mulher quer o homem?
Por que o homem tem força de querer a mulher?
Por que há o cálculo integral?
Por que escrevo?
Por que Cristo morreu na cruz?
Por que minto?
Por que digo a verdade?
Por que existe a galinha?
Por que existem editoras?
Por que há o dinheiro?
Por que pintei um jarro de vidro de preto opaco?
Por que há o ato sexual?
Por que procuro as coisas e não encontro?
Por que existe o anonimato?
Por que existem os santos?
Por que se reza?
Por que se envelhece?
Por que existe câncer?
Por que as pessoas se reúnem para jantar?
Por que a língua italiana é tão amorosa?
Por que a pessoa canta?
Por que existe a raça negra?
Por que é que eu não sou negra?
Por que um homem mata outro?
Por que neste mesmo instante está nascendo uma criança?
Por que o judeu é raça eleita?
Por que Cristo era judeu?
Por que meu segundo nome parece duro como um diamante?
Por que hoje é sábado?
Por que tenho dois filhos?
Por que eu poderia perguntar indefinidamente por quê?
Por que o fígado tem gosto de fígado?
Por que a minha empregada tem um namorado?
Por que a Parapsicologia é ciência?
Por que vou estudar matemática?
Por que há coisas moles e coisas duras?
Por que tenho fome?
Por que no Nordeste há fome?
Por que uma palavra puxa a outra?
Por que os políticos fazem discurso?
Por que a máquina está ficando tão importante?
Por que tenho de parar de fazer perguntas?
Por que existe a cor verde-escuro?
Por quê?
É porque.
Mas por que não me disseram antes?
Por que adeus?
Por que até o outro sábado?
Por quê? ~ Clarice Lispector,#NFDB
812:The Conference Of The (Underemployed) Birds
"It shows the top half of the workforce enjoying permanent, well-paid, fulltime jobs,
while the bottom half can find only casual, poorly-paid, part-time work which, as
Labour
market economist Professor Sue Richardson warned this week, was creating a
class of
"excluded and dangerous" men with incomes to low to support a
family." - The Age, October 04, 2003.
"My discourse is sans words, sans tongue, sans sound: understand it then,
sans mind, sans ear."
- Farid Ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds
(i)
A Willy-Wagtails' call intercepts the morning. Birds were real once, like jobs.
The modem's dial-up scream is cut short; why is our technology suffering so?
Fake, Australian accents in the call centre aviary: Calcutta nest robbers gloat.
A taxidermy of outsourced work: ditto, we're all stuffed on the global floor.
39
Bottom of the bird market. This new flu's crashed like tech stocks, Acme trap
For the Roadrunner managerial class, the coyote - disenfranchised American?
(ii)
Magpies don't attack in the open anymore, have you noticed: phenomena?
Phone tab's the way forward. Keep an eye on your receiver, not the skies.
There are new powers afoot for dealing with these full employment refos,
Our government issues wide-brimmed hats with strings of corks attached.
The contemporary job market has a thin eggshell; depleted proteins crack.
An excluded & dangerous class birthed? They backed job terrorism not us.
(iii)
I saw a hoopoe once. Was it Jaipur? Its crown of truth strutted on the lawn,
Painted a post-colonial green. What good is spiritual knowledge without law?
40
You will play an integral role in this dynamic environment by fudging your
Work history for sure. Service orientate your brain - lively, world class, lame.
Dangerous as ideas? There's a metal storm inside your head. Try Sufism?
Was it John Lennon or Steve McQueen who went on about "ism ism ism?
"
(iv)
There are nightingales here reputedly. Wasn't it someone from myth who
Couldn't stand being unemployed anymore & turned themselves into one?
Hit an epic glass ceiling probably. Better to be amorous than under-employed?
There's no new twist in the figures though. The virtual exclusion of women
From net growth in full-time job mythology is eons old. Sumerians started it.
Gilgamesh's entrapment of Enkidu needed a woman's art: ‘Wanted Harlot.'
(v)
41
Australia has plenty of parrots, but cockatiels inhabit our universal currency
Of shame. See them locked up in Athens, Rome, Madrid, Delhi & Bangkok.
Feathered service economies, budgerigars tell beak fortunes in Iranian streets.
Collars of gold chained to human profit. Flocks flee drought & agricultural rut.
We even killed off one sub-species called ‘Paradise', cleared full-time underbrush.
& if they were flightless, then we paid out redundancies see: dodo, puffin & moa.
~ B. R. Dionysius,#NFDB
813:Green will typically look at history, for example, and whenever it finds a society in which there is a widespread lack of green values, it assumes that these green values would normally and naturally be present were it not for the fact that they have been maliciously oppressed by the dominator hierarchies found in that society. All individuals would possess worldcentric green values of pluralism, radical egalitarianism, and total equality, except for the oppressive controlling powers that crushed those values wherever they appeared. […] The existence of strong and widespread oppressive forces cannot be doubted. The problem comes in the claim to know what their source and cause is. For green postmodernism, the cause of the lack of worldcentric green values in any culture is due to an aggressive and intensively active repressive and oppressive force (usually the male sex; or a particular race— white in most parts of the world, coupled with a rampant colonialism— and/or due to a particular creed—usually religious fundamentalism of one sort or another; or various prejudices—against gays, against women, against whatever minority that is oppressed). In short, lack of green values (egalitarian, group freedom, gender equality, human care and sensitivity) is due to a presence of oppression. […] The major problem with that view taken by itself is that it completely overlooks the central role of growth, development, and evolution. We’ve already seen that human moral identity grows and develops from egocentric (red) to ethnocentric (amber) to worldcentric (orange then green) to integral (turquoise; and this is true individually as well as collectively/historically). Thus, the main reason that slavery was present, say, 2000 years ago, is not because there was an oppressive force preventing worldcentric freedom, but that a worldcentric notion of freedom had not even emerged yet anywhere on the planet. It wasn’t present and then oppressed, as green imagines, it simply had not yet emerged in the first place—there was nothing to oppress. This is why, as only one example, all of the world’s great religions, who otherwise teach love and compassion and treating all beings kindly, nonetheless—precisely because they were created during the great ethnocentric Mythic Age of traditional civilization —had no extensive and widespread conception of the fundamental worldcentric freedom of human beings—or the belief that all humans, regardless of race, sex, color, or creed, were born equal—and thus not one of them strenuously objected to the fact that a very large portion of their own population were slaves. Athens and Greek society, vaunted home of democracy, had 1 out of 3 of their people who were slaves—and no major complaint on a culture-wide scale. Nor was there a widespread culturally effective complaint from Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism et al. It wasn’t until the emergence of the worldcentric Age of Reason that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” actually came into existence—emerged evolutionarily—and thus started to be believed by the average and typical member of that culture. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
814:An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But mans present nature is limited, divided, unequal, -- it is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the Divine Infinity. Some therefore must choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the minds one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works [279-280],#NFDB
815:Dear Rebecca— You may have picked up on my growing disappointment with you this afternoon as our first meeting progressed. I have to say that though you seem quite personable in your electronic communications, in person your behavior is a little lacking in some of the traits that would let you get from a first to a second date with regularity. If Lovability had a rating system, I would award you 2.5 out of 5 stars; however, if it used a scale that only allowed for integral values, I would unfortunately be forced to round down to two. Here are some suggestions for what you could do to improve the initial impression you make. I am speaking here as a veteran of the online dating scene in LA, which is MUCH more intense than New Jersey’s—there, you are competing with aspiring actors and actresses, and a professionally produced headshot and a warm demeanor are the bare minimum necessary to get in the game. By the end of my first year in LA my askback rate (the rate at which my first dates with women led to second dates) was a remarkable 68%. So I know what I’m talking about. I hope you take this constructive criticism in the manner in which it is intended. 1. Vary your responses to inquiries. When our conversation began, you seemed quite cheerful and animated, but as it progressed you became much less so. I asked you a series of questions that were intended to give you opportunities to reveal more about yourself, but you offered only binary answers, and then, troublingly, no answers at all. If you want your date to go well, you need to display more interest. 2. Direct the flow of conversation. Dialogue is collaborative! One consequence of your reticence was that I was forced to propose all of the topics of discussion, both before and after the transition to more personal subjects. If you contribute topics of your own then it will make you appear more engaged: you should aim to bring up one new subject for every one introduced by your date. 3. Take control of the path of the date. If you want the initial meeting to extend beyond the planned drinks, there are many ways you can go about doing this. You can directly say, for instance, “So I wasn’t thinking about this when you showed up, but…do you have any plans for dinner? I’m starving, and I could really go for some pad thai.” Or you can make a vaguer, more general statement such as “After this, I’m up for whatever,” or “Hey, I don’t really want to go home yet, Bradley: I’m having a lot of fun.” Again, this comes down to a general lack of engagement on your part. Without your feedback I was left to offer a game of Scrabble, which was not the best way to end the meeting. 4. Don’t lie about your ability in Scrabble. I won’t go into an analysis of your strategic and tactical errors here, in the interest of brevity, but your amateurish playing style was quite evident. Now, despite my reservations as expressed above, I really do feel that we had some chemistry. So I would like to give things another chance. Would you respond to this message within the next three days, with a suggestion of a place you’d like us to visit together, or an activity that you believe we would both enjoy? I would be forced to construe a delay of more than three days as an unfortunate sign of indifference. I hope to hear from you soon. Best, Bradley ~ Dexter Palmer, #NFDB
816: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,#NFDB
817:Si consideramos que en el hombre terrenal vive el celestial, educando aquél en la debida forma, colaboramos a la evolución de éste durante el período que media entre el nacimiento y la muerte, único período en el cual pueden tener lugar determinadas experiencias. De este modo, se hace justicia a una concepción adecuadamente orientada hacia un conocimiento del mundo, conocimiento según el cual el hombre debe cooperar en la construcción del gran edificio cósmico espiritual que luego también se manifiesta en el mundo sensible. Una buena educación debe reconocer al hombre como cooperador en la obra del progreso de la humanidad. Esto es lo que ayer quise dar a entender al aludir a una concepción del mundo y de la vida que debe latir en la enseñanza y la educación. De ahí es obvio que el contenido unilateral del cerebro no nos permite concebir el mundo tal como es. Es un error decir que el mundo puede ser concebido en ideas, conceptos y representaciones, como también sería falso afirmar que ha de concebirse con la sensibilidad. El mundo ha de aprehenderse con ideas y sentimientos; pero también con la voluntad. En efecto, sólo si lo divinoespiritual penetra la voluntad, nos apropiamos del mundo y, por consiguiente, también del hombre, no ya únicamente con una parte de nuestro ser, sino con toda nuestra entidad. Necesitamos una concepción del mundo, no sólo para el entendimiento y el intelecto, sino para el hombre integral, el que piensa, siente y quiere; una concepción que, a través del hombre integrado de cuerpo, alma y espíritu, vuelva a descubrir el mundo. Sólo aquel que de este modo redescubra el mundo en el hombre, que contemple el mundo en el hombre, puede tener una verdadera concepción del mundo, puesto que así como en el ojo se refleja el mundo visible, así también el hombre entero es un ojo corporal-anímico-espiritual en el que se refleja el mundo en su totalidad. Esta imagen refleja no se puede contemplar desde fuera: hay que vivirla desde lo interior para que deje de ser apariencia y se convierta en realidad. Entonces, por el proceso educativo, el mundo se convierte en hombre y el hombre descubre en sí el mundo. Educando de esta forma llegamos a darnos cuenta de que, supeditándonos a la materia, es decir, entregándole a ella toda vivencia humana, la humanidad se resquebraja, puesto que, al negarse las almas a sí mismas, no se ganan, sino que se pierden en presencia de otras. Si nos elevamos hasta el espíritu, gracias a él encontramos al prójimo. La vida social, en su verdadera acepción, debe encontarse con sujeción al espíritu. La entidad humana debe encontrarse a sí misma en espíritu, único medio para que se realice la unión entre hombre y hombre. Y para que puedan edificarse mundos sobre la base de actos humanos, el mundo habrá de descubrirse en el hombre. Por esta razón, permítanme que termine estas reflexiones con lo que he tenido en mente mientras les he estado hablando. Lo que quería decirles a ustedes llevaba por título "Estudio del Significado de la Educación en la Vida Personal y Cultural de Nuestra Época". Ahora, al terminar, voy a metamorfosear este título para que abarque lo que he querido decir realmente, y que condenso en las siguientes palabras: Venderse a la materia Es triturar el alma. Encontrarse en espíritu Es vincular a los hombres. Descubrirse en el hombre Es edificar mundos. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
818: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],#NFDB
819:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#NFDB
820:I now turn to a *subjective* consideration that belongs here; yet I can give even less distinctness to it than to the objective consideration just discussed, for I shall be able to express it only by image and simile. Why is our consciousness brighter and more distinct the farther it reaches outwards, so that its greatest clearness lies in sense perception, which already half belongs to things outside us; and, on the other hand, becomes more obscure as we go inwards, and leads, when followed to its innermost recesses, into a darkness in which all knowledge ceases? Because, I say, consciousness presupposes *individuality*; but this belongs to the mere phenomenon, since, as the plurality of the homogeneous, it is conditioned by the forms of the phenomenon, time and space. On the other hand, our inner nature has its root in what is no longer phenomenon but thing-in-itself, to which therefore the forms of the phenomenon do not reach; and in this way, the chief conditions of individuality are wanting, and distinct consciousness ceases therewith. In this root-point of existence the difference of beings ceases, just as that of the radii of a sphere ceases at the centre. As in the sphere the surface is produced by the radii ending and breaking off, so consciousness is possible only where the true inner being runs out into the phenomenon. Through the forms of the phenomenon separate individuality becomes possible, and on this individuality rests consciousness, which is on this account confined to phenomena. Therefore everything distinct and really intelligible in our consciousness always lies only outwards on this surface on the sphere. But as soon as we withdraw entirely from this, consciousness forsakes us―in sleep, in death, and to a certain extent also in magnetic or magic activity; for all these lead through the centre. But just because distinct consciousness, as being conditioned by the surface of the sphere, is not directed towards the centre, it recognizes other individuals certainly as of the same kind, but not as identical, which, however, they are in themselves. Immortality of the individual could be compared to the flying off at a tangent of a point on the surface; but immortality, by virtue of the eternity of the true inner being of the whole phenomenon, is comparable to the return of that point on the radius to the centre, whose mere extension is the surface. The will as thing-in-itself is entire and undivided in every being, just as the centre is an integral part of every radius; whereas the peripheral end of this radius is in the most rapid revolution with the surface that represents time and its content, the other end at the centre where eternity lies, remains in profoundest peace, because the centre is the point whose rising half is no different from the sinking half. Therefore, it is said also in the *Bhagavad-Gita*: *Haud distributum animantibus, et quasi distributum tamen insidens, animantiumque sustentaculum id cognoscendum, edax et rursus genitale* (xiii, 16, trans. Schlegel) [Undivided it dwells in beings, and yet as it were divided; it is to be known as the sustainer, annihilator, and producer of beings]. Here, of course, we fall into mystical and metaphorical language, but it is the only language in which anything can be said about this wholly transcendent theme."
―from The World as Will and Representation . Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, pp. 325-326 ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,#NFDB
821:Motion in space can proceed in any direction and back again. Motion in time only proceeds in one direction in the everyday world, whatever seems to be going on at the particle level. It’s hard to visualize the four dimensions of spacetime, each at right angles to the other, but we can leave out one dimension and imagine what this strict rule would mean if it applied to one of the three dimensions we are used to. It’s as if we were allowed to move either up or down, either forward or back, but that sideways motion was restricted to shuffling to the left, say. Movement to the right is forbidden. If we made this the central rule in a children’s game, and then told a child to find a way of reaching a prize off to the right-hand side (“backward in time”) it wouldn’t take too long for the child to find a way out of the trap. Simply turn around to face the other way, swapping left for right, and then reach the prize by moving to the left. Alternatively, lie down on the floor so that the prize is in the “up” direction with reference to your head. Now you can move both “up” to grasp the prize and “down” to your original position, before standing up again and returning your personal space orientation to that of the bystanders.* The technique for time travel allowed by relativity theory is very similar. It involves distorting the fabric of space-time so that in a local region of space-time the time axis points in a direction equivalent to one of the three space directions in the undistorted region of space-time. One of the other space directions takes on the role of time, and by swapping space for time such a device would make true time travel, there and back again, possible. American mathematician Frank Tipler has made the calculations that prove such a trick is theoretically possible. Space-time can be distorted by strong gravitational fields,and Tipler’s imaginary time machine is a very massive cylinder, containing as much matter as our sun packed into a volume 100 km long and 10 km in radius, as dense as the nucleus of an atom, rotating twice every millisecond and dragging the fabric of space-time around with it. The surface of the cylinder would be moving at half the speed of light. This isn’t the sort of thing even the maddest of mad inventors is likely to build in his backyard, but the point is that it is allowed by all the laws of physics that we know. There is even an object in the universe that has the mass of our sun, the density of an atomic nucleus, and spins once every 1.5 milliseconds, only three times slower than Tipler’s time machine. This is the so-called “millisecond pulsar,” discovered in 1982. It is highly unlikely that this object is cylindrical—such extreme rotation has surely flattened it into a pancake shape. Even so, there must be some very peculiar distortions of space-time in its vicinity. “Real” time travel may not be impossible, just extremely difficult and very, very unlikely. That thin end of what might be a very large wedge may, however, make the normality of time travel at the quantum level seem a little more acceptable. Both quantum theory and relativity theory permit time travel, of one kind or another. And anything that is acceptable to both those theories, no matter how paradoxical that something may seem, has to be taken seriously. Time travel, indeed, is an integral part of some of the stranger features of the particle world, where you can even get something for nothing, if you are quick about it. ~ John Gribbin, #NFDB
822:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1], #index,#NFDB
823:To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world.
Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination. Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to "serve" with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand.
Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those whom we seek to control? To dominate is to use another for self-gratification, and where there is the use of another there is no love. When there is love there is consideration, not only for the children but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education.
Mere technical training inevitably makes for ruthlessness, and to educate our children we must be sensitive to the whole movement of life. What we think, what we do, what we say matters infinitely, because it creates the environment, and the environment either helps or hinders the child.
Obviously, then, those of us who are deeply interested in this problem will have to begin to understand ourselves and thereby help to transform society; we will make it our direct responsability to bring about a new approach to education. If we love our children, will we not find a way of putting an end to war? But if we are merely using the word "love" without substance, then the whole complex problem of human misery will remain.
The way out of this problem lies through ourselves. We must begin to understand our relationship with our fellow men, with nature, with ideas and with things, for without that understanding there is no hope, there is no way out of conflict and suffering. The bringing up of a child requires intelligent observation and care. Experts and their knowledge can never replace the parents' love, but most parents corrupt that love by their own fears and ambitions, which condition and distort the outlook of the child. So few of us are concerned with love, but we are vastly taken up with the appearance of love.
The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration; and if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind of educators. The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves.
The contradiction which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group creates an endless battle within himself and in his relationships. This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education, and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very start, which results in personal and social disasters. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,#NFDB
824:We tend to be unaware that stars rise and set at all. This is not entirely
due to our living in cities ablaze with electric lights which reflect back at us from our fumes, smoke, and artificial haze. When I discussed the stars with a well-known naturalist, I was surprised to learn that even a man such as he, who has spent his entire lifetime observing wildlife and nature, was totally unaware of the movements of the stars. And he is no prisoner of smog-bound cities. He had no inkling, for instance, that the Little Bear could serve as a reliable night clock as it revolves in tight circles around the Pole Star (and acts as a celestial hour-hand at half speed - that is, it takes 24 hours rather than 12 for a single revolution).
I wondered what could be wrong. Our modern civilization does not ignore
the stars only because most of us can no longer see them. There are definitely deeper reasons. For even if we leave the sulphurous vapours of our Gomorrahs to venture into a natural landscape, the stars do not enter into any of our back-to-nature schemes. They simply have no place in our outlook any more. We look at them, our heads flung back in awe and wonder that they can exist
in such profusion. But that is as far as it goes, except for the poets. This is simply a 'gee whiz' reaction. The rise in interest in astrology today does not result in much actual star-gazing. And as for the space programme's impact on our view of the sky, many people will attentively follow the motions of a visible satellite against a backdrop of stars whose positions are absolutely meaningless to them. The ancient mythological figures sketched in the sky were taught us as children to be quaint 'shepherds' fantasies' unworthy of the attention of adult minds. We are interested in the satellite because we made it, but the stars are alien and untouched by human hands - therefore vapid. To such a level has our technological mania, like a bacterial solution in which we have been stewed from birth, reduced us.
It is only the integral part of the landscape which can relate to the stars.
Man has ceased to be that. He inhabits a world which is more and more his own fantasy. Farmers relate to the skies, as well as sailors, camel caravans,
and aerial navigators. For theirs are all integral functions involving the fundamental principle - now all but forgotten - of orientation. But in an
almost totally secular and artificial world, orientation is thought to be un- necessary. And the numbers of people in insane asylums or living at home doped on tranquilizers testifies to our aimless, drifting metaphysic. And to our having forgotten orientation either to seasons (except to turn on the air- conditioning if we sweat or the heating system if we shiver) or to direction (our one token acceptance of cosmic direction being the wearing of sun-glasses because the sun is 'over there').
We have debased what was once the integral nature of life channelled by cosmic orientations - a wholeness - to the ennervated tepidity of skin sensations and retinal discomfort. Our interior body clocks, known as circadian rhythms, continue to operate inside us, but find no contact with the outside world.
They therefore become ingrown and frustrated cycles which never interlock with our environment. We are causing ourselves to become meaningless body machines programmed to what looks, in its isolation, to be an arbitrary set of cycles. But by tearing ourselves from our context, like the still-beating heart ripped out of the body of an Aztec victim, we inevitably do violence to our psyches. I would call the new disease, with its side effect of 'alienation of the young', dementia temporalis. ~ Robert K G Temple,#NFDB
825:Today there is much talk about democratic ideals in the outside world. But not in Germany! For here in Germany we had more than enough time-fifteen years-to acquaint ourselves with these democratic ideals. And we ourselves had to pick up the legacy left behind by this democracy.
Now we are being credited with many a truly astounding war aim, especially by the English. After all, England is quite experienced in issuing proclamations of objectives in warfare as it has waged the greatest number of wars the world over.
Truly astounding are the war aims announced to us today. A new Europe will arise. This Europe will be characterized by justice. This justice will render armament obsolete. This will lead to disarmament at last. This disarmament in turn will bring about an economic blossoming. Change and trade will spring up-much trade-free trade. And with the sponsorship of this trade, culture shall once more blossom, and not only culture will benefit, but religion will also prosper.
In other words: we are heading towards a golden age! Well, we have heard of this golden age before. Many times precisely the same people attempted to illustrate its virtues to us who are now flooding us with descriptions of its benefits. The records are old ones, played once too often. We can only pity these gentlemen who cannot even come up with a new idea to trap a great people. For all this they had already promised us in 1918.
Then, too, England’s objectives in the war were the creation of this “new Europe,” the establishment of a “new justice,” of which the “right to selfdetermination of the peoples” was to form an integral part. Back then already they promised us justice to render obsolete-for all time-the bearing of any sort of weaponry.
Back then already they submitted to us a program for disarmament-one for global disarmament. To make this disarmament more evident, it was to be crowned by the establishment of an association of nations bearing no arms.
These were to settle their differences in the future-for even back then there was no doubt that differences would still arise-by talking them to death in discussion and debate, just as is the custom in democratic states. There would be no more shooting under any circumstances! In 1918, they declared a blessed and pious age to come! What came to pass in its stead we all lived to see: the old states were destroyed without even as much as asking their citizenry. Historic, ancient structures were severed, not only state bodies but grown economic structures as well, without anything better to take their place. In total disregard of the principle of the right to self-determination of the peoples, the European peoples were hacked to pieces, torn apart. Great states were dissolved.
Nations were robbed of their rights, first rendered utterly defenseless and then subjected to a division which left only victors and vanquished in this world.
And then there was no more talk of disarmament. To the contrary, armament went on. Nor did any efforts materialize to settle conflicts peacefully. The armed states waged wars just as before. Yet those who had been disarmed were no longer in a position to ward off the aggressions of those well armed.
Naturally, this did not herald economic prosperity but, to the contrary, produced a network of lunatic reparations payments which led to increasing destitution for not only the vanquished, but also the so-called victors themselves. The consequences of this economic destitution were felt most acutely by the German Volk.
International finance remained brutal and squeezed our Volk ruthlessly.
Adolf Hitler – speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1940 ~ Adolf Hitler,#NFDB
826:Não, não há escapatória. Não existe céu com um pouco de inferno nele – não tentemos reter isso ou aquilo do mal em nossos corações ou em nossos bolsos. Satanás deve sair, cada fiapo, cada fio de cabelo.” (George MacDonald)
O poeta inglês William Blake (1757-1827) escreveu 'O Casamento do Céu e do Inferno'. Se escrevo sobre o Divórcio, não é porque me julgue à altura para antagonizar com tão grande gênio, nem porque tenha pleno conhecimento do que ele queria dizer. No entanto, em um sentido ou outro, é constante a tentativa de fazer tal casamento. Essa tentativa baseia-se na crença de que a realidade nunca se apresenta a nós como uma escolha inevitável entre 'isso ou aquilo'; de que, com habilidade, paciência e (sobretudo) tempo suficiente, seria possível encontrar uma maneira de acomodar as duas alternativas; e de que a simples evolução, adaptação ou refinamento conseguirá, de algum jeito, transformar o mal em bem, sem que sejamos interpelados a rejeitar, de modo definitivo e integral, aquilo que desejamos conservar. Essa crença é, a meu juízo, um erro desastroso. Você não pode levar toda a bagagem consigo em todas as viagens; em alguma jornada, sua mão e seu olho direitos podem estar entre as coisas que você terá de deixar para trás. Não vivemos num mundo onde todos os caminhos são como raios de um círculo, que, se suficientemente percorridos, gradualmente se aproximariam um do outro e, ao fim, convergiriam no centro; vivemos, sim, num mundo onde cada caminho, depois de alguns quilômetros, se bifurca e onde cada uma das duas ramificações, por sua vez, se biparte novamente; e, em cada encruzilhada, você precisa tomar uma decisão. Mesmo no nível biológico, a vida não é como um rio, e sim como uma árvore. A vida não flui no sentido da unidade, mas, ao contrário, afasta-se dela, e as criaturas se diferenciam entre si à medida que se aprimoram. O bem, quando amadurece, distingue-se não apenas do mal, mas também de outro bem.
Não creio que todos aqueles que optam por caminhos equivocados pereçam, mas seu resgate consiste em serem colocados de volta na estrada certa. Uma operação de adição pode ser corrigida: mas isso só pode ser feito retornando até encontrar o erro e refazendo o cálculo a partir dali; nunca simplesmente prosseguindo. O mal pode ser desfeito, mas não pode 'evoluir' para o bem. O tempo não o cura. O feitiço deve ser revertido, aos poucos, 'com sussurros de trás para frente, de poder disjuntivo' (peça ‘Comus’, do poeta inglês John Milton – 1608-1674) – ou, então, o encanto não cessará. É 'uma coisa ou outra'. Se insistirmos em preservar o Inferno (ou mesmo a Terra), não veremos o Céu: se aceitarmos o Céu, não poderemos guardar sequer o menor e o mais íntimo 'suvenir' do Inferno. Acredito, com efeito, que toda pessoa que alcançar o Céu descobrirá que o que abandonou (mesmo que seja arrancando seu olho direito) na verdade não era nada: que o cerne daquilo que estava ansiosamente procurando, mesmo em seus desejos mais pervertidos, estará lá, além das expectativas, aguardando por ela nos 'Países Altos'. Nesse sentido, os que tiverem completado a jornada (e somente estes) poderão verdadeiramente dizer que o bem está em tudo, e o Céu, em todo lugar. Entretanto, deste lado da estrada, não devemos tentar antecipar essa observação retrospectiva. Se o fizermos, provavelmente estaremos abraçando o falso e desastroso avesso e fantasia de que tudo é bom e de que todo lugar é o Céu.
Mas e a terra? – você perguntará. Imagino que, no fim, ninguém a achará um lugar muito diferente. Penso que, se escolhida em prejuízo do Céu, a terra acabará se revelando uma mera região no Inferno e, se colocada em segundo lugar, depois do Céu, se mostrará desde o início como uma parte do próprio Céu. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
827:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#NFDB
828:Staring at her with impenetrable blue-black eyes, the warrior on the black nudged the animal a pace forward. With that relentless eye-to-eye contact, he held her pinioned where she stood. For what seemed a lifetime, he studied her, not moving, not speaking, his lance still held aloft.
Loretta’s courage disintegrated, and a violent tremor swept the length of her. He noted the shudder, and his observant gaze trailed up her body in its wake. His attention fell to her hips, lingered there with an insulting contempt, then traveled upward to her breasts. Humiliation scorched her cheeks.
“Keemah.” He hissed the word at her, but it seemed sharp as a rifle shot rending the air. Loretta jumped, confusion and mindless terror contorting her features. She understood no Comanche and hadn’t any perception of what he wanted. She only knew he would kill her if she angered him. Her shaking knees beat a tremulous tattoo against each other. His lips twisted in a sneer. “Come forward, so this Comanche can see you.”
Too frightened to feel her feet, Loretta stumbled on the steps, nearly falling before she regained her balance. Her skin prickled from the two hundred eyes that watched her. As she drew near the Comanche, he wheeled his mount to one side. Cone-shaped brass bells sparkled against the stripped leather of his moccasin. His stare was a tangible thing, reaching to touch her.
“Lift your face, woman.”
She titled her head back, keeping her expression carefully blank. He seemed to tower atop the stallion, his bare shoulders broad, his arms well muscled. The breeze swept his dark hair from his cheek, revealing a thin scar that angled from his right eyebrow to his chin. Brilliant white teeth flashed as he spoke.
“What do you call yourself?”
Loretta parted her lips, and the prolonged silence pulsated.
“Answer, woman, or die.” Lifting his lance tip, he caught her braid, tugging it loose from its coronet. Slowly uncoiling, it snaked to her shoulder.
“Loretta!” Rachel screamed from a front window. “Her name is Loretta. Oh, please, don’t hurt her, please.” A horrible, gut-wrenching sob punctuated the plea.
The Indian pressed the tip of his lance against Loretta’s throat. “Have you no tongue, herbi?”
“No-oo-o,” Rachel wailed. “She can’t talk! It’s the truth! Oh, please. She’s a good, sweet girl. Don’t hurt her.”
To Loretta’s left, an Indian on a pinto began to babble in excitement and pointed a finger at her. The lead Comanche’s arm went taut, causing the lance to prick her skin. He leaned forward, the thick, veined muscles bulging in his upper arm as he tensed to drive the lance forward.
“Ka!” roared the Indian on the pinto. Then he let loose with another garbled string of words.
Loretta closed her eyes and braced herself. Whatever it was the other Indian was saying, he was clearly arguing in her behalf. There hovered in the air a charged expectancy, turbulent, tingling along her nerve endings to the core of her, so that, for a suspended moment, she felt a peculiar sense of oneness with the man above her, perceiving his tumultuous emotions, his indecision, as if she were an integral part of him. He wanted to spill her blood with a primal ferocity, but something, perhaps the Almighty Himself, stayed his hand.
Sensing reprieve, grasping for it with eager disbelief, she lifted her lashes in confusion to see the same emotion reflected in his cobalt eyes.
He began to tremble, as if the lance weighed a thousand pounds. And suddenly she knew that as much as he longed to murder her, a part of him couldn’t, wouldn’t throw the lance. It made no sense. She could see nothing but hatred written on his chiseled face. He had surely killed hundreds of times and would kill again.
Slowly he lowered his arm and stared at her as if she had bested him in some way. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
829: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,#NFDB
830:Thus, unlike the previous Pluralistic View, the Integral View is truly holistic, not in any New Age woo-woo sense but as being evidence of a deeply interwoven and interconnected and conscious Kosmos. The Pluralistic View, we saw, wants to be holistic and all-inclusive and nonmarginalizing, but it loathes the modern Rational View, absolutely cannot abide the traditional Mythic View, goes apoplectic when faced with a truly Integral View. But the Integral stages are truly and genuinely inclusive. First, all of the previous structure-rungs are literally included as components of the Integral structure-rung, or vision-logic, a fact that is intuited at this stage. Views, of course, are negated, and so somebody at an Integral View is not including directly a Magic View, a Mythic View, a Rational View, and so on. By definition, that is impossible. A View is generated when the central self exclusively identifies with a particular rung of development. Somebody at a Rational View is exclusively identified with the corresponding rung at that stage—namely, formal operational. To have access directly to, say, a Magic View—which means the View of the world when exclusively identified with the impulsive or emotional-sexual rung—the individual would have to give up Rationality, give up the concrete mind, give up the representational mind, give up language itself, and regress totally to the impulsive mind (something that won’t happen without severe brain damage). The Rational person still has complete access to the emotional-sexual rung, but not the exclusive View from that rung. As we saw, rungs are included, Views are negated. (Just like on a real ladder—if you’re at, say, the 7th rung in the ladder, all previous 6 rungs are still present and still in existence, holding up the 7th rung; but, while you are standing on the 7th rung, you can’t directly see what the world looks like from those earlier rungs. Those were gone when you stepped off those rungs onto higher ones, and so at this point you have all the rungs, but only the View from the highest rung you’re on, in this case, the 7th-rung View.) So a person at Integral doesn’t directly, in their own makeup, have immediate access to earlier Views (archaic, magic, mythic, and so on), but they do have access to all the earlier corresponding rungs (snsorimotor, emotional-sexual, conceptual, rule/role, and so on), and thus they can generally intuit what rung a particular person’s center of gravity is at, and thus indirectly be able to understand what View or worldview that person is expressing (magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and so on). And by “include those worldviews” what is meant is that the Integral levels actively tolerate and make room for those Views in their own holistic outreach. They might not agree fully with them (they don’t do so in their own makeup, having transcended and negated junior Views), but they intuitively understand the significance and importance of all Views in the unfolding sweep of evolutionary development. Further, they understand that a person has the right to stop growing at virtually any View, and thus each particular View will become, for some people, an actual station in Life, and their values, needs, and motivations will be expressions of that particular View in Life. And thus a truly enlightened, inclusive society will make some sort of room for traditional values, modern values, postmodern values, and so on. Everybody is born at square 1 and thus begins their development of Views at the lowest rung and continues from there, so every society will consist of a different mix of percentages of people at different altitude rungs and Views of the overall spectrum. In most Western countries, for example—and this varies depending on exactly how you measure it—but generally, about 10% of the population is at Magic, 40% at traditional Mythic, 40%-50% at modern Rational, 20% at postmodern Pluralistic, 5% at Holistic/Integral, and less than 1% at Super-Integral. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
831:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration, #concentration,#NFDB
832:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#NFDB
833:[the sevenfold ignorance and the integral knowledge:]
We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence,-that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, -that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self,-that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end,-that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence,-that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations,-that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal,-that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
Our conception of the Ignorance will necessarily determine our conception of the Knowledge and determine, therefore, since our life is the Ignorance at once denying and seeking after the Knowledge, the goal of human effort and the aim of the cosmic endeavour. Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:- it will mean [1] the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all things; [2] the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of the cosmos as the Self's becoming, the becoming of the Being, a manifestation of the Spirit; [3] the knowledge of the world as one with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; [4] the knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in Time beyond death and earth-existence; [5] the knowledge of our greater and inner existence behind the surface; [6] the knowledge of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above them; [7] the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self, the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.
But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify a slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must necessarily emerge in it,-or, in other words, what is the nature of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to materialise or, as one might say, to realise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 680-683 [T1],#NFDB
834:[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],#NFDB
835:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#NFDB
836:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#NFDB
443 Integral Yoga
13 Christianity
12 Psychology
10 Philosophy
8 Occultism
6 Science
6 Education
4 Integral Theory
3 Cybernetics
2 Poetry
2 Fiction
1 Yoga
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
307 Sri Aurobindo
260 The Mother
107 Nolini Kanta Gupta
91 Satprem
11 Carl Jung
10 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
6 George Van Vrekhem
5 A B Purani
3 Plotinus
3 Paul Richard
3 Norbert Wiener
3 Nirodbaran
3 Jordan Peterson
3 Aldous Huxley
2 Walt Whitman
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jean Gebser
2 H P Lovecraft
120 The Synthesis Of Yoga
66 Prayers And Meditations
36 The Life Divine
25 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
24 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
21 Questions And Answers 1956
20 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
20 Letters On Yoga II
17 Essays On The Gita
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
17 Agenda Vol 01
15 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
13 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
11 Words Of Long Ago
11 Questions And Answers 1955
11 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
11 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
10 The Integral Yoga
9 The Human Cycle
8 Words Of The Mother II
8 Questions And Answers 1954
8 Questions And Answers 1953
8 Letters On Yoga I
8 Agenda Vol 08
8 Agenda Vol 03
8 Agenda Vol 02
7 Record of Yoga
7 Letters On Yoga IV
7 Agenda Vol 04
6 Preparing for the Miraculous
6 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
6 On Education
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
6 Agenda Vol 06
5 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
5 Some Answers From The Mother
5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
5 Essays Divine And Human
4 Words Of The Mother III
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 Let Me Explain
4 Isha Upanishad
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
4 Agenda Vol 12
4 Agenda Vol 10
4 Agenda Vol 09
4 Agenda Vol 05
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Perennial Philosophy
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Letters On Yoga III
3 Cybernetics
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Words Of The Mother I
2 Whitman - Poems
2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
2 The Future of Man
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Savitri
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Aion
2 Agenda Vol 13
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance Integrally in the Integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
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We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that Integral Reality.11
The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
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Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the Integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
Elsewhere the Upanishad describes more graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to North, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from North to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five normal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises nor sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.
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Nachiketas is the young aspiring human being still in the Ignorancenaciketa, meaning one without consciousness or knowledge. The three boons he asks for are in reference to the three fundamental modes of being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the Integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental.
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the Integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
In the life of the great Saviours and Prophets of the world it is often found that they are accompanied by souls of high spiritual potency who play a conspicuous part in the furtherance of their Master's mission. They become so Integral a part of the life and work of these great ones that posterity can think of them only in mutual association. Such is the case with Sri Ramakrishna and M., whose diary has come to be known to the world as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English and as Sri Rmakrishna Kathmrita in the original Bengali version.
Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, familiary known to the readers of the Gospel by his pen name M., and to the devotees as Master Mahashay, was born on the 14th of July, 1854 as the son of Madhusudan Gupta, an officer of the Calcutta High Court, and his wife, Swarnamayi Devi. He had a brilliant scholastic career at Hare School and the Presidency College at Calcutta. The range of his studies included the best that both occidental and oriental learning had to offer. English literature, history, economics, western philosophy and law on the one hand, and Sanskrit literature and grammar, Darsanas, Puranas, Smritis, Jainism, Buddhism, astrology and Ayurveda on the other were the subjects in which he attained considerable proficiency.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We are not seeking a license to ramble wordily. We are intent only upon being adequately concise. General systems science discloses the existence of minimum sets of variable factors that uniquely govern each and every system. Lack of knowledge concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our Integral imposes false conclusions. Let us not make the error of inadequacy in examining our most comprehensive inventory of experience and thoughts regarding the evoluting affairs of all humanity.
There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity. With this objective, we set out on our review of the spectrum of significant experiences and seek therein for the greatest meanings as well as for the family of generalized principles governing the realization of their optimum significance to humanity aboard our Sun circling planet Earth.
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As Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively considered by man only as a red, white, or pink device for paying tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process under the single title rose tends to detour human curiosity from further differentiation of its Integral organic operations as well as from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our planet. We don't know what a rose is, nor what may be its essential and unique cosmic function. Thus for long have we inadvertently deferred potential discovery of the essential roles in Universe that are performed complementarily by many, if not most, of the phenomena we experience.
But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.
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
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his Integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no Integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no Integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
annakos.a and pran.akos.a.
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The ultimate knowledge is that which perceives and accepts God in the universe as well as beyond the universe; the Integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend
The Three Steps of Nature
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
differs also in this, - and here from the point of view of an Integral Yoga there seems to be a defect, - that it is indifferent to mental and bodily perfection and aims only at purity as a condition of the divine realisation. A second defect is that as actually practised it chooses one of the three parallel paths exclusively and almost in antagonism to the others instead of effecting a synthetic harmony of the intellect, the heart and the will in an Integral divine realisation.
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of
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We can see also that in the Integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect
Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in this triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Y THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an Integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.
An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed,
Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single Integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
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We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the Integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed
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may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an Integral Yoga.
But in either case it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of
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Prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal action of Nature in us is an Integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The
Yoga that we seek must also be an Integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the Integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the Integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short cuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our Integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary.
The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense
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There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works Integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but
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Secondly, the process, being Integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change.
Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefa thers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this Integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in
Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
An Integral method and an Integral result. First, an Integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by
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Therefore, also, an Integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujya-mukti, by which it can become free2 even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of
Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this Integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the
Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. An Integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine
Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its
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functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an Integral liberty. Its result is an Integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the Integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This Integrality also can be attained by the Integral Yoga.
Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the Integral method. Nor would these have any raison d'etre unless employed for an Integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.
Nor would the Integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.
The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this Integralisation of a widely perfect
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0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
worth much. It is an Integral transformation of terrestrial life
which is anticipated.
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of Integral realisation ceases; so long as one is alive, nothing is
impossible.
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and His Integral realisation in our consciousness.
To keep constantly a concentrated and in-gathered attitude is
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Our yoga being Integral, all these various forms or kinds of
energy are indispensable to our realisation.
--
In the Integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the two combine
with the yoga of works and the yoga of self-perfection to make
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
increasing sincerity ever more scrupulous and Integral.
The easy paths generally lead nowhere.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the Integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and Integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
Not to do what others do, but what your soul impels you to do. Not to be others but your own self. Not to be anything but the very cosmic and infinite divinity of your soul. Therein lies your highest freedom and perfect delight. And there you are supremely creative. Each soul has a consortPrakriti, Naturewhich it creates out of its own rib. And in this field of infinite creativity the soul lives, moves and has its being.
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga
class:chapter
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Descend in him, the Integral Godhead's seals;
His soul and body take that splendid stamp.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize man and the world in an Integral realisation. The greater part of the vast mystery of existence escapes its envergure. Reason is that faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and fixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that he may best manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian, practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing requires that things should be stable and separate entities, therefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls "laws". Such a process has been necessary for man in conducting life and action successfully. Originally a bye-product of active life, Reason gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the instrument of knowledge, of Truth.
But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical, we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole. Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices for artfully manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
--
Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the Integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
***
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Cuts off the Integral Thought, the total Power;
It circles or stands in a vague interspace,
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The individual must find himself and establish his secret god-head, and then only, when such free and Integral individualities meet and reciprocate and coalesce, can the community they form have a living reality and a permanent potency. On the other hand, unless individuals come together and through the interchange of each other's soul and substance' enhance the communal Godhead, the separate individual godheads also will not manifest in their supreme and sovereign powers.
If society, that is to say, community, be the fieldkshetra for the individual to live, move and have its being, then we must begin at the very outset with the community itself, at least, with a nucleus that will go to form such a thing. The fear that the untimely grouping together of immature souls may crush out individuality and dig its own grave has, no doubt, sufficient justification behind it to deter one from the attempt; but neither can we be certain that souls nursed and nourished in solitary cells, absolutely apart from any mellowing and broadening influence of the outside world will ever reach to that stage of perfect maturity when they will suddenly and spontaneously break open their cells and recognise in one another the communal brother-self.
--
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an Integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
Now how to escape the dilemma? Only if we take the commune and the individual togetheren bloc, as has already been suggested. This means that the commune should be at the beginning a subtle and supple thing, without form and even without name, it should be no more than the circumambient aura the sukshma deha that plays around a group of individuals who meet and unite and move together by a secret affinity, along a common path towards a common goal. As each individual develops and defines himself, the commune also takes a more and more concrete shape; and when at the last stage the individual rises to the full height of his godhead, takes possession of his Integral divinity, the commune also establishes its solid empire, vivid and vibrant in form and name.
***
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an Integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the Integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his Integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
practise the yoga of Integral perfection.
7 June 1963
--
But when one wants to progress in the Integrality of the being,
this simplification is hardly advisable.
--
another and are organised and unified in an Integral synthesis.
Here is another quotation by Sri Aurobindo which will show
--
In this Integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, work has a
place of capital importance, doesn't it? This being the
--
purpose in an Integral Yoga.
26 October 1966
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an Integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
***
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social reconstructions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an Integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
Man, however great and puissant he may be, is a perishable thing. People who gather or are gathered round a man and cling to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and scatter when the man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold. What remains is a memory, a gradually fading memory. But memory is hardly a creative force, it is a dead, at best, a moribund thing; the real creative power is Presence. So when the great man's presence, the power that crystallises is gone, the whole edifice crumbles and vanishes into air or remains a mere name.
--
We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our democratic ageprinciples and no personalities! And although we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant one-sidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage. Since, however, we are after a universal ideal, we must also have an Integral method. We shall have to curb many of our susceptibilities, diminish many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance between opposite extremes.
We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for abstract principles as for concrete embodiments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-born things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
However, coming to historical times, we see wave after wave of the most heterogeneous and disparate elementsSakas and Huns and Greeks, each bringing its quota of exotic materialenter into the oceanic Indian life and culture, lose their separate foreign identity and become part and parcel of the common whole. Even so,a single unitary body was formed out of such varied and shifting materialsnot in the political, but in a socio-religious sense. For a catholic religious spirit, not being solely doctrinal and personal, admitted and embraced in its supple and wide texture almost an infinite variety of approaches to the Divine, of forms and norms of apprehending the Beyond. It has been called Hinduism: it is a vast synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erectwas the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and discord that of Buddha, not so much, perhaps, of Buddha as of Buddhism. The Buddhistic enlightenment and discipline did not admit the supreme authority of the Vedas; it sought other bases of truth and reality. It was a great denial; and it meant and worked for a vital schism. The denial of the Vedas by itself, perhaps, would not be serious, but it became so, as it was symptomatic of a deeper divergence. Denying the Vedas, the Buddhistic spirit denied life. It was quite a new thing in the Indian consciousness and spiritual discipline. And it left such a stamp there that even today it stands as the dominant character of the Indian outlook. However, India's synthetic genius rose to the occasion and knew how to bridge the chasm, close up the fissure, and present again a body whole and entire. Buddha became one of the Avataras: the discipline of Nirvana and Maya was reserved as the last duty to be performed at the end of life, as the culmination of a full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahmacharya and Garhasthya. The Integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus:
They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood, in youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they took to spiritual austerities, and in the end they died united with the higher consciousness.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and Integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the Integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
to open the chakras from below, whereas in the Integral
yoga the chakras open from above by the descent of the
--
In Sri Aurobindo's Integral yoga, there are no such rigid rules
and distinctions. Each one follows his own path and has his
--
Transformation demands a total and Integral consecration. But
isn't that the aspiration of every sincere sadhak?
--
Does this mean an intense, constant and Integral
aspiration?
--
necessary even to live in the Integral Knowledge!
Certainly.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one human being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and Integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings.
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
0 1956-07-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
O Thou who art always therepresent in all I do, all I amnot for repose do I aspire, but for THY Integral VICTORY.
***
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos Integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The Integral yoga is made up of an uninterrupted series of tests that you must pass through without any advance notice, thereby forcing you to be always vigilant and attentive.
Three groups of examiners conduct these tests. Apparently they have nothing in common and their methods are so different, at times even so seemingly contradictory, that they do not appear to work towards the same goal, and yet they complete one another, they work together for a common aim and each is indispensable for the Integral result.
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.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is a whole gradation of planes of consciousness, from the physical consciousness to my radiant consciousness at the very highest level, that which knows the Will of the Supreme. I keep all these planes of consciousness in front of me, working simultaneously, coordinatedly, and I am acting on each plane, gathering the information proper to each plane, so as to have the Integral truth of things. Thus, when I have a decision to make in regard to one of you, I plug into you directly from that level of the supreme consciousness which sees the deep truth of your being. But at the same time, my decision is shaped, as it were, by the information given to me by the other planes of consciousness and particularly by the physical consciousness, which acts as a recorder.
This physical consciousness records all it sees, all your reactions, your thoughts, all the factswithout preference, without prejudice, without personal will. Nothing escapes it. Its work is almost mechanical. Therefore I know what to tell or to ask you according to the Integral truth of your being and its present possibilities. Ordinarily, in the normal man, the physical consciousness does not see things as they are, for three reasons: because of ignorance, because of preference, and because of an egoistic will. You color what you see, eliminate what displeases you. In short, you see only what you desire to see.
Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the world. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither foreseen nor desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this word understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the recording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transforming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of normal life. It was much more attuned to the true consciousness than to the world! I couldnt possibly blame it for lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transformation of my being and the worlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the world is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait for the others.
0 1958-04-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, I am seeing all the mean pettiness that obstructs your divine work. Destroy my smallness and take me unto you. May I be sincere, Integrally sincere.
With infinite gratitude, I am your child.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
From the positive point of view, I am convinced that we agree upon the result to be obtained, that is, an Integral and unreserved consecrationin love, knowledge and actionto the Supreme AND TO HIS WORK. I say to the Supreme and to his work because consecration to the Supreme alone is not enough. Now we are here for the supramental realization, this is what is expected of us, but to reach it, our consecration to it must be total, unreserved absolutely Integral. I believe you have understood thisin other words, that you have the will to realize it.
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindowho, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earthdeclared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the Integral sadhana.2 I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not II was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing beforebeing a bridge between his sadhana and the world but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I dont mean successively in time, but it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the Integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
--
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 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So personally, I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to an Integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the Vedic tradition. And as for certain occult practices, he told me that they were entirely tantric and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely nothing, neither the Vedas nor the Tantras.
So very probably there was a tradition anterior to both. I have recollections (for me, these are always things I have LIVED), very clear, very distinct recollections of a time that was certainly VERY anterior to the Vedic times and to the Cabala, to the Chaldean tradition.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have just received your letter of the 15th. Yes, I know that the hour is critical. It has been grave here as well. I had to stop everything, for the attack upon my body was too violent. Now it is better but I have not yet resumed any of my outer activities, and I remain in my room upstairs. The battle continues in the invisible and I consider it decisive. You are a very intimate part of this battle. This is to tell you that I am with you in the most Integral sense of these words. I know what you are suffering, I feel it but you must hold on. The Grace is there, all-powerful. As soon as it is possible and without going through one minute more than needed to transform that which has to be transformed, the trial will reach its end and we shall emerge into the light and joy. So never forget that I am with youin youand that WE SHALL TRIUMPH:
With all that love can bring of solace and endurance,
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
With all my love, I envelope you, my child, and I tell you, Have courage, the victory is certainnot a compromise or partial victory, but Integral.
Signed: Mother
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an Integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of Integrality. And these three destinies in me have their own good reasons, which are true: they are not inferior, they are not incidental, they are woven from the very threads that created the spiritual life in me. My error is to open the door to revolt when I feel too poignantly one or the other being stifled.
So you see, all this is insoluble. I have only to bow before these unfortunate circumstances. I perceive an injustice somewhere, but I have only to remain silent.
0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This inner fusion you speak of as a truth to be realized is already accomplished, absolutely perceptible to me. For long I have felt you as an Integral part of my being; it seems to me that only some surface eddies prevent you also from feeling and living it.
But I am convinced it will come. Meanwhile, I am trying to make you feel my presence not as an impersonal force but as a real and concrete presence, and I am happy to have succeeded in part.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and Integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, its a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that its absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everythingreally to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT.
But to each his destiny, to each his work, to each his realization, and to want to change someones destiny or someones realization is very wrong. For it simply throws him off balance thats all it does.
But for us who want an Integral realization, are all these mantras and this daily japa really a help, or do they also shut us in?
It gives discipline. Its an almost subconscious discipline of the character more than of thought.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the difficulty, whatever time it takes, whatever number of lives, you must know that all this doesnt matter: you KNOW you ARE the Master, that the Master and you are the same. All thats necessary is to know it IntegralLY, and nothing must belie it. Thats the way out.
When I tell people that their health depends on their inner life (an intermediate inner life, not the deepest), its because of this.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In other words, a more and more complete, a more and more Integral assent, more and more like this (gesture of letting herself be carried). Thats when you have the feeling that you must be ABSOLUTELY like a child.
If you start thinking, Oh, I want to be like this! Oh, I ought to be like that! you waste your time.
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 Integral Integral 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 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An illustration of this is the well-known story about the man who refused to move out of the path of an elephant on the pretext that he was Brahman and that Brahman had told him to stay put. And the mahout replied, 'But Brahman has told me that you should get out of the way and let the elephant Brahman pass.' Although childishly simplified, it's the same thing. It's because we look 'in this way' yet not , in that way' at the same time, and above all, because we don't look at EVERYTHING at the same time. From the minute we could be Integral in our perception, all relationships would remain the same, but instead of being in a state of ignorance, we would experience them in a state of knowledge.
Would remain the same? You mean they would physically be the same as they are now, but would be seen in a different way?
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, this is Grace.5 Here, Balance6 (how lovely!). Here, Light without Obscurity.7 And this is purity: an Integral Conversion8 (in the cup of this flower, Mother has placed two other flowers: Service9 and Sri Aurobindos Compassion10), an Integral conversion, with Sri Aurobindo, with his compassionhis compassion which gives us the opportunity to serve him.
Oh, mon petit, we need to say something a bit intelligent, dont you think? Im counting on you.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here is an Integral Endurance. But victory. Victory. And this one is Supramental Victory that is, victory in ALL details.
It grows in huge clusters of many, many flowers. There.
--
Thats why I gave you Integral Enduranceit is his message.
(silence)
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The realization under community or group conditions would clearly be far more complete, Integral, total and probably more perfect than any individual realization, which is always, necessarilynecessarilyextremely limited on the external material level, because its only one way of being, one mode of manifestation, one microscopic set of vibrations that is touched.
But for the facility of the work, I believe theres no comparison!
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was holding one of these flowers [ Integral Generosity1] in my hand when I saw Z, and I explained to him what I meant by Integral generosity. The effect of the ego, I told him, is to shrivel the being. Its the cause of aging, it dries you up the being shrivels under it like a withering flower. And as I was speaking to him, the experience came; all I remember now is the idea, but the idea is nothing the experience itself was there.
I know that at a certain moment I was making the distinction between the two states, between the person the individual, personal beingturning towards the Lord, imploring Him to reveal His Will, and then this experience of becomingby extending oneself, by opening, by enlarging, by merging into the creationof BECOMING the Will of the Lord, the Supremes Will. No longer any need to implore Him, to know His Will and receive it like something foreign to youyou become that Will.
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Occasionally some people were slightly conscious. For instance, during the last war I spent all my nights hovering above Paris (not Integrally, but a part of myself) so that nothing would happen to the city. Later it came out that several people had seen what seemed to be a great white Force with an indistinct form hovering above Paris so that it wouldnt be destroyed.
Throughout the war Sri Aurobindo and I were in such a CONSTANT tension that it completely interrupted the yoga. And that is why the war started in the first placeto stop the Work. At that time there was an extraordinary descent of the Supermind; it was coming like that (massive gesture), a descent! Exactly in 39. Then the war broke out and stopped everything cold. For had we personally continued [the work of transformation] we were not sure of having enough time to finish it before the other one crushed the earth to a pulp, setting the whole Affair back centuries. The FIRST thing to be done was stop the action of the Lord of Nations.
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because there comes a time when one perceives the entire universe in such a total and comprehensive way that, in truth, it is impossible to remove anything from it without disturbing everything. And going a couple of steps further, one knows for certain that things which shock us as contradictions of the Divine are simply things out of place. Each thing must be exactly in its place, and whats more, be supple enough, plastic enough, to admit into a harmonious, progressive organization all the new elements constantly being added to the manifest universe. The universe is in a perpetual movement of internal reorganization, and at the same time its growing: its becoming more and more complex, more and more complete, more and more Integralindefinitely. And as the new elements manifest, the whole reorganization must be built on a new basis, and thus there isnt a second when ALL is not in perpetual movement. And when the movement is in accord with the divine order, its harmonious, so perfectly harmonious that its almost imperceptible. Now, if you descend from this consciousness towards a more external consciousness, you begin naturally to have a very precise feeling of what helps you attain the true consciousness and what bars the way or pulls you backwards or even fights against your progress. And so the perspective changes and you are obliged to say: this is divine or a help towards the Divine; and that goes against the Divine, its the Divines enemy. But this is a pragmatic standpoint, geared to action, to movement in material lifebecause you havent yet attained the consciousness surpassing all that; because you havent reached that inner perfection where you no longer have to fight, since you have gone beyond the field or the time or the utility of struggle. But before reaching that state in your consciousness and action, there is necessarily struggle; and if there is struggle, there is choice; and to choose, you need discrimination.
(Mother remains silent)
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the first seven years he was doing the work, not me. He was the one who saw people; I looked after his personal affairs, his housekeeping, his food, his clothes and so forth. I kept myself quietly busy with that, doing nothing else, not seeing people, simply looking after his material lifelike a child at play. It was seven years of Integral peace.
Later, when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility but it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total, total security for thirty years. Not once. There was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work (an adverse force) and he wasnt taking sufficient precautions for himself because it was directed against both of us, and more especially against me (it had tried once or twice to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that it managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock. But he straightened everything out again almost immediatelyit all fell back into place and went on like that till the end.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I mean by experience is something totally different from what people normally understand. Its something almost not new as such but assuming a new reality. It is not experiencing what one knows thats taken for granted, its banal but. We would need another word. Instead of knowing something (even a knowledge far superior to mental knowledge, even a very Integral knowledge), you become the power that makes it BE.
Essentially, it is becoming the tapas [energy] of things the tapas of the universe.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its simply to ensure that the consciousness is in a state of perfect equanimity; I mean, whether things turn out like this or like that leaves me completely indifferent: what You willspontaneously and Integrally and exclusivelyMy Will. I say My Will on purpose, to show total adhesion. Its not submission, it has nothing to do with submission; its like this (gesture of total abandonment). Well, in spite of that, theres not much progress.
Although sometimes, yes, all of a sudden. Take this example (it may seem a mere trifle, but when you have reached this point): the first sudden glimmer of conscious control over a bodily functioning, giving you a glimpse of the time when everything will function through the action of a conscious will. That has begun but its a tiny, tiny, tiny beginning. And the slightest mental intrusion from the old movement spoils it all I mean the old way of behaving with your body: you want this and you want that and you want to make it do this and you want to make it The minute that pops up, everything stops. Progress comes to a standstill. One must be in a state of beatific union then one can feel the new functioning begin.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And how, how to express in the world? It was like an impossibility, because of the contradiction. But then it came: You have accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth and it will be expressed totally, Integrally. Yes, yes.
And the thing is DONE.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti [Energy], whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special path which He has given to me, the path which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele1 gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in many directionsa first touch, a taking up, a handling and scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas, some sort of complete experience of one and then the pursuit of another.
Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me complete directions for my pathits complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These past ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my yoga siddhi [realization], except indeed one part of it, and that is action. The centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
--
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me Integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The Integral being, the Integral consciousness, the Integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the Integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and we always want what we dont have. Because we are made for an Integral perfection, and until it becomes Integral, we wont be satisfied.
It may comfort you to know that it will come to youin its own time.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo preached the Integral yoga which includes everything, so one can have all the experiences. Indeed, the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the short, straight and narrow paths thats their business. Others like to dawdle along the wayand thats their business! And some are drawn to have all the experiences, and thus they often wander for a long time through the overmental world. And of course, the vast majority of those who have RELIGIOUS aspirations are thus put in touch with various deities, where they stopits enough for them.
But everything Ive just said is only one tiny part of the whole story.
0 1962-11-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because my impression was that the higher I rise, the more I notice things below. I wasnt making a doctrine or theory of it, of course I got rid of that habit a long time ago. But I was looking at it, merely taking note of the fact, without telling myself it was for this or that reason (as you explain here in your book). I observed the phenomenon and was able to say: the more I feel this constant, luminous Presence, the more I see those things. So it has become very clear to me that it is impossible to manifest THAT Integrally without everything below being offered up to the Light.
My method is essentially very simple: for each thing that comes, I say, Here, Lord, its for You; change it, transform it. A work of offering and dedication (gesture of presenting something to the Light). And this morning there was a sort of replynot exactly to a question, but as though I were wondering How do I do it? (because the Lord tells me I am here for His work), How do I do His work? Whats the new way of doing the Work? We know all the old ways, but whats the new way? And the reply came, very concrete, without words: By bringing the two extremes together. Everything you see, everything that comes to you or that you discover is automatically put in the presence of the Most High, of the Supreme. You join the two extremes. Your whole work is to make the junction.
0 1963-02-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an Integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.
The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective.
A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and Integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or presence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(This conversation took place a few days after the new Pope, Paul VI, was enthroned. Mother had asked Satprem to erase the recording, except for a few fragments, but he thought it fit to retain at least its Integral transcription.)
Here, your flowers [roses]. A magnificent color.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nothing inside asks any questions, there are no problems there; all the problems I am talking about are posed by the body, for the body; otherwise, inside, everything is perfect, everything is exactly as it should be. And totally so: what people call good, what they call evil, the beautiful, the ugly, the all that is a small immensity (not a big immensity), a small immensity that is moving more and more towards a progressive realization thats the correct phrasewithin an Integral Consciousness which Integrally (how should I put it?) enjoys, or I could say, feels the plenitude of what He doesdoes, is and so forth (its all the same thing). But this poor body
And probably Its certain too that one cant go too fast: if the body had that Joy in it, if it had that ecstasy in it, that rapture continually, surely that would bring too rapid a transformation there are still a lot of things to be changed, a lot, a whole lot of things.
0 1963-09-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I will look again,2 but for the moment, it seems to me, its a period or a stage in the Integral development that brings you into contact with death. Its an impersonal thing and I dont see anything ominous about it, I mean I dont consider your feeling as premonitoryexcept that Death is everywhere in the world, of course! Well, thats all, it boils down to that.
There, mon petit.
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, once you are here on this earth and you have to go to the end, even if the end is nothingness, you go to the end and its just as well to do so as best you can, that is to say, to your fullest satisfaction. I happened to have some philosophical curiosity and to study all kinds of problems, and I came upon Sri Aurobindos teaching, and what he taught (I would say revealed, but not to a materialist) is by far, among the systems men have formulated, the most satisfying FOR ME, the most complete, and what answers the most satisfactorily all the questions that can be asked; it is the one that helps me the most in life to have the feeling that life is worth living. Consequently, I try to conform entirely to his teaching and to live it Integrally in order to live as best I can for me. I dont mind at all if others dont believe in itwhether they believe in it or not is all the same to me; I dont need the support of others conviction, its enough if I am myself satisfied.
Well, theres no reply to that.
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I was told (but not with words), very clearly and very strongly, that it was a transition necessary for your Integral development Integral. And that I shouldnt worry.
Though I do.
0 1963-12-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The difference between before and after the 9th is that before the 9th there was a constant pressure of adverse suggestions, as Sri Aurobindo said in that letter we translated last time: Its all an illusion, its all imagination. A constant harassment. And sometimes it even takes very precise forms: You think youre Integrally conscious of the Lordnot in the least! Its just a little bit in your head, vaguely, and so you imagine its true. When I heard that, it annoyed me very much, and I said, All right, Ill see. And it is after that kind of battle in the Subconscient that the voice stopped and I had this experience: It flows in the blood, it vibrates in the nerves, it lives in the cells.
And everywhere, you see, not just my cells, not just the cells of this body: when the experience comes, it is quite widespread; I have an impression of many bloods, many cells, many nerves. Which means that the CENTRAL consciousness isnt always aware of it, the individual isnt always aware of it (it has an extraordinary feeling, but it doesnt know what it is), while the cells are aware of it, but they cannot express it.
0 1964-01-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its own, a place where every human being of goodwill, sincere in his aspiration, could live freely as a citizen of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasures and material enjoyment. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop Integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not with a view to passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts, but to enrich ones existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organize; everyones bodily needs would be provided for equally, and in the general organization, intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed not by increased pleasures and powers in life, but by greater duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its art formspainting, sculpture, music, literaturewould be accessible to all equally, the ability to share in the joys it brings being limited solely by ones capacities and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place, money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social position. There, work would not be for earning ones living, but the means to express oneself and develop ones capacities and possibilities, while at the same time being of service to the group as a whole, which would in turn provide for everyones subsistence and field of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, ordinarily based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in trying to do ones best, of collaboration and real brotherhood.
The earth is not ready to realize such an ideal, for humanity does not yet possess either the knowledge necessary to understand and adopt it or the conscious force indispensable for its execution. This is why I call it a dream.
0 1964-09-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Since then, a part of the consciousness has been more self-assured, but it hasnt changed its attitude (how can I explain it?). Its attitude towards the Divine, towards the Work and towards life, is the same, but there is a greater clarity and a greater certainty and a sort of Integrality in the experience.
But I said, Its recent, because the things that to me are old are those that give me the feeling of having changed my position and of having a completely opposite outlookthis Talk hasnt changed.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So the method of renunciation may be tried, but its a method for someone who wants to cut himself off from others. And can there be an Integrality in that case? It doesnt seem possible to me.
Announcing publicly what you intend to do helps considerably. It may give rise to objections, contempt, conflicts, but thats largely made up for by the public expectation, if we may say so: by what others expect from you. That was certainly the reason for those robes: to let people know. Obviously, you may incur the contempt and ill will of some people, but there are all those who feel, I mustnt touch this, I mustnt have anything to do with it, its not my concern.
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here is Mother's exact text, as it was published in the August issue of the Ashram's Bulletin: "Why do men cling to a religion? Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their Integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity."
***
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to be a time of testing (as they say in English, in the sense of a touchstone), a test of equanimitynot an equanimity of the soul: a test of Integral equanimity, even in the cells of the body. As if someone were saying, Ha, you want the earth to change; ha, you want Matter to become divine; oh, you want all Falsehood to disappearvery well, lets see if you bear up. There.
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.
--
Because it doesnt seem possible to me (though I dont know), it doesnt seem possible to me that the state of the earth is adequate to justify an Integral transformation. As for Sri Aurobindo, he used to say that it would come in stages, that there would first be a sort of small formation, or a small creation that will receive the Light and be transformed, and thats what will work as a leaven for the general transformation.
There are all the Christian, Buddhist theories, Shankara, all those who declare that the world is an unreal Falsehood and that it must disappear and give place to a heaven (a new world and a heaven). And this is among the most aspiring elements of mankind, those who arent content with the world as it is, who dont say, Oh, as long as I am here and alive, things are fine; afterwards, I dont careenjoy the short life. Afterwards, well, its over, and thats that; let me make the most of the moment Ive been given. What a queer conception! Thats the other extreme.
0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother starts reading) To those I am making a distinction: there are people who come here and want to dedicate themselves to divine life, but they come to do work and they will work (they wont do an intensive yoga because not one in fifty is capable of doing it, but they are capable of dedicating their life and of working and doing good work disinterestedly, as a service to the Divine thats very good), but in particular, To those who want to practice the Integral yoga, it is strongly advised to abstain from three things. So, the three things ([laughing] you put your fingers in your ears): sexual intercourse (it comes third) and drinking alcohol and [whispering] smoking.
I must tell you that I was born in a family in which nobody smoked: my father had never smoked and neither had his brothersanyway, no one smoked. So since my early childhood, I hadnt been used to others smoking. Later, when I lived with artists Artists smoke, of course (it seems it gives them inspiration!), but I detested the smell. I didnt say anything because I didnt want to be unpleasant, but I detested it. Then I came hereSri Aurobindo smoked. He smoked deliberately, he smoked in order to say: one can do the yoga while smoking, I say one can smoke and do the yoga, and I smoke. And he smoked. And naturally all the disciples smoked, since Sri Aurobindo smoked. For some time, I even gave them pocket money so they could buy cigars (they smoked cigarsit was ghastly!). Then I came to live in Sri Aurobindos house, we spoke freely, and one day I told him, How awful the smell of smoke is! (laughing) Its disgusting! So he said to me, Oh, you dont like the smell? Oh, no! I said, Not only that, but I had to make a yogic effort to stop it from making me feel sick! The next day, he had stopped. It was over, he never smoked again. That was kind. It wasnt on principle, it was because he didnt want to impose the smell on me. But I had never said anything: it was simply because he asked me just like that, while talking, so I told him. And when he stopped smoking, everyone had to stop toosmoking wasnt allowed anymore, since he didnt smoke anymore.
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To be Integral is to make a harmonious synthesis of all ones possibilities.
It came along with the vibration it contained. And it could have gone on, it was there, but then I was interrupted. Its more amusing than to listen to their stories, at any rate.
--
(Soon afterwards, Satprem proposes to Mother the publication of a few brief extracts from the previous and very interesting conversation on illnesses in Notes on the Way, a new series started in the Ashrams Bulletin on Satprems insistence. In fact, Satprem wanted the Ashram to benefit a little from the treasure of Mothers experienceat least a few drops of it. It was those Notes on the Way that were, after Mothers departure, cooly and fraudulently renamed Mothers Agenda by the heads of the Ashram in the hope of stealing the title, throwing people into confusion, and preventing at any cost the Integral publication of the real Agenda, which they dared to declare not genuine, so afraid were they of Mothers clear perception of the people around her and of the Ashram in general. Satprem remembers how much he had to insist with Mother to be allowed to publish those Notes on the Way. Her reluctance is now easier to understand.)
I wondered if we couldnt use the last conversation for the next Notes on the Way?
0 1965-08-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isnt the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being. For instance, it is the mind that makes ones character: the bodily, physical character, which is in large part formed by atavism and education. What is called physical mind is all that. Yes, its the result of atavism, of education and of the formation of the body; thats what makes the physical character. For example, some people are patient, some are strong and so onphysically, I mean, not for vital or mental reasons, but purely physically everyone has a character. Thats the physical mind. And it is part of any Integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years.
But then, that mind, for instance, which is spontaneously defeatist, which has all sorts of fears and worries, which sees the worst, repeats the same things forever, is that the physical mind or the material mind?
--
No, the physical mind, as soon as you do an Integral yoga, you are obliged to deal with it, while this material, cellular mind, I can assure you that its absolutely new! Absolutely new.
It is the mind that was like an uncoordinated substance, with a constant, unorganized activity (Mother gestures to show a constant tremor). This is the mind which is being organized. Thats what is important, because Sri Aurobindo said it was unorganizable and the only thing to do was to reject it from existence. And I was under that impression, too. But when the transforming action on the cells is constant, this material mind begins to become organized, thats the wonderful thing! It begins to become organized. And then, as it becomes organized, it learns to FALL SILENTthats the beautiful thing! It learns to keep calm, silent, and to let the supreme Force act without interfering.
0 1965-11-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, its necessarily the best in the given conditions the earth isnt in a marvelous condition, far from it but in the given conditions, its the best. It prepares something far more complete, far deeper, far more Integral than all that we can imagine. This is indisputable, theres no discussing it.
***
0 1965-11-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And thats why its so difficult to know how one should be. Because in thought you can be in the same constant state, even in aspiration you can be in the same constant state, in the general goodwill, even in surrender to the Divine, it all can be the same thing, in the same stateits in here (Mother touches her body), and this makes the whole difference. I can very well conceive that there may be people in whom this opposition persists in the mind and the vital, but there its so obvious. But I am talking of something absolutely material. Some people say and think, How come? I have such goodwill, such a desire to do the right thing, and then nothing works, everything jarswhy? I am so good (!) and yet things dont respond. Or those who say, Oh, I have made my surrender, I have such goodwill, I have an aspiration, I want nothing but the Truth and the Good, and yet I am ill all the timewhy am I ill? And naturally, one small step more, and you begin to doubt the Justice that rules the world, and so on. Then you fall into a hole. But thats not it, thats not what I mean. Its much simpler and much more difficult at the same time, because it isnt blatant, it isnt evident, its not an opposition from which you can choose, its truly, totally and Integrally leaving the entire responsibility to the Lord.
Of all things, this is the most difficult for manits far easier for the plant and even for the animal, far easier. But for man its very difficult. Because there was a whole period in the evolution when in order to progress he had to take on the responsibility for himself. So the habit has formed, it has taken root in the being.
0 1966-12-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In the afternoon, Mother sent the following note to Satprem, like a continuation of the mornings conversation, meaning that the Integral realization, that of the new being, will only be possible when)
Oh, to be spontaneously divine without watching oneself be, having gone beyond the stage where one wants to be divine.
0 1967-01-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, I have the impression, exactly an impression (its a transcription), the impression of being on the verge of finding a keya key or a way a procedure (I dont know how to put it: all this is popularization), but something which, if you got hold of it without being totally on the true side in one second you could be the cause of a horrifying catastrophe. Thats why the Integral preparation of the consciousness must go hand in hand with the perception of the Power. And then, there are differences so subtle that for the understanding (I am not referring to the ordinary understanding, but even for a quite spiritualized and prepared state of consciousness, which is not THE consciousness), even an insignificant, almost imperceptible, tiny little movement could bring about a catastrophe.
What catastrophe? I dont know. Like a dissolution of the world.2
0 1967-03-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some of the things I said in the Talk youve just read to me today, were true at the time, are still true for the majority of people, but are no longer true for me.1 To the present vision, there is nothing that isnt willed and doesnt come purposely (not exactly deliberately, but with a precise aim in view), and it is AT THE SAME TIME a complete, multifaceted and Integral whole (which is why its very difficult to grasp). But now the thing is very clearly felt. And that is since two or three days, following a very minute observationprecise and minute The centre of consciousness is fairly high up (gesture far above the head); in the past it was always there (gesture near the top of the head) and it would see things around and inside, but it seems to have ascended and the field of the consciousness is much vaster. Also, the body has become transparent, so to speak, and almost nonexistent; I dont know how to put it it doesnt obstruct the vibrations: all vibrations can go through. For example (Ill give an example to make myself understood, omitting details deliberately), I was asked for a certain amount of money, an increase. (On the material level a certain number of things are controlledby Motherfrom here, and which I have to pay for regularly.) So then, an increase was asked for. Not that the request was unreasonable, thats not it (it was an increase for something special, a daily increase), but I dont know why (because heregesture to the foreheadnothing happens, I am absolutely, not only blank, but transparent, and everything is allowed to go through unobstructed), when I had to take the decision, there was immediately a vision (but a vision, as I said, from above, which sees over a much larger field), of conflict, battle, and to the observation there was something (in Mother) very much displeased, like a protest. I wondered why. If it had been translated into words, there would have been indignation at that request (without there being in the consciousness the least reason for this indignation: it all becomes very, very impersonalvery impersonal). I went on looking with the vision of the consciousness, and then, as if automatically, through this mouth I asked how much this increase would amount to per week (because even the mental state that enables you to calculate isnt there at all: its only a question of consciousness). I asked someone who was there, and he told me. Then, there immediately came the decision: I will give so much once a week. And everything calmed down. Why and how and who? I havent the faintest idea.
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.
0 1967-05-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No No, to me, I still see (its the same thing in this body, you understand), there are still little idiocies, you know: scattered here and there, like thattiny idiocies, but sufficient to stop the movement from being Integral.
For instance, what Sri Aurobindo says that purity which consists in receiving ONLY the Influence of the Divine, so that all other influences cannot touch For example, a certain number of people have been paid to destroy me. I know it. And I see it. Well, it cant do anything, but it does give a little workit SHOULDNT give any work. Now and then I am obliged to put up the shield of white Light to stop them from coming through. That shouldnt be necessary, it should be automatic. And it comes from the fact that there are still loads of cells with old habitsold imprints, old habits.
0 1967-07-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the action of a perfectly conscious aspiration, increasingly constant, and the Response which brings the immediate result of that aspiration. But its still a completely new fieldnew from that total, Integral angle. Formerly, everything going on in the body (I dont mean this one, I mean it in a general way) was a reflection and an effect of the Thing, while now, it is the Thing itself. But the millennial habit of being otherwise is so strong that the impression is Its like (the comparison is poor, but anyway), like stretching a rubber band; so as long as you keep it stretched (gesture of effort, pulling on Matter), the effect is there; but if the tension ceases, even for a second (gesture of abrupt flattening), it falls back out of habit. Which compels you to constant tension. But it wont always be like that. It is the transition from one habit to another; once the other movement is established, then it will be natural, this constant tension wont be necessary.
Well see how much time it takes.
0 1967-10-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now there is Integrally, even for the most material consciousness, the body consciousness, this: to leave the entire responsibility to the Lordwhat He wants will be, and thats all. When He wants us to do something, we do it, but after all We do it simply because He tells us to do it. And what will happen will happen. Then, if you want to know, you put yourself in the attitude of the Witness and look on. And thats very amusing! As soon as you are in the attitude of the Witness, it becomes very interestingvery interesting and you smile.
Thats how it is.
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The transformation demands a total and Integral consecration. But is that not the aspiration of every sincere sadhak?
Total means
Yes, it was on the following page (because I thought, This man will wonder why I put total and Integral when the two words seem to mean the same thing). So I gave him the explanation:
Total means VERTICALLY in all the states of being from the most material to the most subtle. Integral means HORIZONTALLY in all the various and often contradictory parts that make up the outer being (physical, vital and mental).
***
0 1967-12-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The best way to prepare oneself to receive Divine Love is to adhere Integrally to the Truth.
(Mother then writes a second note:)
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then you see: as the process grows more and more perfectperfect means Integral, total, leaving nothing behindit NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death represents stops existing, but it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.
Its mainly that: all that the Mind has brought in terms of rigidity and absoluteness and near invincibility thats what is going to disappear. And simply by handing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness.
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Money belongs to no one: money is a collective property that only those with an Integral and general, universal vision must use. And let me add, a vision not only Integral and general, but also essentially TRUE, which means you can distinguish between a utilization in conformity with universal progress, and a utilization that might be called fanciful. But those are details, because even errorseven, from a certain point of view, wasteful useshelp in the general progress: they are lessons in reverse.
(silence)
--
The first thing to be accepted and recognized by all is that the invisible, higher power (higher in the sense that it belongs to a plane of consciousness which, although veiled to most, one can gain, a consciousness one may call as one likes, any name that doesnt matter but which is Integral and pure in the sense that its not mendacious, its based on the Truth), that this power is capable of governing material things for everyone in a MUCH TRUER, happier and more beneficial way than any material power. Thats the first point. Once everyone agrees on it
And its not something you can pretend to have; a being cant pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesnt, because (laughing) if its a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it wont give you any material powerhere also, Thon said something in this regard, he said, Those who are all the way up (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each ones power of consciousness), one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases. And its perfectly true. Its automatic and spontaneous; its not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs becomeautomatically sobecause they lose all their importance and value. Its reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
--
Someone had written to Mother, "I want my money to be used exclusively to conquer the causes of our sufferings and misery." Mother had replied, "That is what we are working towards here, but not in the artificial way of the philanthropists, who only deal with the outward effects. We want to eliminate forever the CAUSE of suffering, by divinizing matter through the Integral transformation."
Mother means socialism or communism.
0 1968-05-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We must face Integral life with all that it still entails in terms of ugliness, falsehood and cruelty, but while taking care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to consciously put that source in contact with the world so it may transform it.
That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing ones eyes so as not to see but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what we might call the individual work. Only, to what extent can this transformation be Integral? Thats the question. Ive said its a much accelerated work, obviously, but in spite of that, you feel the amount of experiences necessary for the transformation is so tremendous that the limits of a lifetime are too short. But then Ive already told you several times that this aggregate has not an impression, but a very clear perception that a certain disequilibrium or disorder (which may apparently be very slight, a mere nothing) is enough to cause dissolution. It feels that the slightest thing is enough, and that only the higher Will to keep it together is preventing things from reaching that stage. Like that. It depends on That. I lived the first thirty years of my life (nearly thirty, twenty-five to thirty) with the sensation that NOTHING could bring about dissolution; that if disorder came, order would quite naturally be restored to allow the body to go on. Very strong, it was very strong. Then there was a period when there was nothing, neither on one side nor on the other; and then, slowly, slowly, there has now come the perception that the LEAST thing is enough, and that its only the SUPREME Will (not even higher: the supreme Will) that is preventing dissolution. It exclusively depends on That.
And as you say, this presence is maintained to the extent its useful and indispensable for a certain aspect of the work. And in that case, theres no question of a long or short time, of when, how, what and all that Its as You will. Constantly, in every cell, every activity, every moment: What You will, Lord. All the time. Like that. No question. Only, there is an observation, a very clear perception of the fact that this supreme Will is what enables things to carry on as they do.
0 1968-12-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I want to offer myself more Integrally.
Offering is yougiving is me!
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An Integral goodwill, a constant aspiration to know the Truth and submit oneself to it.
A plasticity sufficient to face the demands of the work and a ceaseless will for progress so as to progress forever towards the ultimate Truth.
0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(This note is about a person physically close to Sri Aurobindo, who tried to destroy Mother and separate her from Sri Aurobindo. In fact, it is clear and understandable that the darkest shadow is right under the light, and that he or she who comes to do the divine work must take on himself or herself the whole burden of the Opposer. Thus is it near Sri Aurobindo and Mother that the greatest adversaries will be found. That also explains Mothers departure and the ensuing murky situation in Auroville and in the Ashram. For obvious reasons we will not publish Mothers note or the long conversation that followed in its Integrality, but only a few brief extracts, insofar as they illustrate the problem, or perhaps the mystery, of Sri Aurobindos and Mothers departures, for they have one and the same reason.)
Naturally, this mustnt be published, but its to be kept.
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like that. For a PERFECT realization, the entire being must be illumined; but for an initial realization, its probably easier for a body that doesnt have a highly developed mind. Since he came here, Ive looked a good deal, and I am fully convinced of it. Thats why he You see, for us who have gone up to the highest degree of mental potentiality, its through that highest degree that we went beyondits when the mind realized its highest degree that it abdicated and thats very good for the Integral realization, but generally the body is too accustomed to obeying the mind, not supple enough to be transformed. Thats the reason why my mind was sent away. But thats not a process which can be recommended to others. Because nine people out of ten would die.
The mind?
0 1969-11-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, he does make us understand the need for an Integral yoga.
Oh, yes.
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Until the year of grace 1969 [the descent of the New Consciousness], all philosophies, all religions, all isms, all spiritual paths were only the refined products of the mental circle [according to Supermanhood]. All experiences were merely on the higher planes of the mind. Those peaks of the Spirit are but self-paroxysms, p. 61; we must cleanse ourselves of the wisdoms of the past, the ascents of the past, the illuminations of the past and the whole racket of the old sanctities of the Spirit, p. 29, etc. In other words, everything that took place before 1969 is a sublimation of the old flesh, p. 28. It is quite clear. Some have touched the Secret: the Rishis, the Egyptians the reader understands that they had the intuition of it but not the experience. The same applies to Sri Aurobindo, who announced it, but his yoga extended the refinement of the mental bubble; the reader thus understands that he did not know about the key to the yoga of the superman and was merely satisfied in teaching the Integral yoga.
The misconception of this enthusiastic reader is like a demonstration in reverse of precisely what the orthodox reproached Supermanhood for, i.e., of having betrayed Sri Aurobindo. Behind this so-called schism were hidden, on the one hand, those who wanted to separate Mother and Sri Aurobindo and found it more comfortable to philosophize than to do the yoga concretely, and on the other hand, those who wanted conveniently to dispense with all spiritual disciplines and live according to their fancy. Two poles of the same misconception. Here then is the letter Satprem sent in response to this enthusiastic reader:
--
You have a lot of nerve to say that Sri Aurobindo did not have the key to the yoga of the superman and that his Integral yoga was a refinement of the mental bubble! And where have I learned what I write, if not from Mother and Sri Aurobindo? You forget that it is thanks to him that the yoga of the superman is possible, that it is he who prepared it, he who brought down the great flood of the New Consciousness so that, instead of seeking for the Divine Truth up above, men can live it down here and walk their every step in it. It is like saying that Sri Aurobindo did not have the key to the door he opened!
His yoga is Integral because, instead of confining the quest to the spiritual heights, he has told us repeatedly that our body too must participate and we must bring the Spiritual Truth down into our body and our life. The path of ascent and all the other paths, the other planes of consciousness, are part of an Integral development for those who have the time and the special capacities that are required. But it is no longer the time for those excursions, since everything can be found heresince, in fact, Sri Aurobindo and Mother opened the way HERE. Please recall Mothers statement: Sri Aurobindo came to tell us: one need not leave the earth to find the Truth, one need not leave life to find ones soul, one need not abandon the world or have limited beliefs to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if he is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to find him. (Questions and Answers, 8.13.1958) And again this: For many, spiritual life is meditation. As long as that nonsense is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force will always find it very difficult not to be swallowed up in the obscurity of an uncomprehending human mind. (Questions and Answers, 4.17.1957) And if you know how to read Sri Aurobindo and Mother, you will see that they have completely described this road of here and the sunlit pathOn the Way to Supermanhood only puts an intentionally exclusive accent on the here, because there is no time to lose, because everyone does not have the special capacities for making large-scale explorations, and finally because we are at the Hour of Godwe are right there! It has come. Because there really is something different in the world since 1969.
It is not a change in Sri Aurobindos yoga, it is the flowering of Sri Aurobindos yoga, I dare say. I do not think that the flower of the flame tree contradicts in any way the flame tree.
0 1971-08-Undated, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The task of giving a concrete shape to Sri Aurobindos vision has been entrusted to the Mother. The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society, expressing and embodying the new consciousness, is the work undertaken by her. In the nature of things, it is a collective ideal calling for a collective effort to realize it in terms of an Integral human perfection.
The Ashram, founded and built up by the Mother, has been the first step towards the fulfilment of this goal. The project of Auroville is the next step, more exterior, seeking to widen the base of this endeavor to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth in the collective life of humanity.
0 1971-09-22, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ooh! That must be the supramental victory. A white peacock is the Integral victory; a golden tail is the supramental realization. Did you see that?
Satprem saw it.
0 1971-10-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had an experience. Thats all right, I was happy, I was very happy because that requires some Integrality, you knowan absolute sincerity and Integralityo therwise. But the experience itself was terrible.
(long silence)
--
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution towards a supreme consciousness and an Integral awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other expedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a complete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true solution.
The Life Divine, XVIII.627
0 1972-04-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
India shall take her true place in the world only when she will become Integrally the messenger of the Divine Life.1
On what occasion was it sent?
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Probably its due to the stupidity of my body that I suffer the way I do. If it were more receptive and more (Mother opens her hands), yes, more receptive, there would be less friction. I can see, I see clearly that pain, conflict, incapacity are all a product of our own stupidity. Theres no doubt about it. We have only ourselves to blame. At any momentANY moment and in whatever circumstanceswhenever we take the right attitude, that is, when we are like this (Mother opens her hands): let Your Will be donehonestly, sincerely, Integrallyeverything is fine.
Therefore its entirely our fault, we can only blame ourselves. We can only blame ourselves. We complain out of stupidityoh, personally I dont complain but all of a sudden, I cant do anything anymore.
02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Knowledge - the Knowledge by which we become what we know. To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through selfgiving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body - this is the Integral way to the Truth.1 It is this that we call the Truth here and aim at in our Yoga.
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nature's attempt at the transcendence of Mind opens the door for a more and more direct and Integral descent of the Divine Consciousness, and in its highest degrees the degrees of the Supermind the Descent means a reversal of the normal values, a swift and total transfiguration of earthly life into the mould of supernal spiritual realities. An absolute degree of the Descent, an irruption of the Divine Consciousness in its supreme purity and fullness becomes inevitable in the end: for that alone can bring about the fulfilment that Nature ultimately has in view. Matter will yield completely, and life power too, only to the direct touch and embrace of the Divine's own self.
In this age we stand at some such critical juncture in Nature's evolutionary history. Its full implications, the exact degree of the immediate achievement, the form and manner of the Descent are things that remain veiled till the fact is accomplished. Something of it is revealed, however, to the eye of vision and the heart of faith, something of it is seized by those to whom it chooses to disclose itself
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
The outrages committed by Spain in America, the oppression of the Christians by Imperial Rome, the brutal treatment of Christians by Christians themselves (the inquisition, that is to say) or the misdeeds of Imperialists generally were wrong and, in many cases, even inhuman and unpardonable. But when we compare with what Nazi Germany has done in Poland or wants to do throughout the world, we find that there is a difference between the two not only in degree, but in kind.One is an instance of the weakness of man, of his flesh being frail; the other illustrates the might of the Asura, his very spirit is unwilling. One is undivine; the other antidivine, positively hostile. They who cannot discern this difference are colour-blind: there are eyes to which all deeper shades of colour are black and all lighter shades white.
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The next step of Descent is the Mind where the original unity and identity and harmony are disrupted to a yet greater degree, almost completely. The self-delimitation of consciousness which is proper to the Supermind and even to the Overmind, at least in its higher domainsgives way to self-limitation, to intolerant egoism and solipsism. The consciousness withdraws from its high and wide sweep, narrows down to introvert orbits. The sense of unity in the mind is, at most, a thing of idealism and imagination; it is an abstract notion, a supposition and a deduction. Here we enter into the very arcana of Maya, the rightful possession of Ignorance. The individualities here have become totally isolated and independent and mutually conflicting lines of movement. Hence the natural incapacity of mind, as it is said, to comprehend more than one object simultaneously. The Super mind and, less absolutely, the Overmind have a global and Integral outlook: they can take in each one in its purview all at once the total assemblage of things, they differentiate but do not divide the Supermind not at all, the Overmind not categorically. The Mind has not this synthetic view, it proceeds analytically. It observes its object by division, taking the parts piecemeal, dismantling them, separating them, and attending to each one at a time. And when it observes it fixes itself on one point, withdrawing its attention from all the rest. If it bas to arrive at a synthesis, it can only do so by collating, aggregating and summing. Mental consciousness is thus narrowly one pointed: and in narrowing itself, being farther away from the source it becomes obscurer, more and more outward gazing (parci khni) and superficial. The One Absolute in its downward march towards multiplicity, fragmentation and partiality loses also gradually its subtlety, its suppleness, its refinement, becomes more and more obtuse, crude, rigid and dense.
Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying according to the degree of immixture of the two, according to the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other respectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which three main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where consciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled it becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness, the intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the highest ranges of our consciousness and being.
--
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.
--
Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human personality; as the consciousness in the human being rises higher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and higher a richer, wider, deeper personality. The first great conversion, the first turning of the human personality to a new mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally according to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its surface agents and vehicles is what is known as spiritual initiation. This may happen and it does happen even when man lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the possibility of growth and evolution and transformation of personality in higher and a higher spiritual degree through the upper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the Overmind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres, the fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff, the substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the upward drive within the developing and increasing psychic being itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and greater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated. The final coalescence of the fully and Integrally developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from which it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment.
The mystery of rebirth in the evolution of the human personality is nothing but the mystery of the developing psyche. At first this psyche or soul is truly a being: no bigger than the thumb it is the hardly audible still small voice. The experiences of lifesweet or bitter, happy or unhappy, good or bad, howsoever they may appear to the outward eye and perceptionall the dialectics of a terrestrial existence contri bute to the growth and development of the psychic consciousness. Each span of life means a special degree or mode of growth necessitated by the inner demand and drive of the divine Individual seated within the heart. The whole end in view of this secret soul is to move always towards and be united again with its Oversoul, its original and high archetype in the Divine Consciousness: the entire course of its earthly evolution is chalked out and patterned by the exact need of its growth. Whatever happens in each particular life, all the currents of all the lives converge and coalesce, and serve the psychic consciousness to swell in volume and intensity and be one with the Divine Consciousness. Or, in a different imagery, one can say that the multifarious experiences of various lives are as fuel to the Inner Firethis Psychic Agni which is just a spark or a thin tongue at the outset of the human evolutionary course; but with the addition of fuel from life to life this Fire flames up, indeed, becomes ultimately a conflagration that bums and purifies the entire outer vehicle and transforms it into radiant mattera fit receptacle, incarnation of the supernal Light. The mounting Fire (the consciousness-energy secreted in the earth-bound heart of Matter) finally flares up, discloses itself in its full amplitude and calls and attracts into it the incandescent supramental Solar Sphere which is the type and pattern it has to embody and express. This is the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of which the mystics all over the earth in all ages spoke and sangto which the Vedic Rishi refers when he declares:
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas
class:chapter
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I have said that this Yoga was "new" because it aims at the Integrality of the Divine in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other?
I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the Integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas - its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before it - also the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations - the perfectibility of the race, certain
--
(3) Because a method has been preconised for achieving this purpose which is as total and Integral as the aim set before it, viz. the total and Integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods but only as a part action and passing on to others that are distinctive. I have not found this method (as a whole) or anything like it in its totality proposed or realised in the old Yogas. If I had I should not have wasted my time in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our
Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure.
02.08 - The Basic Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A firm physical unity presupposes, at least posits the possibility of an Integral unity. Otherwise the body itself would tend to break up and disintegrate. Such physical cataclysms are not unknown in Nature. However, a geographical unity cannot remain exclusively limited to itself; it brings about other unities by the very pressure, by the capillary action, as it were, of the boundary. The first unity that is called into being is the economic. A Zollverein (Customs Union) has almost always been the starting-point of a national union. Next or along with it comes the political unity. India's political and economic unity has been the great work of the British rule, however that rule might be distasteful to us. It is an illustration of Nature's method of compulsion and violence, when man's voluntary effort fails. India possesses a resounding roll of great names who endeavoured to give her this solid political and economic unity; Bharata, Yudhishthira, Asoka, Chandragupta, Akbar, Shivaji have all contri buted to the evergrowing unification of Indian polity. But still what they realised was not a stable and permanent thing, it was yet fluent and uncertain; it was only the hammerblow, the plastering, as one would say today, from an outside agency that welded, soldered and fixed that unity.
Fissures of late have opened again and they seem to be increasing in depth and width and in number. What appeared to be a unified structure, of one piece, whole and entire, now threatens to crash and fall to pieces. We are asked to deny the unity. The political unity, it is said, is an impossibility, the geographical unity an illusion.
02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Various figures and images depict the nature and relation of the two. The lower is darkness and the night, the higher is light and the day. Sometimes it is the opposite: the lower is the day (ordinary common light), the higher is dark night (because unknown and unfamiliar or because of the very dazzle of its light). The lower is imaged at times as a woodland, a shelter for wild growths and roving animals. The higher is the hunter, with his hounds chasing the creatures of the lower domain. Also the higher is the serene infinite sky, the lower the raging sea below. Otherwise, again, the higher is the vast sea, tranquil or quietly rippling above and the lower is the solid material universe. The higher is the delightful sun, the lower is the muddy slimy earth of the bed of stones and rocks. The consummation, the dnouement is the interlocking between the two and a final coalescence in which the higher penetrates into the lower and the lower is sublimated into the higher and the two form one Integral undivided reality.
Poetry, Volume 104, No 5, August 1964.
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The fact of the matter is that here we enter a domain inwhich the notion of egoism or selfishness has no raison dtre. It is only when one has transcended not only selfishness but egoism and sense of individuality that one becomes ready to enter the glory and beatitude of the Self, or Brahman or Shunyam. One may actually and irrevocably pass beyond, or one may return from there (or from the brink of it) to work in and on the worldout of compassion or in obedience to a special call or a higher Will or because of some other thing; but this second course does not mean that one has attained a higher status of being. We may consider it more human, but it is not necessarily a superior realisation. It is a matter of choice of vocation only, to use a mundane phraseology. The Personal and the Impersonal are two co-ordinates of the same supreme Realitysome choose (or are chosen by) the one and others choose (or are chosen by) the other, perhaps as the Integral Play or the inscrutable Plan demands and determines, but neither is intrinsically superior to the otheralthough, as I have already said, from an interested human standpoint, one may seem more immediately profitable or nearer than the other; but from that standpoint there may be other truths that are still more practically useful, still closer to the earthly texture of humanity.
The humanism, known to Europe generally, both in its profane and religious aspects, is all "humantoo human" as Nietzsche pronounced it; it was for this reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity anyhow, and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisation, of being and consciousness as we would say.
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In my explanation of the universe I have put forward this cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the Supramental consciousness and the Supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the Integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the Supramental
Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole SelfKnowledge and world-Knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and the fulfilment of our spiritual evolution.
03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In old days, while we enjoyed life we were not without the taste for life. We were youthful and in full possession of the dharma of youth. And when we left the world and life we cherished no regret; we did it whole-heartedly. We were young; and our movements were whole and entire. It may be said that that was an age of unthinking innocence; but in the attempt to gain the arid richness of an old-age consciousness, we have lost the simplicity, the spontaneity and the Integrality of our non-age. Yes, we have eaten of the fruit of knowledge and our youth is the price that we have paid. With our present nature we not merely enjoy, but we want to know that we enjoy; we cannot enjoy a thing, unless in the very act we weigh and dissect and scrutinize the object and ourselves too, into the bargain.
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.
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To relieve life of this mingled strain and tension, to lift it out of this ambiguity and uncertainty, to free it from this gravitational force that drives it towards what is superficial and externalto endow it with its real worth, we must find and possess life at a higher level, at its unspoilt source; we must first draw back and re-establish, this time consciously and Integrally, the lost connection with our soul, the Divine in our being.
***
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have said that this is not our path. The divine grace is a factwithout that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace, its manifestation and play may be possible. For, just as the divine grace is true, so it is equally true that the individual is essentially one with the Divine, sin and ignorance are his external sloughs, identity with the Divine is his natural right. We, therefore, Jay equal stress on this hidden aspect of man, on the freedom of his will, on his personal effort which is the determining factor of his destiny. For in the field of ignorance or half-knowledge, in the nether hemisphere of his consciousness, it is this power that directly builds up that ordered state of the being with whose support the divine grace can actualise itself and give a material shape to the Integral fulfilment.
Hence the Mother gives the direction that though external lapses may be natural to our external nature, now that our inner consciousness has awakened, the vision and the earnestness to see and recognise our mistakes have developedassuming that this much of development has taken place in uswe must awake to the situation and be on the alert, we must bring such control to bear upon our vital impulses, upon our nervous centres as will prevent, for good and all, errors and stupidities from upsurging again and invading our physical self and our field of action. When we have reached this stage, we have acquired the capacity to ascend to another level of consciousness. It is then that we can lay the foundations of a new order in the worldit is then that along with the purification, the achievement will begin to take on a material form.
03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic Integral knowledge.
Comus, I, 477-8.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its Integral self-fulfilment, the Divine Integrality.
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
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Mantra or initiation, in its essence, is nothing else than contacting the inner being. In our Path, at least, there is no other rite or rule, injunction or ceremony. The only thing needed is to awake to the consciousness of the psychic being, to hear its callto live and move and act every moment of our life under the eye of this indwelling Guide, in accordance with its direction and impulsion. Our initiation is not therefore a one-time affair only; but at every moment, at each step, it has to be taken again and again, it must be renewed, revitalised, furthered and streng thened constantly and unceasingly; for it means that at each step and at every moment we have to maintain the contact of our external consciousness with the inner being; at each step and every moment we have to undergo the test of our sincerity and loyalty the test whether we are tending to our inner being, moving in its stream or, on the contrary, walking the way of our external animal nature, whether the movements in the mind and life and body are controlled by their habitual inferior nature or are open to and unified with their hidden divine source. This recurrent and continuous initiation is at the secret basis of all spiritual disciplinein the Integral Yoga this is the one and all-important principle.
Mundaka, Ill. 2. 4
03.03 - The Inner Being and the Outer Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
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If then Europe can cut across the snares that Modernism has spread all about her and get behind the surface turmoils and ebullitions and seek that which she herself once knew and esteemed as the one thing needful, then will she really see what the East means, then only will she find the bond of indissoluble unity with Asia. For the Truth that Europe carried in her bosom is much bigger than anything she ever suspected even in her best days. And she carried it not with the full illumination and power of a Master, but rather in the twilight consciousness of a servant or a devotee. The Truth in its purity flowed there for the most part much under the main current of life, and its formulations in life were not its direct expressions and embodiments but echoes and images. It is Asia who grasps the Truth with the hand of the Master, the Truth in its full and absolute truth and it is Asia who can show in fact and life how to embody it Integrally.
Europe's spiritual soul itself in the last analysis will be found to be only a derivative of Asia's own self. For all the Mysteries and Occult Disciplines the Christian, the Platonic, the Eleusinian and Orphic, the Kabalistic, the Druidicwhich lay imbedded in Europe's spiritual and religious genius, when traced further up to the very source, will carry us straight into Asia's lap, perhaps India's.
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The system of varnas and ashramas of ancient Indiaeven if it be supposed that it never existed actually in its purest ideal formserves as a graphic example of how man as a social being should create and organise his existence in order that that existence might be rendered as perfect and Integrally sound as things can be. That system we hold forth as only an illustration; we do not mean that it is a pattern of life that should be or could be implanted on our present day social circumstances. These are certainly very different and demand different groupings and hierarchies that must naturally grow out of them.
It should be noted that in contemporary life stress is laid upon one side, one part and one function of human nature which cover only a superficialhowever useful and necessaryarea. Man is not a political animal (even in the Aristotelian sense); and it is an error to say that he is an economic animal. These notions divide man's Integral being into various sectional views only; they seek to cut out and suppress all other members excepting the favoured one. The politically militant bourgeois ideal of the Nazi or the Fascist and the economically militant ideal of the proletarian are equally guilty of this lapse. Even the ideal of man as a rational being does not go far enough to be able to save man and mankind. All of them evoke conflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict ends in suppression, amputation and atrophy.
We have to recognise that man, in his individual as well as in his collective being, is a complex entity, not something simple and one -dimensional. The healthy growth of himself and his society means a simultaneous development on many lines, all moving together in concord and harmony. And this movement of all-harmony can be found only when the movements are initiated from the very source of harmony which is the soul Certain soul-principles that seek expression in life today thatare necessary to the age or to the coming age, have to be recognised and each given a field and a scope. That should be the basis of social groupings. And a composite variety of grouping with strands and strata, each expressing a particular mode of being of the one group-soulwhich in its turn is an aspect of the Vishva Purusha in his playis the ideal pattern of social organisation. What exactly the lines of grouping would be need not and perhaps cannot be settled now; a certain preliminary growth and change of consciousness in man is necessary before anything definite and precise can be foreseen as to the form and schema that consciousness will manifest and layout.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The unrolling or Involution is the path traced by consciousness in its changing modes of concentration. The principle of concentration is inherent in consciousness. Sri Aurobindo speaks of four modes or degrees of this concentration: (I) the essential, (2) the Integral, (3) the total or global and (4) the separative. The first is a sole in-dwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being it is the superconscient Silence, at one end, and the Inconscience, at the other. The second is the total Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration; the third, multiple or totalising overmental awareness; the fourth is the concentration of Ignorance. All the four, however, form the Integral play of one indivisible consciousness.
Here we come to the very heart of the mystery. As we have put it thus far, the process of Involution would appear as a series of stages in a descending order, a movement along a vertical line, as it were, one stage following another, more or less separate from each other, the lower being ever more ignorant, more separative, more exclusive. But this is not the whole picture. At each lower stage the higher is not merely high above, but also comes down and stands behind or becomes immanent in the lower. Along with the vertical movement there is also a horizontal movement. In other words, even when we are sunk in the lowest stratum of Ignorancein the domain of Matterwe have also there all the other strands behind, even the very highest, not merely as passive or neutral entities, but as dynamic agents exerting their living pressure to the full. Indeed the Ignorance is not mere Ignorance, but Knowledge itself, the very highest Knowledge, but in a particular mode of activity. What appears ignorant is full of a secret Knowledgeit is just the outer surface, the facet that appears as its opposite because of a particular manner of concentration, a total self-abandonment in the object of Knowledge. That Knowledge stands revealed if the mask is put away, that is to say, if we get behind, If we release the exclusiveness of the concentration. This release or getting behind does not mean necessarily the dissolution of the status itself for it is the pressure from behind, the concentration of the hidden consciousness that creates the status and its truth-forms; with the exclusiveness goes away only the twist, the aberration produced by it. When the consciousness withdraws from its mode and field of exclusive concentration, it need not concentrate again on the withdrawal only, it can be an inclusive concentration also embracing both the status the frontal and the behind. Both can be held together in one single movement of consciousness possessing the double function of projection and comprehensionprajna and vijna.
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The fact of the matter is that here we enter a domain in which the notion of egoism or selfishness has no raison d'tre. It is only when one has transcended not only selfishness, but egoism and all sense of individuality that one becomes ready to step into the glory and beatitude of the Self or Brahman or unyam. One may actually and irrevocably pass beyond, or one may return from there (or from the brink of it) to work in and on the worldout of compassion, or in obedience to a special call or a higher Will, or because of some other thing; but this second course does not mean that one has attained a higher status of being. We may consider it more human, but it is not necessarily a superior realisation. It is a matter of choice of vocation only, to use a mundane figure. The Personal and the Impersonal are two co-ordinates of the same supreme Realitysome choose (or are chosen by) one and others choose (or chosen by) the other, perhaps as the Integral Play or the inscrutable Plan demands and determines, but neither is intrinsically superior to the other.
The humanism with which Europe is familiar, both in its profane and religious aspects, would look, from an IndianVedanticstandpoint, all 'human, too human'; it was a European who declared it so. It was for this reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity anyhow and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisationof being and consciousness, as we would say.
03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But is not The Gita's solution somewhat different? Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to be in the very thick of a deadly fight, not a theoretical or abstract combat, but take a hand in the direst man-slaughter, to do the deed (even like Macbeth) but yogically. Yes, The Gita's position seems to be thatto accept all life Integrally, to undertake all necessary work (kartavyam karma) and turn them Godward. The Gita seeks to do it in its own way which consists of two major principles: (1) to do the work, whatever it may be, unattachedwithout any desire for the fruit, simply as a thing that has to be done, and (2) to do it as a sacrifice, as an offering to the supreme Master of works.
The question naturally turns upon the nature and the kind of workwhe ther there is a choice and selection in it. Gita speaks indeed of all works, ktsna-karmakt, but does that really mean any and every work that an ignorant man, an ordinary man steeped in the three Gunas does or can do? It cannot be so. For, although all activity, all energy has its source and impetus in the higher consciousness of the Divine, it assumes on the lower ranges indirect, diverted or even perverted formulations and expressions, not because of the inherent falsity of these so-called inferior strata, the instruments, but because of their temporary impurity and obscurity. There are evidently activities and impulsions born exclusively of desire, of attachment and egoism. There are habits of the body, urges of the vital, notions of the mind, there are individual and social functions that have no place in the spiritual scheme, they have to be rigorously eschewed and eliminated. Has not the Gita said, this is desire, this is passion born of the quality of Rajas? . . . There is not much meaning in trying to do these works unattached or to turn them towards the Divine. When you are unattached, when you turn to the Divine, these 'Simply drop away of themselves. Yes, there are social duties and activities and relations that inevitably dissolve and disappear as you move into the life divine. Some are perhaps tolerated for a period, some are occasions for the consciousness to battle and surmount, grow strong and pass beyond. You have to learn to go beyond and new-create your environment.
03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The original and primeval Indianism was built upon the Vedic realisation of the Everlasting Yes. That luminous body of an Integral realisation, which means the Veda, came to be covered over by a more strenuous demand of immediate necessity, by an over-emphasis on one side or aspect or line of growth of the human consciousness; a negative approach was needed for man to rise out of its too earthly a tenement to glimpse his divine possibility beyond, before he could hope to build it here below. The long reign of Siva was a necessary preparation for the advent of Vishnu.
And yet Mayavada even while it reigned supreme, was never the be-all and end-all of the inner Indian spirit. Always there was along with it the other strain; in the background, driven underground its presence is felt persistently. The Shunyam, the Asat, the Akshara Brahman could never totally obliterate the Sat Purusha, the Purushottama or the Mahashakti. The Line of the Everlasting Yes was kept living and vibrant in the Tantric discipline, for example, although at times it also suffered a change under the compelling impact of the Great Negation.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Another personLaertesplaced in an analogous situation but not worried by the promptings of idealism and the sense of discrepancy between the ideal and the real, takes the world as it is, considers it all right and moves straight to his purpose; he is not a divided being, but in full and Integral possession of himself and of his instruments of actioneven though this solid pragmatism does not avail him much in the end.
The crisis in Hamlet reminds us of another somewhat similar one, that is the basis and starting-point of the great episode in the Mahabharata the Gita. Arjuna, the ideal hero and man of action, in absolute self-confidence and certitude, with no doubt or hesitation about anything in the world, advances into the very thick of the bloody strife and lo! all is changed as with a magic wand! What was to him a moment before a clear duty, an evident act of righteousness, the noblest of deeds, now appears nothing less than an inglorious slaughter. The bow of victory slips from the hand of the mighty warrior and, all nerve and tremor, he sinks down in gloom and dejection and complete confusion.
03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In other words, we can say in a somewhat crudely general manner, in grosso modo, that if English soars high, French dives within; if English is capable of scaling the heavens of the spirit, French enters as easily into the intimacies of the soul (me). It is these intimacies or soul touches that form as it were the inner lining to the mental clarities that give French its external structure; while in English as a counterpart to its spiritual attitudes we meet on the hither side a luxuriant objectivity of sense perception. Thus the two languages are in a way strangely complementary, and in a perfect human culture both have to be equally attended to, given equal importance if completeness or Integrality is our aim.
II
03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not to say that other remediesless radical but more normal to human naturecannot be undertaken in the meanwhile. The higher truths do not rule out the lower. These too have their place and utility in Nature's Integral economy. An organisation based on science and ethicism can be of help as a palliative and measure of relief; it may be even immediately necessary under the circumstances, but however imperative at the moment it does not go to the root of the matter.
The action of the three gunas is the subject matter of the Veda: but do thou become free from the triple guna, O Arjuna.The Gita, II.45
04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine descends as an individual person fundamentally to hasten the evolutionary process and to complete it; he takes the human form to raise humanity to divinity. The fact and the nature of the process have been well exemplified in Sri Ramakrishna who, it is said, took up successively different lines of spiritual discipline and by a supreme and sovereign force of concentration achieved realisation in each line in the course of a few days what might take in normal circumstances years or even lives to do. The Divine gathers and concentrates in himself the world-force, the Nature-Energyeven like adynamo and focuses and canalises it to give it its full, Integral and absolute effectivity. And mortal pain he accepts, and swallows the poison of ignorant lifeeven like Nilakantha Shivato transmute it into ecstasy and immortality. The Divine Mother sank into the earth-nature of a human body:
Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword. . .
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Thus then the embodied human person who has the embodied Divine Person before his eyes must know how to instal and incorporate the Divine Person in him, in his body and physical existence. That was perhaps the mystery sought to be conveyed in the Christian sacrament of transubstantiation. The bread and wine that the initiate has to take in representare or become actually and physically, as the Christian mystics assert the flesh and blood of Christ. One has to become the Divine Person in flesh and blood, wholly and Integrally. As the fossil is a transmutation in stone, grain by grain, of a living bodyorganic elements eliminated and replaced by the inorganic in the very atomic structure and constitutioneven so, the living human structure, the mental, vital and physical formation will be translated, grain by grain, atom by atom into the divine substance by the infusion and imposition of the Divine figure.
The Christian mystics themselves, however, do not seem to have aimed at real physical transubstantiationalthough that might have been at the back of the older Hebrew sacrament of the Eucharist; the perfection sought by them was to be enjoyed in Heaven in company of the Father and not on this earth and in this human body: it was more a sublimation than a transformation that was their goal. The flesh for them was always too weak.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is how man has become and is becoming Integrally consciousconscious in and of all parts of his being. He is awakening and opening to the light that descends from above: indeed the true light, the light of truth is something transcendent and it is that that comes down and slowly inhabits the world and possesses humanity. Its progress marks the steps of evolution. It means the gradual enlightening and illumining of the various layers of our being, the different strands of consciousness from the higher to the lower, from the less dense to the more dense, from mind to the body. It means also in the same process a canalisation, materialisation and fixing upon earth and in the physical being of the increasing powers of the Light.
The Light as it descends from its own home above to the lower levels of our being expresses itself no doubt in one way, but also gets diminished, modified, even deformed in another respect. The work of purification certainly goes on and until that is complete and there comes the fullest expression, it will continue. The action of light on the physical plane, for example, on the body of the Cosmic Being is so blurred and confusing apparently that it looks almost like the action of Darkness. And yet the Dark Night of the soul is not simply the obscurity of Ignorance. It is only the mud that lay diffused or settled in the being which has come up in its gathered mass in the process of churning and cleaning and appears like an obscure screen.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet mankind has always sought for an Integral, an all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyondtotally beyond, in its extreme urge the other probing into the mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.
This double aspiration has found its expression and symbol in the East and the West, each concentrating on one line, sometimes even to the neglect or denial of the other. But this division or incompatibility need not be there and must not be there. A new conception of the Spirit and a new conception of Matter are gaining ground more and more, moving towards a true synthesis of the two, making for the creation of a new world and a new human type.
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The Spirit is not the static transcendent absolute entity only. It is dynamic Force, creative conscious Energy. The spiritual is not mere silence and status it is expression and movement also. Any silence and any status are not the silence and the status of the Spirit the silence and status of death, for example; so too any expression and movement are not of the Spirit either but this does not mean that the Spirit cannot have its own expression and movement. God too likewise is not a mere supracosmic beinga somewhat aggrandised human beingtreating and dominating man and the world as something foreign and essentially antagonistic to his nature. God himself has made himself all creatures and all worlds. He is That and He is This fundamentally and Integrally. Again, at the other end, Matter is not mere dead mechanical matter. It is vibrant energy, but energy that conceals within it life and consciousness. Besides, the whirl and motion of energies is not all, something inherently static looms large behind: you call it ether, field, space or substratumit is being, one would like to say, infused with a secret consciousness and will.
We say then, symbolically at least, if not literally, that the West is looking to the East for this revelation towards which it is groping or moving in its own way: the secret spirit-consciousness that is alive in and through the material cosmos, that alone gives its total sense and significance. And the secret spirit must embody itself here below in material life, the status must be made supremely dynamic the transcendent consciousness, even while maintaining its transcendence, has to deploy its immanence in things of the earth and earthly existence. That is what the West brings to the East; that is what the Scientific and materialist look and labour offer to be integrated into the aspiration and realisation of the East.
So then we say that the East starts from the summit and surveys reality from above downwards, while the West starts from below and works upward. The two complementary movements can be described in several other graphic terms. Instead of a movement from the summit to the base and of another from the base to the apex, that is to say, a movement of ascent and of descent, we can speak of a movement from within outward and of that from outside inward, that is to say, from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre; we can speak also of a movement of contraction, withdrawal or concentration and a movement of expansion; and expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical movement and a horizontal movement. All however express the same truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon that and work our way towards the other; the two together form the total reality and together can they give the Integral life fulfilment.
As I have said, the history of mankind, as a matter of fact, the whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the interaction of this double movement. There are ages and countries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence and special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always a converging movement.
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For an Integral vision of human achievement and perfection we may consider another interesting contrast between the East and the West. We usually attach the word "freedom" or "liberty" to Western culture and civilisation as expressing its essential character: similarly it is bondage, submission, suppression of the individual and individuality that come up in our mind when we think of Eastern culture and civilisation. The judgment is not without truth, so far as it goes; but looked at from a different angle, a deeper standpoint, the true judgment should be, curious to say, just the contrary.
The East does not consider the individual in his social behaviour in terms of freedom and liberty but of service and obligation, not in terms of rights but of duties. The Indian term for right and duty is the sameadhikar. The word originally and usually meant duty, one's sphere of work or service, capacity: the meaning of "right" was secondary and only latterly, probably as a result of the impact from the West, has gained predominance. The West measures human progress by the amount of rights gained for the individual or for the group. It does not seem to have any other standard: submission, obedience, any diminution of the sense of separate individuality meant slavery and loss of human value and dignity. It was the Greek perhaps, with Socrates as the great pioneer, who first declared the supremacy of the individual reason (although he himself obeyed in all things his guardian angel, the Daemon). In India, generally in the East, the value of the individual is estimated in another way. So long as he is in the society, the individual is bound by its demands: he has to serve it according to his best capacity. That is the dharma the Law that one has to observe conscientiously. But if he chooses, he can break the bonds forthwith, come out, come out of the society altogether and be free absolutely that is the only meaning of freedom. In the West the individual is taught to remain in the world and with the society, maintain his individuality and independence and gradually enlarge them in and through the natural fetters and bondages that a collective life and efficient organisation demands and inevitably imposes. The East, on the contrary, asks the individual never to protest and assert his individuality, which is in their view only another name for Ignorant egoism, but to know his position in the social scheme and fulfil the duties and obligations of that position. But the individual has the freedom not to enter into the social frame at all. If he chooses freedom as his ideal, it is the supreme freedom that he must choose, out of the chain of a terrestrial life. He can become the spiritual "outlaw", the sanysi, the word means one who has abandoned everything totally and absolutely.
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Towards that consummation, these two great world currents, East and West, are moving carrying each its own truth and contri buting to the realisation of the Integral truth that is to take body here below.
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04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man, individually and collectively, has passed and is passing through these steps of evolution. The last one is his goal at the present stage. To be a saint, seer or sage is not enough for man. He must be a god. Indeed when he has succeeded to be a god then only would it be possible for him to become what a saint or a seer or sage has to be in order to fulfil himself totally and Integrally. The human race as a whole is progressing along the same line towards the same consummation. That is the secret purpose and end of Nature, to evolve a growing developing material form housing, embodying higher and wider ranges of consciousness, integrating all elements into a more and more intimate and inviolable unity and harmony.
This progress towards ever higher and wider consciousness means also in man's social or collective life the formation of larger and larger aggregates, unification of mankind in ever widening groups. From man the solitary animal, through the family, the clan, the tribe to the nation the race has been increasing the circle of its sympathy and kinship. The birth of the modern nation out of regional and local groupings is a triumph of the emerging consciousness in humanity pointing to another signal and supreme triumph, the emergence of the global sense hi man that is to bind humanity as a single indissoluble indivisible unity in actual life.
04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more Integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine men of all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
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04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more Integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine menof all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, a wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
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04.07 - Readings in Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is the meaning of human life, the significance of even the very ordinary human life. It is the field of a dire debate, a fierce question, a constant struggle between the two opposing or rather polar forces, the will or aspiration to be and the will of inertia not to be the friction, to use a Vedic image, of the two batons of the holy sacrificial wood, arani out of which the flame is to leap forth. The pain and suffering men are subject to in this unhappy vale of tears physical illness and incapacity, vital frustration or mental confusionare symbols and expressions of a deeper fundamental Pain. That pain is the pain of labour, the travail for the birth and incarnation of a godhead asleep or dead. Indeed, the sufferings and ills of life are themselves powerful instruments. They inevitably lead to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and Integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite progressing, through the oblations of our experiences, bitter or sweet, towards the revelation and establishment of the immortal godhead in man.
II
04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is India's great achievement and speciality that she has found the way the way to all truly high fulfilment. It is Yoga and the Yogic consciousness. Yoga is the science and art of discovering the higher truths, indeed, the highest reality and of living there, not a midway moral elevation only. In its Integral view it combines all the three processes mentioned above. The Yogic consciousness seeks to lift the consciousness as high as possible, in fact, to the very highestit literally means union or identity (with the highest Reality, Spirit or God). Thus it has the true perception or vision of the forces that act in and upon the world and the powers that decide and is in union with them. The Yogic consciousness and power is also embodied in the Divine Incarnation for he is Yogeshwara: and in India it is accepted as a commonplace that God descends in a human shape, whenever there is a great crisis and man needs salvaging and salvation. God comes then with all his angels, with the divine host to battle for him and with him to establish the Dharma.
Sri Aurobindo's stand in this field is very definite and clear. The goal or end is clear, and with it the way too. What he envisages is the transformation of Matter and material life, that is to say, neither rejecting it as an impossible thing nor trying to gloss it over with a coat of mental luminosity, but delving into it and cleaning and purifying it, removing its mire and dross wholly and absolutely so that its true divine nature comes out and remains as Nature's highest and fullest expression on earth. That is the goal: the waytoo is not less characteristic. The total spiritual transformation, the divinisation of Matter is possible, not only possible but inevitable, because it is : Matter that wants it, because Matter in its essence, in its true reality is spiritual energy, is the Spirit itself. That is the great secret Sri Aurobindo has brought to light. The ideals in the past for the reclamation of human nature and reformation of human society were tackled with mental and moral powers which were not adequate to the task. Even when the spiritual power was invoked, it was of the static category which is above, aloof, witness and can have at best a kindly look and influence. That the spirit dynamic is involved in Matter and as Matter is a truth that has to be discovered.
05.01 - At the Origin of Ignorance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Consciousness, basically and essentially one and unique, has inherent in it four cardinal attributesprinciples of its modulation, modes of its vibrationdeveloping into or appearing as four aspects and personalities. They are Light, Force, Delight and Knowledge. Originally and in the supreme status the four movements are one and indivisible and form one indissoluble identity with the Divine's pure essence and absolute unity. The differentiation or variability there in the Immutable is a play immanent in the Integral self-nature of the Supreme. The one and the many form on that level a single entity, an undivided whole: the unity running in and through and holding the multiplicity and the multiplicity being the playfulness of the unity. Multiplicity, however, implies freedom of movement in the Unique. In other words, the very character of variability is the absolute freedom of the variables; the play consists precisely in the free choice and self-determination of the partners, the differentiated units. For a formation in the Divine Consciousness, an individualised formulation of its being must necessarily have the Divine's own freedom. Now, the result of this freedom is somewhat unexpected, to put it in the human way, that is to say, it was not explicit at that point, in that field of consciousness. For the freedom, in the normal course of its play, reached a degree or arrived at a mode which brought about I a shift and an impulsion meaning a rift and a clear separation: I the momentum of the free movement carried the individual formation beyond the range of its sense of unity and identity with all and the One. More and more it isolated itself, limiting itself to its own orbit and to its own fund of energy. This isolation, it must be noted, occurs at the origin without any sense of perversity or revolt or disobedience on the part of the free entity, as the legend formulated by the human mind imaged it. The movement of freedom and individual formation in its urge crosses, as it were, a borderline, passes from the safe zone within the Divine's own status into a different zone, creates it, as a matter of fact, by that overzealous and self-concentrated free movement. But, as I have said, there is no premeditation or arrire pense or bad will or spirit of contradiction there at the origin of the deviation. It is no original sin: it is a spontaneous, almost a logical consequence, an inevitable expression of the freedom that particulars enjoy as part and parcel of the Divine Universal.
And yet the result is strange and revolutionary. The game once begun develops its own scheme and pattern and modality. For that crucial step in the movement of freedom, that definite moving away, the assertion of complete independence and isolation immediately brought about a reversal of realities, a complete negation of the original attri butes. Thus Light became obscurity or Inconscience, Life became death, Delight became pain and suffering, Power became incapacity, Knowledge became Ignorance, and Truth became falsehood. In other words, Spirit became forthright Matter.
What seemed, however, to be nothing more than an accident is pregnant nevertheless with a profound meaning and significance. Indeed God has not created the world in jest. Spirit became Matter, that is to say, an apparent negation of the Spirit, to demonstrate that the negation is a way of affirmation, a more Integral way of affirmation of the Spirit. Matter has been brought out to express another poise of the spirit, spirit concretised and embodied.
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05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo aims at a power of consciousness, a formulation of the divine being that is Integral. It takes up the whole man and it embraces all men: it works on a cosmic scale individually and collectively. That force of consciousness identifies itself with each and every individual being in all its parts and limbs; establishing itself in and working through their normal and habitual functionings, it moulds and refashions the earthly vessel. It is a global power, first of all, because it is the supreme creative Power, the original energy of consciousness that brought out this manifested universe, the matrix or the nodus that holds together and in an inviolable unity and harmony the fundamental truth-aspects of the' one and indivisible Reality. This luminous source and substance of all created things consists of their basic true truths which assume disguised and deformed appearances under the present conditions of the world. It is therefore, in the second instance, the secret power in created things which manifests in them as the evolutionary urge, which drives them to rediscover their reality and re-form the appearance as the direct expression and embodiment of this inner soul.
The Divine incarnates, as an individual in the concrete material actuality, this double aspect of the utter truth and reality. There are, what may be called, intermediary incarnations, some representing powersaspects of the Divinein the higher mental or overmental levels of consciousness, others those of the inner heart, yet others again those of the dynamic vital consciousness. But the Integral Divine, he who unites and reconciles in his body the highest height and the lowest depth, who has effectuated in him something like the "marriage of Heaven and Hell" is an event of the futureeven perhaps of the immediate future. The descent into hell is an image that has been made very familiar to man, but all its implications have not been sounded. For what we were made familiar with was more or less an image of hell, not hell itself, a region or experience in the vital (may be even in the mental): real hell is not the mass of desires or weaknesses of the flesh, not "living flesh", but dead Matter whose other name is Inconscience. In the older disciplines the central or key truth, the heart of reality where the higher and the lowerBrahman and Maya, the Absolute and the Contingency, the One and the Many, God and the Worldmet and united in harmony was bypassed: one shot from below right into the supreme Absolute; the matrix of truth-creation was ignored. Even so, at the other end, the reality of brute matter was not given sufficient weight, the spiritual light disdained to reach it (vijigupsate).
The Integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight, for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a foreign country; he comes to his own,only he seeks to rebuild it on another scale, the scale of unity and infinity, instead of the present scale of separativism and finiteness. He comes among men not simply because he is' moved by human miseries; he is no extra-terrestrial person, a bigger human being, but is himself this earth, this world, all these miseries; he is woven into the fabric of the universe, he is the warp and woof that constitute creation. It is not a mere movement of sympathy or benevolence that actuates him, it is a total and absolute identification that is the ground and motive of his activity. When he assumes the frame of mortality, it is not that something outside and totally incongruous is entering into him, it is part and parcel of himself, it is himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and self-illumination, self-discipline and selfrealisation. Also, the horrors of material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity, naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation, are encompassed in his human embodiment. It is the energy of his own consciousness that brought out or developed even this erring earth from within it: that same energy is now available, stored up in the individual formation, for the recreation of that earth. The advent and acceptance of material existence meant, as a kind of necessity in a given scheme of divine manifestation, the appearance and play of Evil, the negation of the very divinity. Absolute Consciousness brought forth absolute unconsciousness the inconscientbecause of its own self-pressure, a play of an increasingly exclusive concentration and rigid objectivisation. That same consciousness repeats its story in the individual incarnation: it plunges into the material life and matter and identifies itself with Evil. But it is then like a pressed or tightened spring; it works at its highest potential. In other words, the Divine in the body now works to divinise the body itself, to make of the negation a concrete affirmation. The inconscient will be embodied consciousness.
The humanist said, Nothing human I reckon foreign to me," In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of the Integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that obscure "gravitational" mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated bodyall and more and to the highest degreeinto a crucible as it were, and works out there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares also each other's burden in some way, for all are interconnected in lifeaction at one point has a reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary mortal would break under a greater pressure. It is the Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of earthly inconscience.
Suffering, incapacity and death are, it is said, the wages of earthly life; but they are, in fact, reverse aspects of divine truths. Whatever is here below has its divine counterpart above. What appears as matter, inertia, static existence here below is the devolution of pure Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of what they really are.
Pain and suffering, disease and incapacity, even age and death are fortuitous auxiliaries; they have come upon us simply because of the small and partial scale of our life to which we agreed. One can live here below, live a full life, upon a larger scale, upon the scale of infinity and eternity. That need not dissolve body and life and mind, the triple ranges that make up our earthly existence. In brief, man himself is not truly man, he is the reverse aspect of God; and when he becomes divine and remains not merely human, he but realises what he is truly and Integrally himself.
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05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But as we have already said, man is not condemned to this malady of schizophrenia: he is not by nature a Manichean creature. He is whole and entire in his inner reality and true consciousness and he can assert his Integrality, he has the freedom and the power to do so-he has to and will do so, since it is not merely a possibility but an inevitability that is to come about in the course of his growth and evolution.
And when he has done so, when he has salvaged himself, by that he will have salvaged the world too around him. The measure of the success within will be the measure of the success without.
05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine is Integral harmony and perfect rhythm.
The element of divine harmony and rhythm is the measure of the beautiful in Art.
05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If you happen to be in the way of the Divine Power, either you yield to it and are taken up into its substance and constitution, become an Integral part of it, execute in it a special function-
Or, you oppose it and are mowed down and destroyed.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The truth of the matter is that the Integral reality is to be seized by an Integral organon. To an Integralised consciousness the Integral reality is directly and immediately presented, each aspect is apprehended in and through its own truth and substance. The synthesis or integration is reached by a consciousness which is the basis and continent of all, collectively and severally, and of which all are various formations and expressions on various levels and degrees. This is the knowledge and experience given by the supreme spiritual consciousness.
The constancy of the velocity of light, it must be noted, is not altogether an objective fact: it is a supposition by which Einstein tried to explain certain anomalies in previous theories. It is really, as some have pointed out (e.g. Hans ReichenbachAtom and Cosmosp 136), a mental formula, part of a built-in structure, arbitrary to a certain extent which is so arranged that the speed becomes constant and equal for systems in different states of motion.
05.08 - True Charity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
True charity consists in laying the healing balm upon the sore that lies hidden behind all external miseries which derive from that source and sustainer. And it is in the sole possession of him alone who has found the bliss of the Spirit and dwells in it always. Such a person does not require external accessories for his work of healing and comforting. He need do nothing apparently; he may even appear to be aloof and indifferent. But his presence itself is a healing power: the patient feels it and wonders at the ease and happiness that come into him as if from nowhere. Many physicians have this kind of healing power; indeed without that, a mere medical man, with his pharmacopoeia, is no physician. It may not be well known and recognised, but it is a fact that a good part of the efficacy of medicines lies in the subtle influence, the vital health, that the doctor puts into his medicine or even directly into the body of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual Bhishak, the power can be raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every objectperson or thingin one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but Integral parts and portions of the same self.
This condition is attained, fully and sovereignly, when there is absolute egolessness, when there is no consciousness of a separate person, the dual consciousness of the helper and the helped, the reformer and the reformed, the doctor and the patient. The normal human sense of values is based upon such a division, upon egohood, mamatvam. A philanthropic man helps others through a sense of sympathy giving rise to a sense of duty and obligation. This feeling of pity, of commiseration is dangerous, for it puts you in a frame of mind that tends to make you look down upon, take a superior air towards your object of pity. You become self-conscious, with the consciousness of your inferior self, that you are helping others, doing good to the world, doing something that raises your value: this sense of personal merit is only another name for vanity. Vanity and ambition are the motive powers that lie behind the philanthropical spirit born of sympathy. To denote a shade of meaning different from what is usually conveyed by the word sympathy, modern psychology has I found another wordempathy. Sympathy may be said to be the relation or contact between two egos; it is a link or bridge between two separate and independent entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the I very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what I spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to! philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual I compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, I charity (caritas) is divine.
05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Another point in Sri Aurobindo's view of consciousness which troubles Prof. Das is about the exact nature and function of Reason. For while on one side Sri Aurobindo never seems to be tired of pointing out the inherent incapacity of Reasonin the good company of the ancient Rishisas an instrument for the discovery or realisation of the Absolute or the Integral Reality, he asserts, on the other hand, almost in the same breath as it were, that mind can have some idea or conception of what is beyond it, which it so often vainly strives to seize or represent. Evidently, the rationalist logic fails to hold together the two ends, as it is further seen in Prof. Das's failure to perceive any distinction between types or gradations of "thinking".1 He thinks that just as a philosopher thinks, or a cabman thinks or an animal thinks, all must think in the same way and through the same function of the same organ: either there is thinking (thinking proper, of one particular kind) or there is no thinking. That Nature consists of a graduated scale in every line of its movements, and that the gradations shade off into each othernot only so but that each scale or principle may contain within itself all the others2is a phenomenon which runs contrary to the "either this or that" or "no-overlapping" principle, like the colour-blind for whom things are either black or white. In the global outlook, however, we do not stand in the relation of division, separation, mutual exclusiveness. There is a consciousness in which all contraries find a harmonising truth and rhythm.
In Sri Aurobindo, Reason and Intuition possess a dual relation of mutual negation and mutual affirmation, of exclusiveness and inclusiveness, as indeed is the relation of Brahman and the World. One negates the other in the sphere of ignorance but in knowledge one affirms the other. That is to say, Reason or mental logic, so long as it is dominated by the senses, by the external impressions from things and by its analytic or exclusively separative method of procedure, is a denial of Intuition and a bar to spiritual experience. But Reason can be purified, relieved of its dross, illumined (sam-buddha)sublimated and uplifted then it comes to its own, becomes what it really is and should bea frame to give body to what is beyond and unembodied, a mirror in conceptual terms to what is supra-conceptual. It loses its hard rigidity and becomes supple, loses its obscurity, density and becomes transparent: it attains a new rhythm and gait and capacity. Many of the Upanishadic mantras, a good part of the Gita, do that. And Sri Aurobindo's own exposition is a miracle in that style. "Reason was a helper, Reason is the bar"and, we can add, Reason will again be an aid. The world, as it is, is anything but Divine; and yet it is nothing but the Divine essentially and fundamentally; it can and will attain the divine figure apparently and externally too. Even so with regard to man's mind and reason and all his other limbs.
05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put the inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally abstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract. The effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason and syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The fundamental perception, the living intuition that is behind his entire philosophy and world outlook is that of an Immanent God, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and redemption of mankind and the world {the apotheosis of the World, as he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the development of his system, as the culminating conclusion of his philosophy, but it is the basic presupposition, the first principle that inspires his whole outlook, all the rest is woven and extended around this central nucleus. The other perception intimate to this basic -original perception and inseparable from it is a synthetic view in which things that are usually supposed to be contraries find their harmony and union, viz.,God and the World, Permanence and Flux, Unity and Multiplicity, the Universal and the Individual. The equal reality of the two poles of an Integral truth is characteristic of many of the modern philosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a fundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.
There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of limitation, and second, the principle of ingress. The first one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and of exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular. The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into , the lower and superficial plane of existence.
05.18 - Man to be Surpassed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Erich Kahler (a Czech now become an American citizen) in his book Man the Measureseeks to strike a balance, but as the title indicates, evidently leans more to the second, the reactionary, than to the original ideal. He posits that man's humanity is to be preserved and fostered, that is to say, his true humanity, that which distinguishes him from mere animality. The Greek ideal, according to Kahler, was an advance upon the animal man; it brought in the ideal of the rational man. And yet the Greek ideal, in spite of its acceptance of the whole manmens sana in corpore sanoembracing as it did his physical, ethical and sthetic development, laid on the whole a greater emphasis upon reason, upon ration-alising, that is, ordering life according to a rational pattern. And then the Greek ideal was more for the individual; it was for the culture and growth of the individuality in man. Society was considered as composed of such individualised units. The degree of personal choice, of individual liberty, of free understanding that a Greek citizen enjoyed marked the evolution secured by man out of the primitive society. Still the Integral man is not the rationalistic man, even as he is not the mere biological man: and he is not predominantly individualistic either.
Yes, man's true humanity, says Kahler, almost echoing Nietzcshe, consists precisely in his capacity to surpass himself. The animal is wholly engrossed in its natural nature and activities; but man is capable of standing back, can separate from his biological self, observe, control and direct. For him "existence" truly means (as the Existentialist declares today) ex+sistere or ex+stare, to stay or stand outside. That is the surpassing enjoyed by him and demanded of himgoing beyond one's natural or normal self. But there is a danger here. For there can be a too much surpassing, a going away altogether, as religion or spirituality usually enjoins. Christianity, for example, which is in many senses a movement contrary to the Greek spirit, taught a transcendence that was for luring or driving the human soul away from the world and men towards an extra-terrestrial summum bonum.
05.19 - Lone to the Lone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the current of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself Integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative poise: one can move up and arrive at a positive status, a new revaluation and reaffirmation. For when the divine selfhood is attained, one is no longer sole or solitary. Indeed, the solitariness or loneliness that is attributed to the spiritual status is a human way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression in the famous mantra of the Gita, he who sees himself in other selves and other selves in his own self. In that status "own" and "other" are not distinct or contrary things, but aspects of the one and the same reality, different stresses in one rhythm.
The flight then represents the freedom, the movement in height of the soul; but there is also the other, the horizontal movement leading to expansiveness and comprehension. One is transcendental, the other global or cosmic. First we have to reject, reject the false formations one by one (sheath by sheath, as it is described in the Upanishads) and arrive at the purest core of truth and reality; but again we have to come back, take up a new, the true formation. What was renounced has to be reintegrated in the divine becoming. While we are in Ignorance, our relations with men and the world are false and, ignorant, but once we attain our true self, we find the same self in men and things and we have no more revulsion for themtato na vijigupsate.
05.21 - Being or Becoming and Having, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A soulful man, whatever he says, thinks, feels or acts, always embodies wholly the Divine. Not that because he says, acts, thinks or feels in a certain manner that he has attained perfection or is in dynamic union with the summit a d Integral consciousness. As the Mother brings out the distinction, although in a somewhat different context, the perfect soul-existence .cannot be judged by the forms it takes, the forms themselves have to be judged by the soul-existence.
***
05.24 - Process of Purification, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are three well-marked stages in the process of the purification of nature and surrender to the Divine. When one has made up one's mind finally to take to the path of spiritual life and to turn one's back on the life of ignorant nature, one enters at the outset into a phase of divided consciousness and life. It is the stage when one cries, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." One feels an inner aspiration and devotion and even freedom and purity and wider consciousness, but actually in the practical world, he follows the old nature, acts under the pressure of Ignorance and the Ripus. You are a mundane man with profane habitsand yet within, when aloof, you are in contact with the deeper and larger breath of the Spirit. The next stage is one of external control and of modification of behaviour. You have the inner consciousness of the spirit grown strong in you and you are no longer a helpless prey to the physical outbursts of inferior nature: a kind of brake has been put upon the outgoing passions. Still at this stage the surges of passion are there within, inside the wall of control, as it were. The pressure and demand of the Spirit has brought about a deadlock in the ignorant movements of the outer nature, although the physico-vital and vital support behind has not been wholly purified and continues in its old way, expressing itself in veiled and sublimated acts and in dreams and imaginations. The vital support even when it does not express itself in grosser physical movements, even when it is self-contained, yet maintains its old taste for them. Finally, when this taste even goes away (that is the suggestion in the beautiful and luminous phrase of the Gita, rasavaljam), then only one rises into the Integral and unadulterated life of the Spirit. Till that final consummation happens, the period of interregnum is a great occasion for training and experience. It is of considerable interest also from the standpoint of occult knowledge.
There are two typeswhich mean two stagesof control. You can control your nature by the force of your will, as one does a wicked horse by means of the toothed bit. But this control is precarious and the clearing or purification effected is only skin-deep. At the slightest weakening of the will or a momentary lack of vigilance, you may find yourself in the very midst of a volcanic eruption of passions. Even otherwise, even if there happens no external outburst, the burden or pressure of the ignorant nature is always there and the struggle or tension, although thrown into the background, obstructs the nature, does not give it the free and spontaneous higher poise of the spirit. The other control comes from the inmost being, from the spiritual self itself: it is automatic and it is occult in its action and therefore naturally effective. When the Spirit, the Inner Control (Antarymi)works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth of the inner consciousness, the demand of the soul makes it impossible for the vital (or physico-vital), so far as it is unpurified and unprepared, to secure its objects: even if the lips yearn, the cup is taken away. The circumstances themselves yield to the pressure of the inner being and conspire, as it were, to withhold and remove all dangerous contacts. The being has not to say, "Lead me not into temptation", for the temptations by themselves slip away. That is the earlier poise of the interregnum we are describing; the next poise comes when the wish-impulses, the subjective vibrations also melt and disappear. Then there appear no such things as temptations. Objects, events, circumstances that might have acted in that role come and go, but the being remains indifferent and unruffled, because suffused with the delight of another contact. The detachment from the worldly is secure and absolute because the being has found its attachment to the Divine. That is the beginning of the Integral spiritualisation of the nature.
***
06.08 - The Individual and the Collective, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An Integral sadhana cannot be confined to the individual alone; an element of collectivity must enter into it. An individual is not an isolated being in any way. There are, of course, schools of Yoga and philosophy that seek to isolate the individual, consider him as an entity hemmed in by his own consciousness; indeed they view the individuals as all distinct and separate, each a closed circle or sphere, they may barely touch each other but never interpenetrate or inter-communicate. Each stands as a solitary island, all together forming the vast archipelago of the universe. This is a position; no doubt, that can be acquired by a kind of discipline of the consciousness, though not to a great perfection; but it is not a natural or necessary poise. Normally, individuals do merge into each other and form one weft of give and take. A desire, an impulse, even a thought that rises in you, goes out of you, overflows you and spreads around even to the extreme limit of the earth, like a Hertzian wave. Again, any movement in any person anywhere in the world would come to you, penetrate you, raise a similar vibration in you, even though you may not so recognise it but consider it as something exclusively personal to you. You send out vibrations into the world and the world sends out vibrations into you. Individual life is the meeting-ground of these outgoing and incoming forces. It is precisely to avoid this circle or cycle of world-vibrations that the older Yogis used to leave the world, away from society, retire to mountain-tops, into the virgin forest where they hoped to find themselves alone and aloof, to be single with the Single Self. This is a way out, but it is not the only or the best solution. It is not the best solution, for although apparent-ly one is alone on the hill-top, in the desert crypt, or the forest womb, one always carries with oneself a whole world within, the normal nature with all its instincts and impulses, reactions, memories and hopes: you cut away the outside, run away from it, but what about the outside that is within you? The taste for a tasty thing does not drop with the removal of the object. Secondly, such an individual solution, even if it were possible, would still be a purely personal matter and, in the ultimate analysis, egoistic. It is why the Buddha refused to enter definitely into Nirvana and withdrew from the brink to work among men. Indeed, the real solution is else-where. It is not to withdraw or go away but to find within the orbit here a centre, a focus of consciousness which is not controlled by the outside forces but can control them, which is not coloured by them but can lend them its own luminosity. That is the soul or the psychic centre.
And this centre is not an isolated entity in its nature: it is, as it were, a universal centre, that is to say, it links itself indissolubly in a secret sense of identity with all other centres. For this self is only one of the selves through which the One Self has multiplied itself for a varied self-objectification. The light that shines here, the fire that burns here and the delight that flows here illumine, purify and revitalise not only the individual in which it dwells, but move abroad and extend into the other individuals with which it lives in spiritual identity.
--- Overview of noun integral
The noun integral has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (1) integral ::: (the result of a mathematical integration; F(x) is the integral of f(x) if dF/dx = f(x))
--- Overview of adj integral
The adj integral has 3 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (3) built-in, constitutional, inbuilt, inherent, integral ::: (existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; "the Ptolemaic system with its built-in concept of periodicity"; "a constitutional inability to tell the truth")
2. (1) integral, entire, intact ::: (constituting the undiminished entirety; lacking nothing essential especially not damaged; "a local motion keepeth bodies integral"- Bacon; "was able to keep the collection entire during his lifetime"; "fought to keep the union intact")
3. integral ::: (of or denoted by an integer)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun integral
1 sense of integral
Sense 1
integral
=> calculation, computation, figuring, reckoning
=> problem solving
=> thinking, thought, thought process, cerebration, intellection, mentation
=> higher cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun integral
1 sense of integral
Sense 1
integral
=> indefinite integral
=> definite integral
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun integral
1 sense of integral
Sense 1
integral
=> calculation, computation, figuring, reckoning
--- Similarity of adj integral
3 senses of integral
Sense 1
built-in, constitutional, inbuilt, inherent, integral
=> intrinsic (vs. extrinsic), intrinsical
Sense 2
integral, entire, intact
=> whole (vs. fractional)
Sense 3
integral
--- Antonyms of adj integral
2 of 3 senses of integral
Sense 1
built-in, constitutional, inbuilt, inherent, integral
INDIRECT (VIA intrinsic) -> extrinsic
Sense 2
integral, entire, intact
INDIRECT (VIA whole) -> fractional
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun integral
1 sense of integral
Sense 1
integral
-> calculation, computation, figuring, reckoning
=> extrapolation
=> interpolation
=> conversion
=> estimate, estimation, approximation, idea
=> derived function, derivative, differential coefficient, differential, first derivative
=> integral
--- Pertainyms of adj integral
3 senses of integral
Sense 1
built-in, constitutional, inbuilt, inherent, integral
Sense 2
integral, entire, intact
Sense 3
integral
Pertains to noun integer (Sense 1)
=>integer, whole number
=> number
--- Derived Forms of adj integral
1 of 3 senses of integral
Sense 2
integral, entire, intact
RELATED TO->(noun) integrality#1
=> entirety, entireness, integrality, totality
--- Grep of noun integral
definite integral
indefinite integral
integral
integral calculus
integrality
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