DEFINITIONS
The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is. - Saint Thomas Aquinas
All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo
Philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist. ~ Sri Aurobindo
The most general science. Pythagoras is said to have called himself a lover of wisdom. But philosophy has been both the seeking of wisdom and the wisdom sought. Originally, the rational explanation of anything, the general principles under which all facts could be explained; in this sense, indistinguishable from science. Later, the science of the first principles of being; the presuppositions of ultimate reality. Now, popularly, private wisdom or consolation; technically, the science of sciences, the criticism and systematization or organization of all knowledge, drawn from empirical science, rational learning, common experience, or whatever. Philosophy includes metaphysics, or ontology and epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, etc. (all of which see). ~ J.K.F.
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves. ~ Bertrand Russell
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. ~ Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy. - Bertrand Russell
AUTHORS
Albert Camus
Aldous Huxley
Aleister Crowley
Alfred North Whitehead
Aristotle
Arthur Schopenhauer
Baruch Spinoza
Bertrand Russell
Blaise Pascal
class
Confucius
David Hume
Diogenes
Dogen
Epictetus
Franz Kafka
Friedrich Nietzsche
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Georg C Lichtenberg
George Bernard Shaw
G. W. F. Hegel
Henri Bergson
Henry David Thoreau
Heraclitus
Immanuel Kant
Jean Baudrillard
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jurgen Habermas
Ken Wilber
Lao Tzu
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maimonides
Marcus Aurelius
Martin Heidegger
Mencius
Paracelsus
Plato
Plotinus
Proclus
Pythagoras
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seneca
Simone de Beauvoir
Soren Kierkegaard
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Ramakrishna
Thomas Carlyle
Voltaire
William James
Albert Camus, Aristotle, Arthur Schopenhauer, Baruch Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, Diogenes, Donald Davidson, Epictetus, Francis Bacon, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Gottfried Leibniz,Immanuel Kant, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Stuart Mill, Jurgen Habermas, Karl Popper, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Michel de Montaigne, Plato, Plotinus, Rene Descartes, Saul Kripke, Simone de Beauvoir, Slavoj Zizek, Socrates, Soren Kierkegaard, Walter Kaufmann, William James Sidis, Heraclitus, Soren Kierkegaard, Pythagoras, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Lao Tzu, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Eugene Thacker, Sri Francis Bacon, Jeffrey J. Kripal, Jeff Kripal, Proclus, William Irwin Thompson, Gustav Fechner, Moses Maimonides, Maimonides, Rudolf Steiner, Thomas Carlyle, Ren Gunon, Epicurus, Ludwig Feuerbach, John Locke, Denis Diderot, Mikhail Bakhtin, Seneca the Younger, Thomas Hobbes, Lucretius, Michel de Montaigne, Henri Bergson, Eric Hoffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Niccolo Machiavelli, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emberto Eco, Voltaire, Erich Fromm, Emanuel Swedenborg, Omar Khayyam, Baron de Montesquieu, Mortimer J. Adler, Mortimer Jerome Adler, Immanuel Kant, Giles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Edmund Husserl, Mikhail Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, Friedrich Schiller, Helena Blavatsky<
PHILOSOPHY BRITANNICA
Philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, love of wisdom) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. Philosophical inquiry is a central element in the intellectual history of many civilizations.
The subject of philosophy is treated in a number of articles. For discussion of major systems of Eastern philosophy, see Buddhism; Chinese philosophy; Confucianism; Daoism; Hinduism; Indian philosophy; Jainism; Japanese philosophy; Shint; Sikhism.
For biographies of major Eastern philosophers, see Buddha; Confucius; Dai Zhen; Han Feizi; Laozi; Mencius; Mozi; Nichiren; Nishida Kitar; Wang Yangming; Xunzi; Zhu Xi.
For historical coverage of Western philosophy, see Western philosophy. For discussion of philosophies associated with the major religious traditions of the West, see Christianity: Christian philosophy; Islam: Islamic philosophy; Judaism: Jewish philosophy.
For discussion of major Western schools, movements, and systems, see atomism; analytic philosophy; Continental philosophy; deconstruction Eleaticism; empiricism; existentialism; idealism; materialism; phenomenology; positivism; postmodernism; pragmatism; rationalism; realism; Scholasticism; skepticism; Stoicism; utilitarianism.
For biographies of major Western philosophers and treatment of their associated movements, see Aristotle and Aristotelianism; Ren Descartes and Cartesianism; Epicurus and Epicureanism; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Hegelianism; Immanuel Kant and Kantianism; Karl Marx and Marxism; Plato and Platonism; Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism.
For discussion of other major Western philosophers, see Peter Abelard; St. Anselm; St. Thomas Aquinas; St. Augustine; Noam Chomsky; Jacques Derrida; Duns Scotus; Michel Foucault; Jrgen Habermas; Martin Heidegger; David Hume; William James; Saul Kripke; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; John Locke; John Stuart Mill; Friedrich Nietzsche; Hilary Putnam; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Bertrand Russell; Jean-Paul Sartre; Socrates; Benedict de Spinoza; Bernard Williams; Ludwig Wittgenstein.
For coverage of the particular branches of Western philosophy, see aesthetics; epistemology; ethics; ideology; logic; metaphysics; philosophical anthropology; philosophy of biology; philosophy of education; philosophy of history; philosophy of language; philosophy of law; philosophy of logic; philosophy of mathematics; philosophy of mind ; philosophy of physics; philosophy of religion; philosophy of science.
PHILOSOPHY WIKIPEDIA
Philosophy (from Greek: , philosophia, 'love of wisdom') is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570 495 BCE). Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation.
Classic philosophical questions include: 'is it possible to know anything and to prove it?'[10][11][12] and 'what is most real?' Philosophers also pose more practical and concrete questions such as: 'is there a best way to live?', 'is it better to be just or unjust (if one can get away with it)?', 'do humans have free will?'
Historically, philosophy encompassed all bodies of knowledge. From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural philosophy" encompassed astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics.
In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy. For example, is beauty objective or subjective? Are there many scientific methods or just one? Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy?
Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include: metaphysics, which is "concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being;" and epistemology, which is about "nature and grounds of knowledge [and]its limits and validity;" as well as ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, and philosophy of science.
Syntheses of Eastern and Western philosophy
In antiquity elements of Eastern philosophy appear to have directly influenced Western philosophy.
The Ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho accompanied Alexander the Great in his eastern campaigns, spending about 18 months in India. Pyrrho subsequently returned to Greece and founded Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Lartius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[134] Pyrrho was directly influenced by Buddhism in developing his philosophy, which is based on Pyrrho's interpretation of the Buddhist three marks of existence.[135] According to Edward Conze, Pyrrhonism can be compared to Buddhist philosophy, especially the Indian Madhyamika school.[136] The Pyrrhonists' goal of ataraxia (the state of being untroubled) is a soteriological goal similar to nirvana. The Pyrrhonists promoted suspending judgment (epoch) about dogma (beliefs about non-evident matters) as the way to reach ataraxia. This is similar to the Buddha's refusal to answer certain metaphysical questions which he saw as non-conductive to the path of Buddhist practice and Nagarjuna's "relinquishing of all views (drsti)". Adrian Kuzminski argues for direct influence between these two systems of thought. In Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism[137] According to Kuzminski, both philosophies argue against assenting to any dogmatic assertions about an ultimate metaphysical reality behind our sense impressions as a tactic to reach tranquility and both also make use of logical arguments against other philosophies in order to expose their contradictions.[137]
The philosopher Hegesias of Cyrene is thought by some to have been influenced by the teachings of Ashoka's Buddhist missionaries.[138]
In the modern era there have been many attempts to integrate Western and Eastern philosophical traditions.
Arthur Schopenhauer developed a philosophy that was essentially a synthesis of Hinduism with Western thought. He anticipated that the Upanishads (primary Hindu scriptures) would have a much greater influence in the West than they have had. However, Schopenhauer was working with heavily flawed early translations (and sometimes second-degree translations), and many feel that he may not necessarily have accurately grasped the Eastern philosophies which interested him.[139]
Recent attempts to incorporate Western philosophy into Eastern thought include the Kyoto School of philosophers, who combined the phenomenology of Husserl with the insights of Zen Buddhism. Watsuji Tetsur, a 20th-century Japanese philosopher attempted to combine the works of Soren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger with Eastern philosophies. Some have claimed that there is also a definite eastern element within Heidegger's philosophy.[140] For the most part this is not made explicit within Heidegger's philosophy, apart from in the dialogue between a Japanese and inquirer. Heidegger did spend time attempting to translate the Tao Te Ching into German, working with his Chinese student Paul Hsaio. It has also been claimed that much of Heidegger's later philosophy, particularly the sacredness of Being, bears a distinct similarity to Taoist ideas. There are clear parallels between Heidegger and the work of Kyoto School, and ultimately, it may be read that Heidegger's philosophy is an attempt to 'turn eastwards' in response to the crisis in Western civilization. However, this is only an interpretation.
The 20th century Hindu guru Sri Aurobindo was influenced by German Idealism and his integral yoga is regarded as a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought. The German phenomenologist Jean Gebser's writings on the history of consciousness referred to a new planetary consciousness that would bridge this gap. Followers of these two authors are often grouped together under the term Integral thought.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was deeply influenced by the I Ching (Book of Changes), an ancient Chinese text that dates back to the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty (. 1,700-1,050 BCE). It uses a system of Yin and Yang, which it places into hexagrams for the purposes of divination. Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity moves towards an Oriental view of causality, as he states in the foreword to Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching.[141] He explains that this Chinese view of the world is based not on science as the West knows it, but on chance.
Philosophy::: All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 106
Philosophy ::: An operation of the human spirit-mind in its endeavor to understand not merely the how of things, but thewhy of things -- why and how things are as they are. Philosophy is one phase of a triform method ofunderstanding the nature of nature, of universal nature, and of its multiform and multifold workings, andphilosophy cannot be separated from the other two phases (science and religion), if we wish to gain atrue and complete picture of things as they are in themselves. It is a capital mistake of Western thought tosuppose that science, religion, and philosophy are three separate and unrelated operations of thought. Theidea when pondered upon is immediately seen to be ludicrously false, because all these three are butphases of operations of human consciousness. Not one of these three -- philosophy, religion, or science -can be divorced from the other two, and if the attempt be made so to divorce them, the result is spiritualand intellectual dissatisfaction, and the mind senses an incompleteness. Consequently any philosophywhich is unscientific and irreligious, or any religion which is unscientific and unphilosophical, and anyscience which is unphilosophical and unreligious, is de facto erroneous because incomplete. These threeare simply three aspects or phases of a fundamental reality which is consciousness.Philosophy is that aspect of the human consciousness which is correlative, and which seeks the bonds ofunion among things and exposes them, when found, as existing in the manifold and diverse forms ofnatural processes and the so-called laws which demonstrate their existence. (See also Religion, Science)
Philosophy: (Gr. philein, to love -- sophia, wisdom) The most general science. Pythagoras is said to have called himself a lover of wisdom. But philosophy has been both the seeking of wisdom and the wisdom sought. Originally, the rational explanation of anything, the general principles under which all facts could be explained; in this sense, indistinguishable from science. Later, the science of the first principles of being; the presuppositions of ultimate reality. Now, popularly, private wisdom or consolation; technically, the science of sciences, the criticism and systematization or organization of all knowledge, drawn from empirical science, rational learning, common experience, or whatever. Philosophy includes metaphysics, or ontology and epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, etc. (all of which see). -- J.K.F.
Philosophy III; de Abano, Elementia Magica.]
Philosophy III, Semeliel (Semeshiah) is the spirit
Philosophy III.]
Philosophy, III.]
Philosophy III; The Sixth and Seventh Books of
Philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 253
Philosophy: Literally, the love for and the pursuit of knowledge, and its application to daily affairs; in actual usage the knowledge of phenomena as explained by and resolved into reasons and causes, sources and forces and the laws applicable thereto.
Philosophy of Change: The theory that change itself is the only enduring pnnciple and therefore the fundamental reality. Applied to the views of Heraclitus, and in modern times to those of Henri Bergson. -- R.T.F.
Philosophy of Discontinuity: The theory that the principle of change is the fundamental basis of reality; that natural law is but the outward aspect of what is internally habit Being as an irreducible synthesis of possibility and action. God the Creator and Essence of things. Applied to the thought of Renouvier, Boutroux, and Lachelier. -- R.T.F.
Philosophy of Effort: The theory that in the self-consciousness of effort the person becomes one with reality. Consciousness of effort is self-consciousness. Used by Maine de Biran. -- R.T.F.
Philosophy of Mind: Philosophical theory of the nature of mind and its place in the world. See Philosophical Psychology. -- L.W.
Philosophy of Religion: An inquiry into the general subject of religion from the philosophical point of view, i.e., an inquiry employing the accepted tools of critical analysis and evaluation without a predisposition to defend or reject the claims of any particular religion. Among the specific questions considered are the nature, function and value of religion; the validity of the claims of religious knowledge; the relation of religion and ethics; the character of ideal religion; the nature of evil; the problem of theodicy; revealed versus natural religion; the problem of the human spirit (soul) and its destiny; the relation of the human to the divine as to the freedom and responsibility of the individual and the character (if any) of a divine purpose; evaluation of the claims of prophecy, mystic intuitions, special revelations, inspired utterances; the value of prayers of petition; the human hope of immortality; evaluation of institutional forms of expressions, rituals, creeds, ceremonies, rites, missionary propaganda; the meaning of human existence, the character of value, its status in the world of reality, the existence and character of deity; the nature of belief and faith, etc.
Philosophy The Greek philosophia meant love of wisdom, but with equal power of significance, although perhaps not etymologically as correct, the meaning was wisdom of love; also, the systematic investigation and instruction of facts and theories regarded as important in the study of truth. In common usage it denotes the mental and moral sciences, in some respects being nearly equivalent to metaphysics, and including a number of divisions. Theosophists speak of a triad of philosophy, religion, and science as being merged by theosophy into a unity; but science was itself at one time called natural philosophy, so that the chief distinction is that between faith and reason.
philosophy ::: A broad field of inquiry concerning knowledge, in which the definition of knowledge itself is one of the subjects investigated. Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, spanning the nature of the Universe and human nature (of the mind and the body) as well as the relationships between these and between people. It explores what and how people come to know, including existence itself, and how that knowledge is reliably and usefully represented and communicated between and among humans, whether in thought, by language, or with mathematics. Philosophy is the predecessor and complement of science. It develops notions about the issues that underlie science and ponders the nature of thought itself. The scientific method, which involves repeated observations of the results of controlled experiments, is an available and highly successful philosophical methodology. Within fields of study that are concerned directly with humans (economics, psychology, sociology, and so forth), in which experimental methodologies are generally not available, sub-disciplines of philosophy have been developed to provide a rational basis for study in the respective fields.
PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is limited to physical reality and therefore, physically, all philosophy remains physicalism and, superphysically, subjectivism: speculations without reality content. In order to speak about the superphysical one must have factual knowledge of the superphysical worlds. K 5.38.2
The philosophers have not yet managed to solve the basic problem of existence: trinity; the three equal, inseparable aspects of existence. Ever since the Greek sophists, the whole history of philosophy has been dominated by the subjectivist way of looking at things. K 5.43.21
philosophy ::: Philosophy The word philosophy derives from a combination of the Greek words 'philos' meaning love and 'sophia' meaning wisdom. It is the use of reason and argument in seeking truth and knowledge of reality, especially of the causes and nature of things and of the principles governing existence, the material universe, perception of physical phenomena, and human behaviour. It can also be defined as the love of wisdom or knowledge; a study of the processes governing thought, conduct and ultimate reality.
philosophy
See {computer ethics}, {liar paradox}, {netiquette}, {proof}.
PHILOSOPHY. ::: Intellectual expression of the Truth ; a means of expressing this greater discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mentality to those who still live in the mental intelligence.
philosophy: is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language.
PHILOSOPHY—Knowledge, in a scientific system, of the ultimate principles, elements, cause and laws that underlie and explain all knowledge and existence, and their application in the explanation of these.
philosophy ::: n. --> Literally, the love of, including the search after, wisdom; in actual usage, the knowledge of phenomena as explained by, and resolved into, causes and reasons, powers and laws.
A particular philosophical system or theory; the hypothesis by which particular phenomena are explained.
Practical wisdom; calmness of temper and judgment; equanimity; fortitude; stoicism; as, to meet misfortune with philosophy.
philosophy of mind: is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of themind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain.
philosophy of perception: concerns how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver.
philosophy of science: is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science.
philosophy ::: See computer ethics, liar paradox, netiquette, proof.
philosophy
KEYS (10k)
127 Sri Aurobindo
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3 Ken Wilber
3 Alfred Korzybski
2 Tom Butler-Bowdon
2 Mortimer J Adler
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 H P Blavatsky
2 Georg C Lichtenberg
2 Francis Bacon
2 Epictetus
2 Eliphas Levi
2 ?
1 The Mother
1 Swami Sivananda
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
1 Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
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1 Leonard Susskind
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1 Harold Abelson
1 G Santayana
1 Giordano Bruno
1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 Eugene Thacker
1 Editors of Discovery Magazine
1 Daily Evolver
1 Baruch Spinoza
1 Arthur Koestler
1 Alfred North Whitehead
1 Aleister Crowley
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NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
10 Plato
10 Ludwig Wittgenstein
8 J K Rowling
7 Jim Rohn
7 Blaise Pascal
7 Bertrand Russell
6 Novalis
6 Marcus Tullius Cicero
6 David Hume
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5 Will Durant
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5 Seneca
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5 Albert Camus
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1:Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
~ Epictetus,#KEYS
2:I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #KEYS
3:Man is fortunately inconsistent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism, #KEYS
4:All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
5:The philosophy of laughter will never have anything in common with the religion of tears.
~ Eliphas Levi,#KEYS
6:The perfect man is a divine child! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VII, #KEYS
7:The mind pre-eminently is man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
8:To know and to will are two operations of the human mind.
~ Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, Philosophy, 1146,#KEYS
9:Liberation is self-possession, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
10:Everything is a poise of contrary energies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - IV, #KEYS
11:The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
12:The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it. ~ Linus Torvalds, #KEYS
13:All Nature is a display and a play of God, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
14:Everything becomes, nothing is made. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
15:It is only through life that one can reach to immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karmayoga, #KEYS
16:All is eternal in the eternal spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
17:All sentience is ultimately self-sentience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
18:The body has an unexpressed knowledge of its own. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Humanity, #KEYS
19:The universe is a self-creative process of a supreme Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
20:Nothing can exist which is not substance and power of Brahman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
21:A little philosophy inclineth mans mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth mans minds about to religion.
~ Francis Bacon,#KEYS
22:The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
23:All variations resolve themselves into an unity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
24:Energy distributes itself, but never really dissipates itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - V, #KEYS
25:Apparent evil is often the shortest way to the good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Strength of Stillness, #KEYS
26:No human law is the absolute expression of the divine justice, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VI, #KEYS
27:The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
28:What we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
29:Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
~ Alfred North Whitehead,#KEYS
30:Where there is no limitation, there can be no pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
31:Necessity is the child of the spirit’s free self-determination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma and Freedom, #KEYS
32:The complete soul possesses all its self and all Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
33:All this infinite becoming is a birth of the Spirit into form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity, #KEYS
34:Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get some men to accept it, but he did." ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
35:Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
36:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. ~ Francis Bacon, Atheism, #KEYS
37:All the terrestrial past of the world is there summarised in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity, #KEYS
38:Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man, #KEYS
39:There is no body without soul, no body that is not itself a form of soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
40:From exchange we can rise to the highest possible idea of interchange. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VII, #KEYS
41:If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, [T5], #KEYS
42:Science and Philosophy are never entirely dispassionate and disinterested. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life, #KEYS
43:A divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Divine Body, #KEYS
44:All things are there as the spirit’s powers and means and forms of manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
45:All birth is a progressive self-finding, a means of self-realisation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
46:The Spirit manifest as Intelligence is the basis of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
47:Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
48:The cosmos is eternally one and many and does not by becoming cease to be one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - III, #KEYS
49:Philosophy and religion are the soul of Indian culture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - II, #KEYS
50:There is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
51:It is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
52:Freedom may be illusory and our apparent freedom may be a real and iron bondage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Fate and Free-Will, #KEYS
53:Matter is only so much mobile energy vibrating intensely into form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
54:The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
55:Our humanity is the conscious meeting place of the finite and the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
56:Adwaita is true, because the Many are only manifestations of the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
57:Being is an eternal becoming and yet the Becoming resolves itself into eternal being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - II, #KEYS
58:Limitation by ignorance and error is the fundamental defect of an untransformed mind, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Divine Body, #KEYS
59:Order is not inconsistent with liberty but rather the condition for the right use of liberty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Message, #KEYS
60:All cannot, indeed, reach in a single life the highest in this path, but all can go forward. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karmayoga, #KEYS
61:Everything is put out from latency, nothing is brought into existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
62:The ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine Delight in things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Double Soul in Man, #KEYS
63:The one reward of the works of right Knowledge is to grow perpetually into the infinite Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth, #KEYS
64:All things circle back to the eternal unity and in their beginning and end are the same. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VI, #KEYS
65:Change and unalterable conservation of energy in the change are the law, not destruction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - V, #KEYS
66:Philosophy is of course a creation of the mind but its defect is not that it is false. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Place of Study in Sadhana, #KEYS
67:The greatness of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
68:What is God after all?
An eternal child
playing an eternal game
in an eternal garden.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Thoughts And Glimpses,#KEYS
69:Body and mind are not the creators of the spirit, the spirit is the creator of the mind and body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
70:Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
71:The dance of Brindaban is not complete without the death-dance of Kurukshetra; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
72:Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
73:The creative truth of things works and can work infallibly even in the Inconscient: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
74:There is an identity in things, in all existences, sarvabhūtāni, as well as a constant changing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - III, #KEYS
75:It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
76:Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
77:Physical science may give clues of process, but cannot lay hold on the reality of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth and Soul Evolution, #KEYS
78:Our spiritual orientation, the magnetism that draws the soul, is to eternal Being and not to eternal Non-Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #KEYS
79:Indian religion is Indian spiritual philosophy put into action and experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - IV, #KEYS
80:Man epitomises in his being not only the animal existence below him, but the obscurer subanimal being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity, #KEYS
81:There is a law, a one truth of being, a guiding and fulfilling purpose of the world-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
82:The depths are linked to the heights and the Law of the one Truth creates and works everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
83:Brahman is willing to be called Vishnu, and yet he is not willing, because he is also Brahma and Maheshwara. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VI, #KEYS
84:The consciousness is there throughout in our occult parts of being, the development is in the manifesting Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
85:The infinite variety of particular objects constitutes one sole and identical Being. To know that unity is the aim of all philosophy and of all knowledge of Nature. ~ Giordano Bruno, #KEYS
86:Human thought in the generality of men is no more than a rough and crude acceptance of unexamined ideas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Reincarnating Soul, #KEYS
87:Dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
88:Humanity is not the highest godhead; God is more than humanity; but in humanity too we have to find and to serve him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism, #KEYS
89:The life of the individual must have the same rhythm of significance, the same law of progression as the cosmic life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
90:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Passages from The Synthesis of Yoga, #KEYS
91:As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History,#KEYS
92:Progress is the very heart of the significance of human life, for it means our evolution into greater and richer being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism, #KEYS
93:Man insists continually on making God in his own image instead of seeking to make himself more and more in the image of God, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth, #KEYS
94:An ounce of practice is better than tons of theory. Practice Yoga, Religion and Philosophy in daily life and attain Self-realization. ~ Swami Sivananda, Light Power and Wisdom, Introduction, #KEYS
95:Jnanam is more than philosophy, it is the inspired and direct knowledge which comes of what our ancients called drishti, spiritual sight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
96:The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
97:Philosophy dealing with the principles of things must come to perceive the Principle of all these principles. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #KEYS
98:All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
99:Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
100:The emergence and growth of consciousness is the central motive of the evolution and the key to its secret purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
101:The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. (461) ~ G Santayana, #KEYS
102:It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
103:It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
104:The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and the Life Divine, #KEYS
105:The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Three Purushas, #KEYS
106:To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
107:In all forms in the world there is a force at work, unconsciously active or oppressed by inertia in its lower formulations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
108:In the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, genius entails that an individual possesses unique qualities and talents that make the genius especially valuable to the society in which he or she operates.
~ ?,#KEYS
109:The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Process of Evolution, #KEYS
110:The overcoming of the sex instinct and impulse is indeed binding on all who would attain to self-mastery and lead the spiritual life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Divine Body, #KEYS
111:A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
112:Suicide is merely a frenzied revolt against limitation, a revolt not the less significant because it is without knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
113:An involution of spirit in matter is the beginning, but a spiritual assumption of divine birth is the fullness of the evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
114:The harmony of the world is made manifest in form and number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of natural philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. ~ Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, #KEYS
115:Fortunate is the man who does not lose himself in the labyrinths of philosophy, but goes straight to the Source from which they all rise. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana, #KEYS
116:It not seldom happens that in the purposeless rovings and wanderings of the imagination we hunt down such game as can be put to use by our purposeful philosophy in its well-ordered household. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
117:A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
118:The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and the Life Divine, #KEYS
119:Angels transcend every religion, every philosophy, every creed. In fact Angels have no religion as we know it... Their existence precedes every religious system that has ever existed on Earth. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
120:All would change if man could once consent to be spiritualised; but his nature mental and vital and physical is rebellious to the higher law. He loves his imperfections. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
121:Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
122:Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5], #KEYS
123:Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves. ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
124:Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
125:Philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
126:In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #KEYS
127:The soul is not bound by the formula of mental humanity: it did not begin with that and will not end with it; it had a prehuman past, it has a superhuman future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
128:Chance, that vague shadow of an infinite possibility, must be banished from the dictionary of our perceptions; for of chance we can make nothing, because it is nothing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma, #KEYS
129:I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,#KEYS
130:There are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
131:When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
132:My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS
133:Consistency is usually a rigid or narrow-minded inability to see more than one side of the truth or more than their own narrow personal view or experience of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, On His Philosophy in General, #KEYS
134:The body is the chariot and the senses are the horses of the driving and it is through the bloodstained and mire-sunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna pilots the soul of man to Vaicuntha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karmayoga, #KEYS
135:What we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
136:In the totality of the change we have to achieve, human means and forces too have to be taken up, not dropped but used and magnified to their utmost possibility as part of the new life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
137:Philosophy not only purifies the reason and predisposes it to the contact of the universal and the infinite, but tends to stabilise the nature and create the tranquillity of the sage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #KEYS
138:It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world’s Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
139:Every reader should ask himself periodically 'Toward what end, toward what end?' -- but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
~ Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,#KEYS
140:God cannot cease from leaning towards Nature, nor man from aspiring towards the Godhead. It is the eternal relation of the finite to the infinite. When they seem to turn from each other, it is to recoil for a more intimate meeting.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,#KEYS
141:The sex-vampire eats up the other’s vital and gives nothing or very little. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Sec-Vampire
In myself is the seed of all my creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma,#KEYS
142:The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
143:The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
144:My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
145:Work without ideals is a false gospel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II: Work and Ideal
Work without ideals is a false gospel.
The world is a great game of hide and seek in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behind matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit,#KEYS
146:Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered? ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #KEYS
147: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
148:There is a meaning in each curve and line.
It is an architecture high and grand
By many named and nameless masons built
In which unseeing hands obey the Unseen, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain
Meaning of this World
Our means must be as great as our ends. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin,#KEYS
149:The essence of my work is; God, or the absolute Spirit, exists-and can be proven-and there is a ladder that reaches to that summit, a ladder that you can be shown how to climb, a ladder that leads from time to eternity, and from death to immortality. And all philosophy and psychology swings into a remarkable synthesis around that ladder. ~ Ken Wilber, The Great Chain of Being, 1987 (unpublished manuscript), #KEYS
150:The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called 'model agnosticism' and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, 'The map is not the territory.' Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as 'The menu is not the meal.'
~ Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger,#KEYS
151:There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations. ~ Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, #KEYS
152:We have to entertain the possibility that there is no reason for something existing; or that the split between subject and object is only our name for something equally accidental we call knowledge; or, an even more difficult thought, that while there may be some order to the self and the cosmos, to the microcosm and macrocosm, it is an order that is absolutely indifferent to our existence, and of which we can have only a negative awareness.
~ Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet: Horror Of Philosophy vol. 1,#KEYS
153:MAGIC is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents 2 being applied to proper Patients, 3 strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature; they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effort, 4 the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle.
~ King Solomon, Lesser Key Of The Goetia,#KEYS
154:There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through the vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land. - Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates, #KEYS
155:Essentially, Yoga is a generic name for the processes and the result of processes by which we transcend or shred off our present modes of being and rise to a new, a higher, a wider mode of consciousness which is not that of the ordinary animal and intellectual man. Yoga is the exchange of an egoistic for a universal or cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the supra-cosmic, transcendent Unnameable who is the source and support of all things. Yoga is the passage of the human thinking animal towards the God-consciousness from which he has descended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, #KEYS
156:The other day I happened to be reading a careful, interesting account of the state of British higher education. The government is a kind of market-oriented government and they came out with an official paper, a 'White Paper' saying that it is not the responsibility of the state to support any institution that can't survive in the market. So, if Oxford is teaching philosophy, the arts, Greek history, medieval history, and so on, and they can't sell it on the market, why should they be supported? Because life consists only of what you can sell in the market and get back, nothing else. That is a real pathology. ~ Noam Chomsky, #KEYS
157:The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form-all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #KEYS
158: But we now come to speak of the holy and sacred Pentacles and Sigils. Now these pentacles, are as it were certain holy signes preserving us from evil chances and events, and helping and assisting us to binde, exterminate, and drive away evil spirits, and alluring the good spirits, and reconciling them unto us. And these pentacles do consist either of Characters of the good spirits of the superiour order, or of sacred pictures of holy letters or revelations, with apt and fit versicles, which are composed either of Geometrical figures and holy names of God, according to the course and maner of many of them; or they are compounded of all of them, or very many of them mixt. ~ Agrippa, A Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, #KEYS
159:The most general science. Pythagoras is said to have called himself a lover of wisdom. But philosophy has been both the seeking of wisdom and the wisdom sought. Originally, the rational explanation of anything, the general principles under which all facts could be explained; in this sense, indistinguishable from science. Later, the science of the first principles of being; the presuppositions of ultimate reality. Now, popularly, private wisdom or consolation; technically, the science of sciences, the criticism and systematization or organization of all knowledge, drawn from empirical science, rational learning, common experience, or whatever. Philosophy includes metaphysics, or ontology and epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, etc. (all of which see). ~ J.K.F., Dagoberts Dictionary of Philosophy, #KEYS
160:Only, in all he sees God, sees the supreme reality, and his motive of work is to help mankind towards the knowledge of God and the possession of the supreme reality. He sees God through the data of science, God through the conclusions of philosophy, God through the forms of Beauty and the forms of Good, God in all the activities of life, God in the past of the world and its effects, in the present and its tendencies, in the future and its great progression. Into any or all of these he can bring his illumined vision and his liberated power of the spirit. The lower knowledge has been the step from which he has risen to the higher; the higher illumines for him the lower and makes it part of itself, even if only its lower fringe and most external radiation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge,#KEYS
161:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#KEYS
162:ALL YOGA is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration,#KEYS
163:...the present terms are there not as an unprofitable recurrence, but in active pregnant gestation of all that is yet to be unfolded by the spirit, no irrational decimal recurrence helplessly repeating for ever its figures, but an expanding series of powers of the Infinite. What is in front of us is the greater potentialities, the steps yet unclimbed, the intended mightier manifestations. Why we are here is to be this means of the spirit's upward self-unfolding. What we have to do with ourselves and our significances is to grow and open them to greater significances of divine being, divine consciousness, divine power, divine delight and multiplied unity, and what we have to do with our environment is to use it consciously for increasing spiritual purposes and make it more and more a mould for the ideal unfolding of the perfect nature and self-conception of the Divine in the cosmos. This is surely the Will in things which moves, great and deliberate, unhasting, unresting, through whatever cycles, towards a greater and greater informing of its own finite figures with its own infinite Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,#KEYS
164:Here I want to make it very clear that mathematics is not what many people think it is; it is not a system of mere formulas and theorems; but as beautifully defined by Professor Cassius J. Keyser, in his book The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking (Columbia University Press, 1916), mathematics is the science of "Exact thought or rigorous thinking," and one of its distinctive characteristics is "precision, sharpness, completeness of definitions." This quality alone is sufficient to explain why people generally do not like mathematics and why even some scientists bluntly refuse to have anything to do with problems wherein mathematical reasoning is involved. In the meantime, mathematical philosophy has very little, if anything, to do with mere calculations or with numbers as such or with formulas; it is a philosophy wherein precise, sharp and rigorous thinking is essential. Those who deliberately refuse to think "rigorously"-that is mathematically-in connections where such thinking is possible, commit the sin of preferring the worse to the better; they deliberately violate the supreme law of intellectual rectitude. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
165:
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
166:The key one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into is transcendental philosophy.
The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon, ^ and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows
(1) The dogma of Hermes;
(2) Magical realisation;
(3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work
(4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays;
(5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross;
(6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work
(7) The absolute synthesis of science;
(8) Universal equilibrium ;
(9) A summary of Khunrath's personal embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors. ~ Eliphas Levi, The History Of Magic,#KEYS
167:Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by the early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge; inspired Scripture made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science.
Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle heights of our being; pure reason in its turn was supplanted for a time by the mixed action of the reason which lives on our plains and lower elevations and does not in its view exceed the horizon of the experience that the physical mind and senses or such aids as we can invent for them can bring to us.
And this process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress.
For in each case the lower faculty is compelled to take up as much as it can assimilate of what the higher had already given and to attempt to re-establish it by its own methods.
By the attempt it is itself enlarged in its scope and arrives eventually at a more supple and a more ample selfaccommodation to the higher faculties. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.08-13,#KEYS
168:Philosophy, as defined by Fichte, is the "science of sciences." Its aim was to solve the problems of the world. In the past, when all exact sciences were in their infancy, philosophy had to be purely speculative, with little or no regard to realities. But if we regard philosophy as a Mother science, divided into many branches, we find that those branches have grown so large and various, that the Mother science looks like a hen with her little ducklings paddling in a pond, far beyond her reach; she is unable to follow her growing hatchlings. In the meantime, the progress of life and science goes on, irrespective of the cackling of metaphysics. Philosophy does not fulfill her initial aim to bring the results of experimental and exact sciences together and to solve world problems. Through endless, scientific specialization scientific branches multiply, and for want of coordination the great world-problems suffer. This failure of philosophy to fulfill her boasted mission of scientific coordination is responsible for the chaos in the world of general thought. The world has no collective or organized higher ideals and aims, nor even fixed general purposes. Life is an accidental game of private or collective ambitions and greeds. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
169:I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
170:on cultivating equality :::
For it is certain that so great a result cannot be arrived at immediately and without any previous stages. At first we have to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched and silent, even when the surface mind, heart, life are strongly shaken; unmoved there on the bedrock of our life, we must separate the soul watching behind or immune deep within from these outer workings of our nature. Afterwards, extending this calm and steadfastness of the detached soul to its instruments, it will become slowly possible to radiate peace from the luminous centre to the darker peripheries. In this process we may take the passing help of many minor phases; a certain stoicism, a certain calm philosophy, a certain religious exaltation may help us towards some nearness to our aim, or we may call in even less strong and exalted but still useful powers of our mental nature. In the end we must either discard or transform them and arrive instead at an entire equality, a perfect self-existent peace within and even, if we can, a total unassailable, self-poised and spontaneous delight in all our members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [103-104],#KEYS
171:But even when the desire to know exists in the requisite strength, the mental vision by which abstract truth is recognised is hard to distinguish from vivid imaginability and consonance with mental habits. It is necessary to practise methodological doubt, like Descartes, in order to loosen the hold of mental habits; and it is necessary to cultivate logical imagination, in order to have a number of hypotheses at command, and not to be the slave of the one which common sense has rendered easy to imagine. These two processes, of doubting the familiar and imagining the unfamiliar, are correlative, and form the chief part of the mental training required for a philosopher.
The naïve beliefs which we find in ourselves when we first begin the process of philosophic reflection may turn out, in the end, to be almost all capable of a true interpretation; but they ought all, before being admitted into philosophy, to undergo the ordeal of sceptical criticism. Until they have gone through this ordeal, they are mere blind habits, ways of behaving rather than intellectual convictions. And although it may be that a majority will pass the test, we may be pretty sure that some will not, and that a serious readjustment of our outlook ought to result. In order to break the dominion of habit, we must do our best to doubt the senses, reason, morals, everything in short. In some directions, doubt will be found possible; in others, it will be checked by that direct vision of abstract truth upon which the possibility of philosophical knowledge depends. ~ Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World,#KEYS
172:... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. ~ Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels, #KEYS
173:In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is called 'the resurrection body ' and 'the glorified body.' The prophet Isaiah said, 'The dead shall live, their bodies shall rise' (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it 'the celestial body' or 'spiritual body ' (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40). In Sufism it is called 'the most sacred body ' (wujud al-aqdas) and 'supracelestial body ' (jism asli haqiqi). In Taoism, it is called 'the diamond body,' and those who have attained it are called 'the immortals' and 'the cloudwalkers.' In Tibetan Buddhism it is called 'the light body.' In Tantrism and some schools of yoga, it is called 'the vajra body,' 'the adamantine body,' and 'the divine body.' In Kriya yoga it is called 'the body of bliss.' In Vedanta it is called 'the superconductive body.' In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it is called 'the radiant body.' In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it 'the Glory of the Whole Universe' and 'the golden body.' The alchemist Paracelsus called it 'the astral body.' In the Hermetic Corpus, it is called 'the immortal body ' (soma athanaton). In some mystery schools, it is called 'the solar body.' In Rosicrucianism, it is called 'the diamond body of the temple of God.' In ancient Egypt it was called 'the luminous body or being' (akh). In Old Persia it was called 'the indwelling divine potential' (fravashi or fravarti). In the Mithraic liturgy it was called 'the perfect body ' (soma teilion). In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, it is called 'the divine body,' composed of supramental substance. In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, it is called 'the ultrahuman'.
~ ?, http://herebedragons.weebly.com/homo-lumen.html,#KEYS
174:Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
175:science reading list :::
1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie
3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687)
4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632)
5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)
6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.)
7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543)
8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916)
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947)
11. The Double Helix by James D. Watson (1968)
12. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger (1944)
13. The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan (1973)
14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson (1971)
15. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)
18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1985)
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard P Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands (1963)
21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey et al. (1948)
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)
23. Under a Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (1943)
24. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665)
25. Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)
~ Editors of Discovery Magazine, Website,#KEYS
176:the omnipresent Trinity :::
In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,-God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
177:This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a truthconscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life.
In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Mind of Light, 587,#KEYS
178:There is one point in particular I would like to single out and stress, namely, the notion of evolution. It is common to assume that one of the doctrines of the perennial philosophy... is the idea of involution-evolution. That is, the manifest world was created as a "fall" or "breaking away" from the Absolute (involution), but that all things are now returning to the Absolute (via evolution). In fact, the doctrine of progressive temporal return to Source (evolution) does not appear anywhere, according to scholars as Joseph Campbell, until the axial period (i.e. a mere two thousand years ago). And even then, the idea was somewhat convoluted and backwards. The doctrine of the yugas, for example, sees the world as proceeding through various stages of development, but the direction is backward: yesterday was the Golden Age, and time ever since has been a devolutionary slide downhill, resulting in the present-day Kali-Yuga. Indeed, this notion of a historical fall from Eden was ubiquitous during the axial period; the idea that we are, at this moment, actually evolving toward Spirit was simply not conceived in any sort of influential fashion.
But sometime during the modern era-it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly-the idea of history as devolution (or a fall from God) was slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (or a growth towards God). We see it explicitly in Schelling (1775-1854); Hegel (1770-1831) propounded the doctrine with a genius rarely equaled; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made evolution a universal law, and his friend Charles Darwin (1809-1882) applied it to biology. We find it next appearing in Aurobindo (1872-1950), who gave perhaps its most accurate and profound spiritual context, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who made it famous in the West.
But here is my point: we might say that the idea of evolution as return-to-Spirit is part of the perennial philosophy, but the idea itself, in any adequate form, is no more than a few hundred years old. It might be 'ancient' as timeless, but it is certainly not ancient as "old."...
This fundamental shift in the sense or form of the perennial philosophy-as represented in, say, Aurobindo, Hegel, Adi Da, Schelling, Teilhard de Chardin, Radhakrishnan, to name a few-I should like to call the "neoperennial philosophy." ~ Ken Wilber, The Eye Of Spirit,#KEYS
179:reading :::
Self-Help Reading List:
James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904)
Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century)
The Bhagavad-Gita
The Bible
Robert Bly Iron John (1990)
Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC)
Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997)
William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980)
David Brooks The Road to Character (2015)
Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012)
David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980)
Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988)
Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997)
Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994)
Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012)
Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988)
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991)
The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999)
The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings)
Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011)
Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992)
Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841)
Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996)
Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959)
Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790)
Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982)
Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995)
John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992)
Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984)
James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996)
Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987)
Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998)
Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014)
Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989)
Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power)
Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960)
Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954)
Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992)
Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)
Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)
M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990)
Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991)
Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923)
Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991)
Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)
Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help,#KEYS
180:reading :::
50 Philosophy Classics: List of Books Covered:
1. Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition (1958)
2. Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)
3. AJ Ayer - Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
4. Julian Baggini - The Ego Trick (2011)
5. Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
6. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1952)
7. Jeremy Bentham - Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
8. Henri Bergson - Creative Evolution (1911)
9. David Bohm - Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
10. Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power (2002)
11. Cicero - On Duties (44 BC)
12. Confucius - Analects (5th century BC)
13. Rene Descartes - Meditations (1641)
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Fate (1860)
15. Epicurus - Letters (3rd century BC)
16. Michel Foucault - The Order of Things (1966)
17. Harry Frankfurt - On Bullshit (2005)
18. Sam Harris - Free Will (2012)
19. GWF Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit (1803)
20. Martin Heidegger - Being and Time (1927)
21. Heraclitus - Fragments (6th century)
22. David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
23. William James - Pragmatism (1904)
24. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking: Fast and Slow (2011)
25. Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
26. Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling (1843)
27. Saul Kripke - Naming and Necessity (1972)
28. Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
29. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Theodicy (1710)
30. John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
31. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage (1967)
32. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince (1532)
33. John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859)
34. Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580)
35. Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
36. Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
37. Blaise Pascal - Pensees (1670)
38. Plato - The Republic (4th century BC)
39. Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
40. John Rawls - A Theory of Justice (1971)
41. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (1762)
42. Bertrand Russell - The Conquest of Happiness (1920)
43. Michael Sandel - Justice (2009)
44. Jean Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness (1943)
45. Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation (1818)
46. Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save (2009)
47. Baruch Spinoza - Ethics (1677)
48. Nassim Nicholas - Taleb The Black Swan (2007)
49. Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations (1953)
50. Slavoj Zizek - Living In The End Times (2010)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Philosophy Classics,#KEYS
181:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
182:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#KEYS
183:(Novum Organum by Francis Bacon.)
34. "Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols of the Market, the fourth Idols of the Theatre.
40. "The information of notions and axioms on the foundation of true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off and expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point them out; for the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of the confutation of sophisms does to common logic.
41. "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.
42. "The idols of the den are those of each individual; for everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and singular disposition, or from his education and intercourse with others, or from his reading, and the authority acquired by those whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impressions produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied and predisposed, or equable and tranquil, and the like; so that the spirit of man (according to its several dispositions), is variable, confused, and, as it were, actuated by chance; and Heraclitus said well that men search for knowledge in lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
43. "There are also idols formed by the reciprocal intercourse and society of man with man, which we call idols of the market, from the commerce and association of men with each other; for men converse by means of language, but words are formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. Nor can the definitions and explanations with which learned men are wont to guard and protect themselves in some instances afford a complete remedy-words still manifestly force the understanding, throw everything into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies.
44. "Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the theatre: for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present systems, or of the philosophy and sects of the ancients, since numerous other plays of a similar nature can be still composed and made to agree with each other, the causes of the most opposite errors being generally the same. Nor, again, do we allude merely to general systems, but also to many elements and axioms of sciences which have become inveterate by tradition, implicit credence, and neglect. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
184:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,#KEYS
185:Although a devout student of the Bible, Paracelsus instinctively adopted the broad patterns of essential learning, as these had been clarified by Pythagoras of Samos and Plato of Athens. Being by nature a mystic as well as a scientist, he also revealed a deep regard for the Neoplatonic philosophy as expounded by Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Neoplatonism is therefore an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the Paracelsian doctrine.
Paracelsus held that true knowledge is attained in two ways, or rather that the pursuit of knowledge is advanced by a two-fold method, the elements of which are completely interdependent. In our present terminology, we can say that these two parts of method are intuition and experience. To Paracelsus, these could never be divided from each other.
The purpose of intuition is to reveal certain basic ideas which must then be tested and proven by experience. Experience, in turn, not only justifies intuition, but contributes certain additional knowledge by which the impulse to further growth is strengthened and developed. Paracelsus regarded the separation of intuition and experience to be a disaster, leading inevitably to greater error and further disaster. Intuition without experience allows the mind to fall into an abyss of speculation without adequate censorship by practical means. Experience without intuition could never be fruitful because fruitfulness comes not merely from the doing of things, but from the overtones which stimulate creative thought. Further, experience is meaningless unless there is within man the power capable of evaluating happenings and occurrences. The absence of this evaluating factor allows the individual to pass through many kinds of experiences, either misinterpreting them or not inter preting them at all. So Paracelsus attempted to explain intuition and how man is able to apprehend that which is not obvious or apparent. Is it possible to prove beyond doubt that the human being is capable of an inward realization of truths or facts without the assistance of the so-called rational faculty?
According to Paracelsus, intuition was possible because of the existence in nature of a mysterious substance or essence-a universal life force. He gave this many names, but for our purposes, the simplest term will be appropriate. He compared it to light, further reasoning that there are two kinds of light: a visible radiance, which he called brightness, and an invisible radiance, which he called darkness. There is no essential difference between light and darkness. There is a dark light, which appears luminous to the soul but cannot be sensed by the body. There is a visible radiance which seems bright to the senses, but may appear dark to the soul. We must recognize that Paracelsus considered light as pertaining to the nature of being, the total existence from which all separate existences arise. Light not only contains the energy needed to support visible creatures, and the whole broad expanse of creation, but the invisible part of light supports the secret powers and functions of man, particularly intuition. Intuition, therefore, relates to the capacity of the individual to become attuned to the hidden side of life. By light, then, Paracelsus implies much more than the radiance that comes from the sun, a lantern, or a candle. To him, light is the perfect symbol, emblem, or figure of total well-being. Light is the cause of health. Invisible light, no less real if unseen, is the cause of wisdom. As the light of the body gives strength and energy, sustaining growth and development, so the light of the soul bestows understanding, the light of the mind makes wisdom possible, and the light of the spirit confers truth. Therefore, truth, wisdom, understanding, and health are all manifesta tions or revelations ot one virtue or power. What health is to the body, morality is to the emotions, virtue to the soul, wisdom to the mind, and reality to the spirit. This total content of living values is contained in every ray of visible light. This ray is only a manifestation upon one level or plane of the total mystery of life. Therefore, when we look at a thing, we either see its objective, physical form, or we apprehend its inner light Everything that lives, lives in light; everything that has an existence, radiates light. All things derive their life from light, and this light, in its root, is life itself. This, indeed, is the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world. ~ Manly P Hall, Paracelsus,#KEYS
186:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, #KEYS
187:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
188:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,#KEYS
189: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
190: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
191: The purpose of creation, is lila. The concept of lila escapes all the traditional difficulties in assigning purpose to the creator. Lila is a purpose-less purpose, a natural outflow, a spontaneous self-manifestation of the Divine. The concept of lila, again, emphasizes the role of delight in creation. The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the bliss aspect of Divine. If the world is manifestation of the Force of Satcitananda, the deployment of its existence and consciousness, its purpose can be nothing but delight. This is the meaning of delight. Lila, the play, the child’s joy, the poet’s joy, the actor’s joy, the mechanician’s joy of the soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and recreating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that self-creation, of that self-representation, Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground ~ Sri Aurobindo, Philosophy of Social Development, pp-39-40 #KEYS
192: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
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1:Philosophy begins in wonder. ~ Plato
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2:Philosophy.—Nil. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
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3:Philosophy is the highest music. ~ Plato
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4:Let's drop the philosophy! ~ Anton Chekhov
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5:Philosophy begins with wonder. ~ Aristotle
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6:Philosophy is an act of living. ~ Plutarch
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7:AI makes philosophy honest ~ Daniel Dennett
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8:Philosophy is the art of living. ~ Plutarch
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9:All work is an act of philosophy. ~ Ayn Rand
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10:Animal smell is beyond philosophy. ~ K b Abe
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11:God loves only one philosophy, ~ Sri Chinmoy
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12:Philosophy bakes no bread ~ Bertrand Russell
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13:Philosophy begins in wonder." -Plato ~ Plato
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14:Philosophy can make people sick. ~ Aristotle
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15:Philosophy gives life to life. ~ Neel Burton
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16:Philosophy is for the few. ~ William Gilbert
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17:All Philosophy is Biography ~ Peter J Carroll
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18:Too much philosophy makes men mad. ~ Alan Judd
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19:Philosophy is the Devil's Whore ~ Martin Luther
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20:How charming is divine philosophy! ~ John Milton
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21:Never look back' is my philosophy. ~ Helen Clark
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22:Science is practical philosophy. ~ Rene Descartes
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23:Will our Philosophy to later Life ~ Julian Huxley
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24:in each shave lies a philosophy. ~ Haruki Murakami
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25:after philosophy, action is required; ~ Victor Hugo
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26:History should be written as philosophy. ~ Voltaire
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27:Leisure is the mother of Philosophy ~ Thomas Hobbes
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28:Philosophy is nothing but discretion. ~ John Selden
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29:Philosophy will clip an angel's wings. ~ John Keats
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30:CHAPTER VIII—PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING ~ Victor Hugo
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31:Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. ~ Thomas Hobbes
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32:Philosophy is everybody's business. ~ Mortimer Adler
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33:philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; ~ Seneca
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34:Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. ~ John Milton
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35:Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it. ~ Epictetus
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36:Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it. ~ Epictetus
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37:Personal philosophy: Clothing optional ~ Will Ferrell
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38:Philosophy is really homesickness. ~ George MacDonald
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39:The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy. ~ David Mamet
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40:Astonishment is the root of philosophy. ~ Paul Tillich
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41:Philosophy is not a spectator sport. ~ Nigel Warburton
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42:Philosophy is the microscope of thought. ~ Victor Hugo
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43:The poem of the understanding is philosophy. ~ Novalis
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44:History is Philosophy teaching by example. ~ Thucydides
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45:Philosophy! the lumber of the schools. ~ Jonathan Swift
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46:Propaganda replaces moral philosophy. ~ Hans Morgenthau
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47:That's why I love philosophy: no one wins. ~ D T Suzuki
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48:A religion without mystics is a philosophy. ~ Quintilian
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49:Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
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50:My workout philosophy is; no pain, no pain ~ Woody Paige
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51:Never judge a philosophy by its abuse. ~ Saint Augustine
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52:Philosophy has degenerated into ideology. ~ Peter Kreeft
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53:Philosophy teaches you to think big. ~ Jay Chandrasekhar
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54:Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy. ~ William Shakespeare
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55:I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. ~ Saul Leiter
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56:O philosophy, you leader of life. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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57:Philosophy is nothing but a failed art. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim
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58:There is no other start to philosophy but wonder. ~ Plato
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59:I was allowed to play at philosophy no longer. ~ C S Lewis
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60:My philosophy is familiarity breeds contempt. ~ Chaka Khan
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61:My style philosophy is: Be comfortable. ~ Cheyenne Kimball
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62:Philosophy always buries its undertakers. ~ Etienne Gilson
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63:Philosophy has forgotten about children ~ Bernhard Schlink
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64:Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope. ~ Anne Carson
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65:Philosophy is common sense with big words. ~ James Madison
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66:Philosophy is the education of grown-ups. ~ Stanley Cavell
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67:Philosophy is the health of the mind. ~ Seneca the Younger
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68:Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. ~ Victor Hugo
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69:Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot. ~ Edgar Quinet
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70:Robert Garcia is a philosophy professor, ~ Nancy R Pearcey
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71:Words, without power, is mere philosophy. ~ Muhammad Iqbal
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72:It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy ~ Zadie Smith
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73:I was only 44, which is childhood philosophy. ~ Will Durant
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74:Philosophy: a purple bullfinch in a lilac tree. ~ T S Eliot
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75:Philosophy is the invention of the rich. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
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76:Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales ~ Jostein Gaarder
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77:Abortion does not compute with my philosophy. ~ Kate Mulgrew
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78:My philosophy is worry means you suffer twice. ~ J K Rowling
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79:Philosophy is the science which considers truth. ~ Aristotle
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80:Slow are the beginnings of philosophy. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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81:All is well... That's my new philosophy... ~ Charles M Schulz
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82:All philosophy is a form of confession. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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83:Common sense is the folklore of philosophy. ~ Antonio Gramsci
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84:I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art. ~ Oscar Wilde
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85:My personal philosophy of life is one of ethics ~ Alva Myrdal
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86:My whole philosophy is about playing dress-up. ~ Brad Goreski
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87:Parent hard, play hard. That's my philosophy. ~ Oliver Hudson
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88:Philosophy is the product of wonder. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
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89:Philosophy says truth, literature shows truth. ~ Peter Kreeft
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90:Religion is the retarded stepchild of philosophy. ~ Frank Mir
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91:Remain true to yourself and your philosophy. ~ Giorgio Armani
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92:To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize. ~ Blaise Pascal
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93:Without philosophy, action has no meaning. ~ Sebastien Foucan
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94:History is philosophy teaching by examples. ~ Thomas Jefferson
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95:History is philosophy teaching by experience. ~ Thomas Carlyle
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96:Our whole philosophy is one of transparency. ~ Valerie Jarrett
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97:Pessimism is an emotion not a philosophy. ~ Immortal Technique
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98:Poetry and philosophy will become friends. ~ Swami Vivekananda
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99:To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. ~ Blaise Pascal
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100:God — the John Doe of philosophy and religion. ~ Elbert Hubbard
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101:I see I have made my self a slave to Philosophy. ~ Isaac Newton
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102:My philosophy is worrying means you suffer twice. ~ J K Rowling
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103:one generation is the philosophy of government ~ David Kupelian
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104:Philosophy is to science as masturbation is to sex. ~ Karl Marx
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105:that last word of human philosophy, “Perhaps! ~ Alexandre Dumas
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106:There is always a philosophy for lack of courage ~ Albert Camus
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107:But philosophy proper has become a place to hide... ~ N D Wilson
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108:Computers brought philosophy into everyday life. ~ Sherry Turkle
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109:es·se n. [PHILOSOPHY] essential nature or essence. ~ Erin McKean
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110:friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art ~ C S Lewis
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111:Leisure can be one of the Mothers of Philosophy. ~ Thomas Hobbes
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112:My philosophy? I'm always right and you are wrong. ~ Oscar Wilde
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113:Philosophy is not a theory but an activity ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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114:Philosophy is surgery; surgery is philosophy. ~ David Cronenberg
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115:Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run. ~ Mason Cooley
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116:There is always a philosophy for lack of courage. ~ Albert Camus
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117:To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy. ~ Seneca
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118:Where philosophy ends spirituality begins. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
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119:Believe it or not, philosophy has consequences. ~ Jonathan V Last
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120:I'm very passionate about philosophy and religion. ~ Helen Slater
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121:I saw death come for you, and I had no philosophy. ~ Mary Renault
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122:Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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123:Philosophy is the true mother of science. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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124:Philosophy, satan's portal into man's insanity. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim
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125:The first step towards philosophy is incredulity. ~ Denis Diderot
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126:To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize. ~ Blaise Pascal
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127:Where there is no bread, there is no philosophy. ~ Avram Davidson
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128:All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. ~ Epictetus
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129:Isn't that an odd philosophy for a vampire? ~ Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
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130:Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising. ~ Blaise Pascal
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131:All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. ~ Epictetus,
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132:Every man has two vocations: his own and philosophy. ~ Edward Abbey
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133:Go away, you give philosophy nothing to catch hold of. ~ Xenocrates
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134:In philosophy an individual is becoming himself. ~ Bernard Lonergan
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135:My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice ~ J K Rowling
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136:Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home. ~ Novalis
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137:I don't exercise. My philosophy is: No pain, no pain. ~ Carol Leifer
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138:Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy ~ Tertullian
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139:My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice. ~ J K Rowling
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140:My philosophy of dating is to just fart right away. ~ Jenny McCarthy
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141:Paradox is the pathos or the passion of philosophy. ~ Gilles Deleuze
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142:Philosophy is one reason which could lead to death. ~ Santosh Kalwar
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143:That’s the underlying philosophy of Aoki Bootcamp: ~ Timothy Ferriss
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144:What philosophy has lacked most of all is precision. ~ Henri Bergson
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145:Wisdom corresponds to the future; it is philosophy. ~ Herbie Hancock
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146:Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass. ~ Herman Melville
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147:My fashion philosophy is that if I like it, I wear it. ~ Nicky Hilton
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148:Philosophy: circles that include one another. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty
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149:Philosophy is the acquisition of knowledge. ~ Plato, Euthydemus, 288d
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150:Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason. ~ Victor Hugo
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151:Stay away from philosophy, kids: it will ruin your mind. ~ Rex Murphy
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152:Geometry is one of the handles of science and philosophy. ~ Xenocrates
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153:Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity. ~ George Will
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154:Good philosophy is always hate speech to evil doers. ~ Stefan Molyneux
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155:Have a philosophy of investment and try to follow it. ~ Walter Schloss
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156:If you want to silence me, silence philosophy, who is my love. ~ Plato
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157:Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
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158:Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does. ~ Denis Diderot
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159:A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. ~ Jim Rohn
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160:Every show is your last show. That's my philosophy. ~ Garrison Keillor
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161:My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint. ~ David Maraniss
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162:Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy. ~ David Bentley Hart
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163:Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy. ~ Denis Diderot
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164:The grandeur of a philosophy does not certify its truth. ~ Mason Cooley
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165:The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy. ~ William James
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166:To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher ~ Blaise Pascal
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167:Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
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168:In philosophy all truth is old and only error is original. ~ Will Durant
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169:Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. ~ Martin Heidegger
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170:Philosophy as well as foppery often changes fashion. ~ Benjamin Franklin
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171:Philosophy is the history of philosophy. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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172:Philosophy is the rational expression of genius. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine
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173:Philosophy studies the world, but the point is to change it. ~ Karl Marx
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174:The chief error in philosophy is overstatement. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
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175:To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal
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176:Children, viewed from one angle, are philosophy in motion. ~ Anthony Lane
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177:I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain. ~ Carol Leifer
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178:...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying? ~ Gore Vidal
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179:Let the ‘why not’ philosophy be your life principle! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan
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180:Original philosophy is always "deviant" or even subversive. ~ Mario Bunge
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181:Philosophy is an art form—art of thought or thought as art ~ Susan Sontag
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182:Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide. ~ Jean Baudrillard
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183:Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel
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184:Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
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185:Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
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186:Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel. ~ Seneca
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187:The current philosophy was that Buddha was a communist. ~ Colin Cotterill
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188:The facts must rule philosophy, not philosophy the facts. ~ Philip Schaff
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189:Too much philosophy makes men mad. ~ Alan Judd, The Noonday Devil (1987).
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190:Your Philosophy of life shapes you more than anything else ~ Tony Robbins
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191:Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy? ~ John Keats
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192:In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent ~ Ambrose Bierce
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193:I've always said fantasy is sort of 'stealth philosophy'. ~ Terry Goodkind
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194:Marriage is a team effort. Both of us share that philosophy. ~ Nick Lachey
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195:Mere unbelief in a personal God is no philosophy at all. ~ Albert Einstein
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196:My philosophy all my life has been the pursuit of excellence. ~ John Kluge
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197:My philosophy has always been it's good to learn everything. ~ Gene LeBell
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198:My philosophy is that everything starts with a great product. ~ Steve Jobs
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199:Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher. ~ Lord Chesterfield
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200:Poetry is philosophy's sister, the one that wears makeup. ~ Jennifer Grotz
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201:rhetoric was to be surveyed from the standpoint of philosophy. ~ Aristotle
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202:The science of love is the philosophy of the heart ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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203:True philosophy is beyond all the attacks of things. ~ Apollonius of Tyana
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204:What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom? ~ Thomas Carlyle
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205:You destroy my life then feed me inspirational philosophy. ~ Richelle Mead
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206:A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. ~ Albert Camus
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207:Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. ~ David Hume
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208:Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy be still a man. ~ David Hume
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209:Everything is science and everything is philosophy. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty
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210:Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer. ~ Jasper Fforde
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211:I don't attach importance to great speeches or philosophy. ~ Jacques Santer
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212:I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy. ~ Aristotle
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213:Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas. ~ Emile M Cioran
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214:Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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215:Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science]. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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216:Something always turned up. That was Tom's philosophy. ~ Patricia Highsmith
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217:To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal
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218:Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. ~ Julian Baggini
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219:As a comforter, philosophy cannot compete with a good dinner. ~ Mason Cooley
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220:but philosophy at half-past ten at night is somewhat late; ~ Alexandre Dumas
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221:But philosophy is an anestetic, a shot to keep the wonder away. ~ N D Wilson
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222:For justice is a blunt knife, both as a philosophy and as a judge. ~ Jo Nesb
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223:I'm someone who believes in centrist governing philosophy. ~ Scott McClellan
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224:Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy. ~ C D Broad
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225:Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman ; it made him one. ~ Seneca
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226:Science fiction tends to be philosophy for stupid people. ~ Chuck Klosterman
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227:Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy. ~ Richard M Nixon
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228:The band has a liberal philosophy - that's sort of a given. ~ Thurston Moore
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229:An abundance of good friends does not lead to better philosophy . ~ Karl Marx
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230:Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. ~ Sydney J Harris
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231:It is easy to build a philosophy - it doesn't have to run ~ Charles Kettering
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232:Philosophy is a distancing, if not debilitating, activity. ~ Michael J Sandel
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233:Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté. ~ Emmanuel Levinas
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234:There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology. ~ Karl Barth
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235:Yoga is a way of life; it is an art, a science, a philosophy. ~ B K S Iyengar
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236:All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion. ~ Francis Bacon
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237:Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume
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238:I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy. ~ Max Born
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239:Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly. ~ William James
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240:philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and some of the work of Seneca. ~ Robin S Sharma
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241:Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know ~ Bertrand Russell
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242:Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. ~ David Hume
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243:Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal. ~ Robert Sheckley
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244:Every man must find his own philosophy, his attitude towards life. ~ Lin Yutang
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245:Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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246:It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists. ~ Immanuel Kant
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247:My philosophy is that the club is more important than anyone! ~ Gerard Houllier
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248:Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere. ~ Novalis
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249:Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. ~ Bertrand Russell
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250:The agenda of the roadblock is the philosophy of the stop sign. ~ George W Bush
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251:The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next. ~ David Schnarch
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252:Your face is a billboard advertising your philosophy of life! ~ Barbara Johnson
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253:Your income is directly related to your philosophy, NOT the economy. ~ Jim Rohn
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254:Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy. ~ Diogenes
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255:If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of Philosophy. ~ Epicurus
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256:I have this philosophy that A and B students work for C students. ~ Kenny Troutt
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257:Income is primarily determined by your philosophy, not by the economy ~ Jim Rohn
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258:Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, ~ Caroline Mitchell
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259:My music and lyrics became an extension of this Indian philosophy. ~ Gary Wright
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260:My philosophy is very simple: when in doubt, take a bath. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
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261:My philosophy is, worrying means you suffer twice - Newt Scamander ~ J K Rowling
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262:philosophy is the discipline that involves creating concepts” . ~ Gilles Deleuze
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263:Philosophy is to a thinker … what push-ups are to a model. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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264:Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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265:Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
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266:Yoga began as a philosophy rather than as a physical discipline. ~ Deepak Chopra
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267:Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting. ~ Trevanian
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268:If I had a philosophy, it's that I support the beautiful side of anarchy. ~ Bjork
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269:I just swung for the fence. That's my whole philosophy in life. ~ Ronnie Van Zant
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270:I think [ fashion philosophy] it's about your smile and your smell. ~ Erykah Badu
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271:I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. ~ Jack Nicholson
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272:Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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273:Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility. ~ Susan Neiman
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274:Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom. ~ Will Durant
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275:Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know. ~ Bertrand Russell
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276:The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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277:There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life. ~ Jaegwon Kim
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278:The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality. ~ Guy Debord
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279:To be nice to people and make them happy - that's my philosophy in life. ~ Hiromi
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280:True philosophy entails relearning to see the world anew. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty
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281:But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style. ~ Gertrude Stein
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282:Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art. ~ Brian Eno
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283:Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else. ~ K b Abe
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284:I got an A in philosophy because I proved my professor didn't exist. ~ Judy Tenuta
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285:I have no philosophy, my favourite thing is sitting in the studio. ~ Arne Jacobsen
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286:Jiu-Jitsu is like a philosophy. It helps me learn how to face life. ~ Helio Gracie
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287:Josiah Royce wrote a book with the title The Philosophy of Loyalty. ~ Atul Gawande
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288:My pitching philosophy is simple - keep the ball way from the bat. ~ Satchel Paige
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289:Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home. ~ Novalis
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290:Philosophy is the process of deliberate dumbing down of Science. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim
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291:Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business. ~ Bertrand Russell
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292:Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points. ~ Khalil Gibran
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293:the damaging notion that obscure is the way philosophy should sound. ~ Clive James
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294:The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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295:There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation. ~ Walter Benjamin
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296:There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections. ~ Joseph de Maistre
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297:There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker. ~ Charles M Schulz
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298:The tragedy of contemporary philosophy is that it has been castrated. ~ Paul Kurtz
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299:We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. ~ Isaac Newton
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300:Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy. ~ Joseph Joubert
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301:Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. ~ Plato
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302:Did you party too much and drop out?” “No, I got a philosophy degree. ~ Bobby Adair
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303:Fools alone say that work and philosophy are different, not the learned ~ Anonymous
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304:If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy. ~ Chrysippus
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305:...it requires all my philosophy, and all my piety' to make peace... ~ Sarah Vowell
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306:Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
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307:My philosophy is the same as a Samurai: To hit without getting hit. ~ Lyoto Machida
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308:Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy. ~ Novalis
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309:Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. ~ Ambrose Bierce
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310:Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about? ~ Alfred North Whitehead
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311:Philosophy makes literature clear, literature makes philosophy real. ~ Peter Kreeft
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312:Philosophy only seems to offer endless dispute, with no cakes and ale. ~ Keith Ward
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313:Prepare for the worst, and pursue the fun: this was her philosophy ~ Meredith Duran
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314:Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them. ~ Voltaire
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315:The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature. ~ Julius Charles Hare
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316:The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy ~ George Santayana
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317:The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
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318:Where did biology, morality, literature, and philosophy intersect? ~ Paul Kalanithi
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319:Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and all philosophy begins in wonder ~ Plato
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320:As long as I draw breath and am able, I won't give up practicing philosophy. ~ Plato
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321:I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse. ~ Paul Virilio
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322:Maybe it's my libertarian philosophy: but being in government is hard. ~ John Bolton
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323:My philosophy is: If you can't have fun, there's no sense in doing it. ~ Paul Walker
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324:my philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice - newt scamander ~ J K Rowling
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325:Newt Scamander: My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice. ~ J K Rowling
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326:Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. ~ Dalai Lama
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327:Philosophy - A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. ~ Ambrose Bierce
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328:Philosophy limits the thinkable and therefore the unthinkable. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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329:The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do. ~ Ian Hacking
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330:The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy. ~ George Santayana
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331:The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy. ~ Bertrand Russell
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332:Economic disaster begins with a philosophy of doing less and wanting more. ~ Jim Rohn
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333:Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. ~ Margaret Thatcher
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334:Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy. ~ Plato
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335:Heresy is just philosophy that the establishment doesn’t approve of, ~ Mary Jo Putney
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336:I really wanted to maintain that bedroom philosophy to creating stuff. ~ Jamie Lidell
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337:Mathematics is less related to accounting than it is to philosophy. ~ Leonard Adleman
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338:My philosophy is that you sell things for more than you bought them. ~ Sophia Amoruso
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339:Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction. ~ R D Laing
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340:Philosophy is a state of fermentation a process without final outcome. ~ Esa Saarinen
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341:Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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342:Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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343:But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence. ~ Ayn Rand
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344:He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
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345:I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time. ~ Charles M Schulz
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346:I like to think that death gives life meaning. I like that philosophy. ~ Kirsten Dunst
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347:More things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, ~ Stephen King
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348:My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice." - Newt Scamander ~ J K Rowling
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349:My philosophy of life can be summed up in four words: It can't be helped. ~ Will Cuppy
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350:Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension. ~ Karl Jaspers
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351:Philosophy can't build bridges, but can encourage people to cross them. ~ Paulo Coelho
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352:Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously. ~ Bertrand Russell
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353:Philosophy set knowledge adrift; physics anchored knowledge to reality. ~ James Gleick
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354:Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others. ~ Oscar Wilde
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355:Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it. ~ Albert Camus
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356:what Shakespeare was to the drama of England, Plato was to ancient philosophy, ~ Plato
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357:Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb. ~ Ferdinand Christian Baur
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358:You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy ~ R Buckminster Fuller
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359:Hinduism the perennial philosophy that is at the core of all religions. ~ Aldous Huxley
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360:I believe strongly that philosophy has nothing to do with specialists. ~ Gilles Deleuze
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361:I have the general philosophy of creating the future you want to see. ~ Peter Diamandis
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362:Look, my philosophy in life is expect nothing and everything is a bonus. ~ Hugh Jackman
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363:My philosophy, like color television, is all there in black and white. ~ Graham Chapman
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364:Philosophy is good advice; and no one can give advice at the top of his lungs. ~ Seneca
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365:Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness or limitation of knowledge". ~ Bhagat Singh
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366:Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
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367:Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses. ~ George Santayana
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368:Science never makes an advance until philosophy authorizes it to do so. ~ Thomas E Mann
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369:The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, That no philosophy can lift. ~ William Wordsworth
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370:The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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371:There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers ~ Henry David Thoreau
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372:This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society. ~ Ai Weiwei
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373:You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity. ~ Kirk Douglas
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374:All human philosophy is riddled with the nightmare of searching in vain. ~ Wilhelm Reich
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375:Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future. ~ Ayn Rand
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376:If you want to amend your errors, you must begin by amending your philosophy. ~ Jim Rohn
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377:I have a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time. —Charlie Brown ~ Edward T Welch
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378:In the Art, Science, Philosophy and Mystic rests the temple of Wisdom. ~ Samael Aun Weor
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379:Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
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380:My philosophy is: Everybody needs to look out for everybody else. ~ Robert James Thomson
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381:Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines. ~ Gilbert Ryle
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382:Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy? ~ Liu Cixin
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383:The advantages of philosophy? That I am able to hold converse with myself. ~ Antisthenes
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384:There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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385:There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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386:To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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387:What is philosophy? It is something that lightens up, that makes bright. ~ Victor Cousin
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388:why did rail journeys always provoke interior monologues of philosophy? ~ Alex Rosenberg
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389:You may be a genius engineer, but I took Intro to Philosophy and got a B + ~ Audrey Bell
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390:a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. ~ William B Irvine
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391:Bader's philosophy was my philosophy. His whole attitude to life was mine. ~ Kenneth More
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392:If philosophy begins in wonder, pedagogy typically begins in frustration. ~ Lee S Shulman
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393:Initial response illustrates a great deal about someone's personal philosophy. ~ Jim Rohn
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394:In the presence of death, no philosophy of life can feel triumphant! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan
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395:Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old. ~ Epicurus
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396:literature is not conceivable without philosophy or the other way round ~ Thomas Bernhard
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397:My philosophy has always been, you don't put your name in front of a movie. ~ Lee Daniels
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398:Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination. ~ George Henry Lewes
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399:Remember: philosophy requires
only what your nature already demands. ~ Marcus Aurelius
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400:The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art. ~ George Santayana
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401:There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. ~ Will Durant
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402:The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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403:Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers. ~ John Churton Collins
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404:A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world. ~ Louis Pasteur
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405:A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice. ~ G K Chesterton
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406:Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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407:Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct. ~ Thomas Hardy
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408:My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek. ~ Milton Friedman
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409:My teaching is not a philosophy. It is the result of direct experience... ~ Gautama Buddha
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410:Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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411:philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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412:Singing is my main goal, and I think philosophy will help me write songs. ~ Jackie Evancho
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413:There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself. ~ Will Durant
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414:Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins. ~ W Edwards Deming
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415:Existentialism is the kind of philosophy that makes for legendary children. ~ Norman Mailer
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416:Extreme liberalism is not a political philosophy. It is a mental disorder. ~ Michael Savage
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417:For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses. ~ John Keats
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418:For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald
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419:God’s philosophy is simpler than the simplest: “Never give up, never give up! ~ Sri Chinmoy
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420:Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald
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421:I think the Playboy philosophy is very, very connected to the American dream. ~ Hugh Hefner
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422:Medicine rests upon four pillars - philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. ~ Paracelsus
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423:Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging. ~ H L Mencken
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424:Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism. ~ Denis Diderot
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425:Philosophy is overwhelmingly complicated, its procedure depressingly slow. ~ Max Horkheimer
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426:@philosophytweet "When the state is most corrupt, then laws are most multiplied." ~ Tacitus
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427:Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton
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428:Deutschland über alles - I fear that was the end of German Philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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429:For every un-universe, then, an un-philosophy that must also negate itself. ~ Eugene Thacker
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430:In the world today, only a philosophy of eternity could justify non-violence. ~ Albert Camus
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431:It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly. ~ Isaac Asimov
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432:Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding. ~ Iris Murdoch
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433:My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing. ~ Werner Heisenberg
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434:Philosophy is the sum total of all that you know and what you decide is valuable. ~ Jim Rohn
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435:Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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436:Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion. ~ Novalis
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437:Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?” Ye ~ Liu Cixin
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438:The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions. ~ Epictetus
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439:The ideas within this philosophy are certainly not exclusive to any writer. ~ Nic Pizzolatto
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440:There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language. ~ Henri Bergson
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441:Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism. ~ Richard Hugo
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442:Trump himself has reduced his life philosophy to a single word—revenge. ~ David Cay Johnston
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443:When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when ~ Daniel Dennett
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444:Always marveling at how New Age pseudo-philosophy had taken over the Internet. ~ Jeff Lindsay
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445:In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all. ~ Iris Murdoch
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446:I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective. ~ Helen Keller
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447:It seemed too good to be true and thus, be human philosophy, clearly false. ~ Stephenie Meyer
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448:Know the philosophy, know the details, and ignore everything in the middle. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk
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449:Man is fortunately inconsistent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism,
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450:My philosophy in life is that you only live once. Live life to its fullest. ~ Richard Branson
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451:My philosophy was if they weren't calling you names, you weren't doing anything. ~ Earl Lloyd
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452:My relationship with Barack Obama isn't based on my political philosophy or his. ~ Tom Coburn
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453:Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that's my philosophy. ~ Tad Williams
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454:One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then. ~ John Burroughs
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455:Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work. ~ Karl Jaspers
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456:Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory. ~ Louis Althusser
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457:Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual. ~ Jacques Ellul
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458:the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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459:The old harlot, German philosophy, has finally turned into a church lady. ~ Franz Grillparzer
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460:Those who love seek a philosophy and, because of this, are fond of solitude. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
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461:True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is. ~ Victor Cousin
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462:A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion ~ David Hume
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463:A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it. ~ Alexander Pope
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464:Don’t buy anything. My philosophy is, if it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it. ~ Nelson DeMille
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465:God save me from fools with a little philosophy—no one is more difficult to reach. ~ Epictetus
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466:I don't think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing. ~ Bill Gates
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467:I gotta think that one that becomes a philosophy of work, which is "no excuses." ~ Phil Ramone
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468:I have a social philosophy; you have political opinions; he has an ideology. ~ Clifford Geertz
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469:It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. ~ Megan Miranda
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470:Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind. ~ John Calvin
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471:Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth. ~ Alexandre Dumas
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472:Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set. ~ Laurence Sterne
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473:Philosophy is a root of science. Science is a branch of a philosophical tree. ~ Santosh Kalwar
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474:Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. ~ William James
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475:Philosophy seeks to explain life and portray how life should be lived ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
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476:Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another. ~ Mason Cooley
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477:Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer
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478:Religion realizes philosophy by adapting it to the weaknesses of the vulgar.... ~ liphas L vi
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479:The gems of philosophy are not less precious because they are not understood. ~ Giordano Bruno
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480:To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell. ~ Igor Stravinsky
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481:When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool. ~ Clay Shirky
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482:All that philosophy can teach is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes. ~ Oliver Goldsmith
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483:[ ] dreams provide rare insights into their philosophy about life and money [ ] ~ Matthew Kelly
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484:Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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485:It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true. ~ George Santayana
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486:Men were first led to the study of philosophy, as indeed they are today, by wonder. ~ Aristotle
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487:Philosophy is like a normal personal organizer, but it's smaller than a matchbox. ~ Oscar Wilde
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488:Philosophy suffered more from modernity than any other field of human endeavor. ~ Hannah Arendt
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489:Philosophy wants us to get ourselves out of trouble by utilising our own resources, ~ Luc Ferry
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490:Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it. ~ David Hume
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491:Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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492:Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who’s ~ Peter Kreeft
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493:Taoist philosophy, “Rest is prior to motion and stillness prior to action. ~ Arianna Huffington
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494:The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas. ~ Eric Hoffer
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495:The Nordstrom corollary to that philosophy is hire the smile, train the skill. ~ Robert Spector
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496:The only philosophy is that of language, the only religion is that of the word. ~ Michel Serres
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497:The philosophy to 'buy and hold' is a philosophy that I use to manage funds. ~ Michael Lee Chin
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498:There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy ~ Julia Gregson
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499:The topic of philosophy is whatever you experience, as you experience it. Such ~ Sarah Bakewell
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500:We call it drunk philosophy. You have a few beers and you become a lot smarter. ~ Kenny Chesney
#NFDB
216 Integral Yoga
62 Philosophy
58 Occultism
42 Psychology
42 Poetry
36 Christianity
24 Yoga
22 Fiction
10 Science
6 Hinduism
2 Mysticism
1 Theosophy
1 Mythology
1 Integral Theory
1 Education
1 Buddhism
1 Alchemy
196 Sri Aurobindo
55 Nolini Kanta Gupta
51 The Mother
41 Carl Jung
29 Aldous Huxley
28 Satprem
22 Aleister Crowley
17 Swami Vivekananda
16 A B Purani
13 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
12 Sri Ramakrishna
12 Saint Augustine of Hippo
12 H P Lovecraft
11 Plato
10 Plotinus
10 Percy Bysshe Shelley
10 James George Frazer
8 William Wordsworth
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
7 Swami Krishnananda
7 George Van Vrekhem
6 Paul Richard
6 Jordan Peterson
4 Walt Whitman
4 Patanjali
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 John Keats
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Robert Browning
3 Nirodbaran
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Friedrich Schiller
2 Franz Bardon
2 Edgar Allan Poe
60 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
29 The Perennial Philosophy
19 The Synthesis Of Yoga
17 The Life Divine
17 The Human Cycle
17 Magick Without Tears
16 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
15 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
14 The Practice of Psycho therapy
14 Essays On The Gita
12 Mysterium Coniunctionis
12 Lovecraft - Poems
11 Liber ABA
11 Essays Divine And Human
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
10 The Problems of Philosophy
10 The Golden Bough
10 Shelley - Poems
9 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
9 City of God
9 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
8 Wordsworth - Poems
8 Talks
8 Letters On Yoga II
7 Twilight of the Idols
7 The Study and Practice of Yoga
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
7 Bhakti-Yoga
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Future of Man
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Letters On Poetry And Art
6 Aion
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
5 Letters On Yoga I
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Whitman - Poems
4 Walden
4 Questions And Answers 1956
4 Questions And Answers 1953
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 Letters On Yoga IV
4 Let Me Explain
4 Keats - Poems
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
4 Agenda Vol 03
3 Vedic and Philological Studies
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Savitri
3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
3 Questions And Answers 1955
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Labyrinths
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Browning - Poems
3 Agenda Vol 11
3 Agenda Vol 02
2 The Secret Of The Veda
2 Schiller - Poems
2 Record of Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Poe - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 12
2 Agenda Vol 10
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 04
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Kabbalah
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 altoge ther 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.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian Philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is this truth which makes necessary to every Philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the
Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
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its object which our Philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of
Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
preacher. Nor have the other treatises the learning and the authority of these.
Nowhere else does the genius of St. John of the Cross for infusing Philosophy into
his mystical dissertations find such an outlet as here. Nowhere else, again, is he
quite so appealingly human; for, though he is human even in his loftiest and
sublimest passages, this intermingling of Philosophy with mystical theology makes
him seem particularly so. These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croixTie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is the dead matter that has found life and glows and vibrates in Sri Aurobindo's passion? It is something which appears to many poetically intractable, not amenable to aesthetic treatment, not usually, that is to say, nor in the supreme manner. Sri Aurobindo has thrown such a material into his poetic fervour and created a sheer beauty, a stupendous reality out of it. Herein lies the greatness of his achievement. Philosophy, however divine, and in spite of Milton, has been regarded by poets as "harsh and crabbed" and as such unfit for poetic delineation. Not a few poets indeed foundered upon this rock. A poet in his own way is a philosopher, but a philosopher chanting out his Philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now where a philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shakespeare nor Homer had anything like Philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to Philosophy and philosophical ideas Virgil and Milton were not philosophers either. Dante sought perhaps consciously and deliberately to philosophise in his Paradiso I Did he? The less Dante then is he. For it is his Inferno, where he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (where he has put in more thought-power) that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement.
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.
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This is sheer Philosophy, told with an almost philosophical bluntnessmay be, but is it mere Philosophy and mediocre poetry? Once more listen to the Upanishadic lines:
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We have been speaking of Philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
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Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every Philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in Philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
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Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative Philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The style and manner of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation1 is also supremely characteristic: it does not carry the impress of a mere metaphysical dissertation-although in matter it clothes throughout a profound Philosophy; it is throbbing with the luminous life of a prophet's message, it is instinct with something of the Gita's own mantraakti.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and Philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The real secret of Nietzsche's Philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.
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01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsNicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human
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William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human Goethe
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsAldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsGoe the
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Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his Philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we can get that, intellectual speculation and reasoning must fall necessarily into a very secondary place and even lose their reason for existence. Philosophy, intellectual expression of the
Truth may remain, but mainly as a means of expressing this greater discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mental terms to those who still live in the mental intelligence.
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In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each Philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with Thought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental thinking. Each philosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been a metaphysical thinker doubled with a Yogi. Those who were only philosophic intellectuals were respected for their learning but never took rank as truth discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful means of spiritual experience died out and became things of the past because they were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation.
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Thought, intellect, the logical reason came to be regarded more and more as the highest means and even the highest end; in Philosophy, Thought is the be-all and the end-all. It is by intellectual thinking and speculation that the truth is to be discovered; even spiritual experience has been summoned to pass the tests of the intellect, if it is to be held valid - just the reverse of the
Indian position. Even those who see that mental Thought must be overpassed and admit a supramental "Other", do not seem to escape from the feeling that it must be through mental Thought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that this other Truth must be reached and made to take the place of the mental limitation and ignorance. And again Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason for seekers like yourself to turn to the East for guidance; for in the purely intellectual field, the Western thinkers are as competent as any Eastern sage.
02.06 - Vansittartism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Germany is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velleities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it all are appalling. Hitler is not the malady; removal of the Fuehrer will not cure Germany. The man is only a sign and a symbol. The whole nation is corrupt to the core: it has been inoculated with a virus that cannot be eradicated. The peculiar German character that confronts and bewilders us now, is not a thing of today or even of yesterday; it has been there since Tacitus remarked it. Even Germans themselves know it very well; the best among them have always repudiated their mother country. Certainly there were peoples and nations that acted at times most barbarously and inhumanly. The classical example of the Spanish Terror in America is there. But all pales into insignificance when compared to the German achievement and ideal in this respect. For here is a people violent and cruel, not simply because it is their character to be so and they delight in being so, but because it forms the bedrock of their Philosophy of life, their weltanschauung.
This is the very core of the matter. Germany stands for a Philosophy of life, for a definite mode of human values. That Philosophy was slowly developed, elaborated by the German mind, in various degrees and in various ways through various thinkers and theorists and moralists and statesmen, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The conception of the State as propounded even by her great philosophers as something self-existent, sacrosanct and almost divineaugust and grim, one has to addis profoundly significant of the type of the subconscient dynamic in the nation: it strangely reminds one of the state organised by the bee, the ant or the termite. Hitler has only precipitated the idea, given it a concrete, physical and dynamic form. That Philosophy in its outlook has been culturally anti-Latin, religiously anti-Christian. Germany cherishes always in her heart the memory of the day when her hero Arminius routed the Roman legions of Varus. Germany stands for a mode of human consciousness that is not in line with the major current of its evolutionary growth: she harks back to something primeval, infra-rational, infra-human.
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Some passion and power and acrid point of life.
A new Philosophy theorised evil's rights,
Gloried in the shimmering rot of decadence,
02.14 - Appendix, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo has said that Vyasa is the most masculine of poets. Echoing his words we may say that Wordsworth is the most masculine of English poets. This classification of poets into "masculine" and "feminine" was made by the poet Coleridge. "Masculine" means in the first place, shorn of ornament, whereas the "feminine" loves ornament. Secondly, the masculine has intellectuality and the feminine emotionalism. Then again, femininity is sweetness and charm, masculinity implies hard restraint; the feminine has movement, like the flow of a stream, the play of melody, while the masculine has immobility, like the stillness of sculpture, the stability of a rock. This is the difference between the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, between the styles of Vyasa and Valmiki. This too is the difference between Wordsworth and Shelley. The Ramayana has always been recognised for its poetic beauty; Valmiki is our first great poet, di-kavi. In the Mahabharata we appreciate not so much the beauty of poetic form as a treasury of knowledge, on polity and ethics, culture and spirituality. We consider the Gita primarily as a work of Philosophy, not of poetry. In the same way, Wordsworth has not been able to capture the mind and heart of India or Bengal as Shelley has done. In order truly to appreciate Wordsworth's poetry, one must be something of a meditative ascetic,dhyn, tapasv indeed,
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the cry is for greater human values. Man needs food and shelter, goes without saying, but he yearns for other things also, air and light: he needs freedom, he needs culturehigher thoughts, finer emotions, nobler urges the field and expression of personal worth. The acquisition of knowledge, the creation of beauty, the pursuit of Philosophy, art, literature, and science in their pure forms and for their own sake are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility must be free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all men should have work and wages, it is not sufficient that I all should have learnt the three R's, it is not sufficient that they should understand their rightssocial, political, economic and claim and vindicate them. Nor is it sufficient for men to r become merely useful or indispensablealthough happy and I contentedmembers of a collective body. The individual must be free, free in his creative joy to bring out and formulate, in thought, in speech, in action, in all the modes of expression, the truth, the beauty, the good he experiences within. An all-round culture, a well-developed mind, a well-organised life, a well-formed body, a harmonious working of all the members of the system at a high level of consciousness that is man's need, for there lies his self-fulfilment. That is the ideal of Humanismwhich the ancient Grco-Roman culture worshipped, which was again revived by the Renaissance and which once again became a fresh and living force after the great Revolution and is still the high light to which Science and modern knowledge turns.
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Appendix The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineHumanism and Humanism
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But first of all we must know what exactly is meant by humanism. It is, of course, not a doctrine or dogma; it is an attitude, an outlook the attitude, the outlook that views and weighs the worth of man as man. The essential formula was succinctly given by the Latin poet when he said that nothing human he considered foreign to him.2 It is the characteristic of humanism to be interested in man as man and in all things that interest man as man. To this however an important corollary is to be added, that it does not concern itself with things that do not concern man's humanity. The original father of humanism was perhaps Socrates whose mission it was, as he said, to bring down Philosophy from heaven to live among men. More precisely, the genesis should be ascribed rather to the Aristotelian tradition of Socratic teaching.
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Appendix The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
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
object:03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Humanism and Humanism A Stainless Steel Frame
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and Divine The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
I wonder why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that Philosophy is divine and charming:
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In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of Philosophyperhaps the very large element of Philosophy that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of au thentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the question. I am not trying to enter into the Philosophy the metaphysicsof it, but only into the science the physicsof it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly formkavi kavitva divi rpam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the philosopher? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher's taskit is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a my as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to doand nothing lessthan to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things the two terms used by Philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.
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But the philosopher's stone is not, after all, a myth, as is being proved by modern science. Even so, the philosopher's truth the truth, that is to say, in the noumenal sense, to which he aspires in his heart of heartsis also existent. There is a reality apart from and beyond all relativities and contingencies: truth is not mere self-consistence, it is self-existence. Art and Philosophy as an art may not comprehend it, but they circuit round it and even have glimpses of it and touch it, though the vision they have more often aberrates, distorting a rope into a snake.
It is a grain of this truth that is the substance and the core of all true art and Philosophy. Philosophy works upon this secret strand by its logic, art by imaginationalthough logic and imagination may not be so incommensurable as they are commonly thought to be; even so, both art and Philosophy arrive at the same result, viz., the building of a beautiful superstructure.
This golden core of truth comes from elsewhereit is beyond the myic circle of art and Philosophy. To have access to it, a lid overhead is to be broken throughra ther, as it is said, it is that that breaks through of its own accord and reveals its identity.
03.03 - A Stainless Steel Frame, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineA Stainless Steel Frame
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The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But first of all we must know what exactly is meant by humanism. It is, of course, not a doctrine or dogma; it is an attitude, an outlook the attitude, the outlook that views and weighs the worth of man as man. The essential formula was succinctly given by the Latin poet when he said that nothing human he considered foreign to him. It is the characteristic of humanism to be interested in man as man and in all things that interest man as man. To this, however, an important corollary is to be added, that it does not concern itself with things that do not concern man's humanity. The original father of humanism was perhaps the father of European culture itself, Socrates, whose mission it was, as he said, to bring down Philosophy from heaven to live among men. More precisely the genesis should be ascribed to the Aristotelian tradition of Socratic teaching.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Turning to India we find a fuller and completerif not a globalpicture of the whole movement. India, we may say, is the spiritual world itself: and she epitomised the curve of human progress in a clearer and more significant manner. Indian history, not its political but its cultural and spiritual history, divides itself naturally into great movements with corresponding epochs each dwelling upon and dealing with one domain in the hierarchy of man's consciousness. The stages and epochs are well known: they are(l) Vedic, (2) Upanishadic, (3) Darshanasroughly from Buddha to Shankara, (4) Puranic, (5) Bhagavataor the Age of Bhakti, and finally (6) the Tantric. The last does not mean that it is the latest revelation, the nearest to us in time, but that it represents a kind of complementary movement, it was there all along, for long at least, and in which the others find their fruition and consummation. We shall explain presently. The force of consciousness that came and moved and moulded the first and the earliest epoch was Revelation. It was a power of direct vision and occult will and cosmic perception. Its physical seat is somewhere behind and or just beyond the crown of the head: the peak of man's manifest being that received the first touch of Surya Savitri (the supreme Creative Consciousness) to whom it bowed down uttering the invocation mantra of Gayatri. The Ray then entered the head at the crown and illumined it: the force of consciousness that ruled there is Intuition, the immediate perception of truth and reality, the cosmic consciousness gathered and concentrated at that peak. That is Upanishadic knowledge. If the source and foundation of the Vedic initiation was occult vision, the Upanishad meant a pure and direct Ideation. The next stage in the coming down or propagation of the Light was when it reached further down into the brain and the philosophical outlook grew with rational understanding and discursive argumentation as the channel for expression, the power to be cultivated and the limb to be developed. The Age of the Darshanas or Systems of Philosophy started with the Buddha and continued till it reached its peak in Shankaracharya. The age sought to give a bright and strong mental, even an intellectual body to the spiritual light, the consciousness of the highest truth and reality. In the Puranic Age the vital being was touched by the light of the spirit and principally on the highest, the mental level of that domain. It meant the advent of the element of feeling and emotiveness and imagination into the play of the Light, the beginning of their reclamation. This was rendered more concrete and more vibrant and intense in the next stage of the movement. The whole emotional being was taken up into the travailing crucible of consciousness. We may name it also as the age of the Bhagavatas, god-lovers, Bhaktas. It reached its climax in Chaitanya whose physical passion for God denoted that the lower ranges of the vital being (its physical foundations) were now stirred in man to awake and to receive the Light. Finally remains the physical, the most material to be worked upon and made conscious and illumined. That was the task of the Tantras. Viewed in that light one can easily understand why especial stress was laid in that system upon the esoteric discipline of the five m's (pancha makra),all preoccupied with the handling and harnessing of the grossest physical instincts and the most material instruments. The Tantric discipline bases itself upon Nature Power coiled up in Matter: the release of that all-conquering force through a purification and opening into the consciousness of the Divine Mother, the transcendent creatrix of the universe. The dynamic materialising aspect of consciousness was what inspired the Tantras: the others forming the Vedantic line, on the whole, were based on the primacy of the static being, the Purusha, aloof and withdrawing.
04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mind of Reason is a kind of steel-frame for other movements of consciousness pure ideas, imaginations or instinctive and sensory notions, or even secret intimations and visions of deeper truths and greater realitiesto take body, to find a local habitation and name and be firmly stabilised for experience or utilisation in physical life. There was indeed a hiatus in the human consciousness of the earlier period. Take, for example, the earliest human civilisation at its best, of which we have historical record, the Vedic culture of India: human consciousness is here at its optimum, its depth and height is a thing of wonder. But between that world, an almost occult world and this world of the physical senses there is a gap. That world was occult precisely because of this gap. The physical life and mind could translate and represent the supra-physical only in figures and symbols; the impact was direct, but it expressed itself in hieroglyphs. Life itself was more or less a life of rites and ceremonies, and mind a field of metaphors and legends and parables. The parable, the myth was an inevitability with this type of consciousness and in such a world. The language spoken was also one of images and figures, expressing ideas and perceptions not in the abstract but as concrete objects, represented through concrete objects. It is the Mind of Reason that brought in the age of Philosophy, the age of pure and abstract ideas, of the analytic language. A significant point to note is that it was in the Greek language that the pre-position, the backbone almost of the analytical language, started to have an independent and autonomous status. With the Greeks dawned the spirit of Science.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it went through to establish and confirm itself. The ancient civilisations represented this character of the human spirit. The subject freeing itself more and more from its environmental tegument, still living and moving within it and dynamically reacting upon itthis was the character we speak of. Next came the period when the free and dynamic subject feeling itself no more tied down to its natural objective sphere sought lines of development and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in Philosophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural sciencea period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The Scientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and co-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness and the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a greater enrichment on one side the subjective consciousness and on the other, the objective environment, a corresponding change and effective reorganisation.
The present age which ushers a fourth stagesignificantly called turiya or the transcendent, in Indian terminologyis pregnant with a fateful crisis. The stage of self-consciousness to which scientific development has arrived seems to land in a cul-de-sac, a blind alley: Science also is faced, almost helplessly, with the antinomies of reason that Kant discovered long ago in the domain of speculative Philosophy. The way out, for a further growth and development and evolution, lies in a supersession of the self-consciousness, an elevation into a super-consciousnessas already envisaged by Yogis and Mystics everywherewhich will give a new potential and harmony to the human consciousness.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is the view, an old-world view, of eternal recurrence. That is to say, creation is ever the same; it goes through a cycle of changes, but the cycles repeat ad infinitum. There is no progress, no forward movement towards a more and more perfection. Indeed, the cycle of creation is a closed circle. The idea of progress was very much in vogue at one time. It was born under the auspices of Romantic Idealism; it was fostered and streng thened by youthful, Science in the first enthusiasm of her early discoveries, especially that of the fact of biological evolution. There has, however, been a setback since, when it was found that the original picture of evolution the emergence and growth of species in the course of a few thousand years is far from being true, that evolution means not thousands but millions of years. And when archaeologists discovered that men could build hygienic cities, run democratic states, discuss and argue acutely on recondite problems of life and Philosophy, women knew the use of ornaments and jewels of consummate beauty and craftsmanship in epochs when they were expected to be no more than wild denizens of the cave or the forest, the belief in human progress, at least along a steady straight line, was very much shaken.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Immortal Person Physics or Philosophy
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Quest and the Goal In Quest of Reality
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The Immortal Person Physics or Philosophy
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:05.06 - Physics or Philosophy
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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In Quest of Reality The Observer and the Observed
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Quest and the GoalPhysics or Philosophy
Physics or Philosophy
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Physical Science in the nineteenth century did indeed develop or presuppose a Philosophy of its own; it had, that is to say, a definite outlook on the fundamental quality of things and the nature of the universe. Those were days of its youthful self-confidence and unbending assurance. The view was, as is well-known, materialistic and deterministic. That is to say, all observation and experiment, according to it, demonstrated and posited:
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Physics and Philosophy, by Sir James Jeans.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Physics or Philosophy An Age of Revolution
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Quest and the GoalThe Observer and the Observed
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Science means objectivity, that is to say, elimination of the personal elementtruth as pure fact without being distorted or coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the observer. It is the very opposite of the philosopher's standpoint who says that a thing exists because (and so long as) it is perceived. The scientist swears that a thing exists whether you perceive it or not, perception is possible because it exists, not the other way. And yet Descartes is considered not only as the father of modern Philosophy, but also as the founder o( modern mathematical science. But more of that anon. The scientific observer observes as a witness impartial and aloof: he is nothing more than a recording machine, a sort of passive mirror reflecting accurately and faithfully what is presented to it. This is indeed the great revolution brought about by Science in the world of human inquiry and in human consciousness, viz.,the isolation of the observer from the observed.
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Is it then to say that science is no longer science, it has now been converted into Philosophy, even into idealistic Philosophy? In spite of Russell and Eddington who may be considered in this respect as counsellors of despair, the objective reality of the scientific field stands, it is asserted, although somewhat changed.
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Physics or Philosophy An Age of Revolution