TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
Adam-Adammi (Hebrew) ’Ādām ’Adāmī [’ādam mankind + ’adāmī fortress] Used by Chwolsohn in his Nabathean Agriculture and regarded by Blavatsky as “a generic compound name as old as languages are” (SD 2:452). Adam-Adami, like Adam, was not a man but a race, specifically the “dark Race” which was “the first to fall into generation” in contradistinction with Sarku, or the light Race, which remained pure much longer (SD 2:5). “Adam-Adami is a personation of the dual Adam: of the paradigmic Adam-Kadmon, the creator, and of the lower Adam, the terrestrial . . .” (SD 2:456). See also ADAM; ’ADAM QADMON.
Adikrit or Adikartri (Sanskrit) Ādikṛt, Ādikartṛ [from ādi first + kṛt doing (kartṛ doer, author, producer) from the verbal root kṛ to do, make, accomplish] The first produced or evolved, synonymous with adikara. In Hindu mythology, the creator; in the Puranas, the personified aspect of the formative or cosmically generative force, which in its root is eternal but periodic in its manifestations. During periods of manifestation adikrit is personified as Vishnu or Brahma (VP 6:4); during periods of rest it is represented as sleeping upon the ocean of space in the form of Vishnu. The term applies to any universe or hierarchy, great or small, whether a cluster of galaxies, a solar system, a planet, or a human being.
Again “beginning with Cain, the first murderer, every fifth man in his line of descent is a murderer. . . . In the Talmud this genealogy is given complete, and thirteen murderers range themselves in line below the name of Cain. This is no coincidence. Siva is the Destroyer, but he is also the Regenerator. Cain is a murderer, but he is also the creator of nations, and an inventor” (IU 2:447-8).
Ahura-Mazda (Avestan) Aura-Mazda (Old Persian) Auhr-Mazd (Pahlavi) Hormazd, Hormoz, Ormazd, Ormuzd (Persian) [from Avestan ahura lord of life from the verbal root ahu conscious life + mazda the creator of mind, remembering, bearing in mind from the verbal root man to think + da the creator, bestower; cf Pahlavi dehesh creation] The lord of life and creator of mind; the immutable light, the uncreated supreme deity of the Mazdean system. Porphyry writes that Pythagoras taught that the Iranian Magis consider Ahura-Mazda a being whose body is of light and his soul is of truth. He is referred to as the maker of the material world and father of the six Amesha-Spentas. In later Persian literature similar descriptions of the supreme creator have been given. Ferdowsi refers to him as the lord of jan (consciousness) and kherad (intellect).
ahura-mazda ::: 'Lord Wisdom', Wise Lord. The supreme God in the ancient Persian monotheistic religious system taught by Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) sometime around 1000 BC. Ahura Mazda is said to be the beginning and the end, the creator of everything which can and cannot be seen, the Eternal, the Pure and the only Truth. Also referred to as Ormuzd. (see also ahriman) (the Farsi term yazdān also refers to God)
Al-Khafid ::: The One who abases. The One who capacitates a state of existence which is far from reality. The creator of the ‘asfali safileen’ (the lower state of existence). The former of the vision of ‘multiplicity’ to conceal the reality.
Al-Matin ::: The One who sustains the world of acts, the steadfast, the creator of robustness and stability, the provider of strength and resistance!
Al-Muhsi ::: The creator of the ‘forms’ (micro to macro) comprising the seeming multiplicities, each equipped with unique qualities and attributes, within UNITY.
Also “the name given by the Peruvians to the Creator of the universe, represented as a host of creators. On his altar only the first fruits and flowers were laid by the pious” (TG 245).
Al-Wadud ::: The creator of attraction. The creator of unconditional and unrequited love. The essence within every beloved!
A Platonic deity who orders or fashions the material world out of chaos. 2. (in Gnostic and some other philosophies) The creator of the universe, supernatural but subordinate to the Supreme Being. Demiurges.
Architects [from Greek architektones master-builders] Among groups of the creators such as the cosmocratores, demiourgoi, and dhyani-chohans, architect applies to the designers, those possessing and using the ideational faculties, and the term builder applies to the workmen or those who execute the general design. “The architects form the higher or more spiritual side, and actually form the line of the luminous arc; and the builders or constructors form, on the other hand, the shadowy arc” (Fund 507-8). The architects are the dhyani-buddhas, the principle creators, the elohim, synthesized by demiourgus; they follow the plan of the inherent divine thought.
archon ::: ArchonLiterally 'Ruler'. Refers to the creators and governing forces in the material world, e.g. the Demiurge (a craftsman - the grand original intelligence who acted to produce the real world) and his angels.
Archon; "Ruler". Refers to the creators and governing forces in the material world. The Demiurge and his angels.
argumentative ::: a. --> Consisting of, or characterized by, argument; containing a process of reasoning; as, an argumentative discourse.
Adductive as proof; indicative; as, the adaptation of things to their uses is argumentative of infinite wisdom in the Creator.
Given to argument; characterized by argument; disputatious; as, an argumentative writer.
"As for Vishnu being the creator, all the three gods are often spoken of as creating the universe — even Shiva who is by tradition the Destroyer.” Letters on Yoga
“As for Vishnu being the creator, all the three gods are often spoken of as creating the universe—even Shiva who is by tradition the Destroyer.” Letters on Yoga
Atmu, Atum (Egyptian) Ȧtmu, Ȧtum [from tem to make an end of, complete] Also Tem, Tum, Temu. A form of the sun god, represented as bringing the day to its close, thus associated with the evening sun — whether of our ordinary day, or of the ending of a manvantara. “I am the god Tem, the maker of the sky, the creator of things which are, who cometh forth from the earth, who made the seed of man to come into being, the Lord of things, who fashioned the gods, the Great Gods, who created himself, the Lord of Life, who made to flourish the Two Companies of the Gods. . . . My coming is like unto that god who eateth men, and who feedeth upon the gods” (Egyptian Book of the Dead, Budge 258-60).
Bhaga Savitr (Bhaga Savitri) ::: [Savitr, the Creator, as Bhaga, the Enjoyer].
Bhakti yoga: The Yoga of love, the quest of union with the Divine Spirit through the bhakti-marga, the harmonization of the love nature of man with his prescribed destiny, which is to manifest, in all its purity, the Divine Love of the Creator under its three-fold aspect of life-giver, preserver and upholder. Man is conceived as ultimately reaching the divine union of mystic love by uniting his love nature with that portion of the divine aspect of love and cohesion which is giving him life. The three degrees of Bhakti Yoga are: Bhaya bhakti, ananaya bhakti, and yekanta bhakti (q.v.).
brahma. ::: God as the creator; one of the hindu trinity
Brahma: In Hindu mythology and occult philosophy, the Creator, as one of the three aspects of Ishwara, the Personal God. (Often written Brahmâ, to distinguish the word from Brahma as an alternative form of Brahman—q.v.).
brahmaloka. (T. tshangs pa'i 'jig rten; C. fanjie; J. bonkai; K. pomgye 梵界). In Sanskrit and PAli, the "BRAHMA worlds." In its narrowest sense, brahmaloka refers to the first three heavens of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU), whose denizens live perpetually immersed in the bliss of the first meditative absorption (DHYANA; P. jhAna): BRAHMAKAYIKA (heaven of BrahmA's followers), BRAHMAPUROHITA (heaven of BrahmA's vassals), and MAHABRAHMA (heaven of BrahmA himself). The ruler of these three heavens is named either BrahmA or MahAbrahmA, and he mistakenly believes that he is the creator of the universe. In a more general sense, the brahmaloka can also refer collectively to all the heavens of both the realm of subtle materiality and the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU). The two realms are divided into twenty heavens, the top four of which comprise the immaterial realm. Denizens of the immaterial realm have no physical dimension but are entirely mental and are perpetually immersed in one of the four immaterial absorptions (ARuPYAVACARADHYANA). The realm of subtle materiality is divided into sixteen heavens, the top five of which are called the "pure abodes" (sUDDHAVASA), where nonreturners (ANAGAMIN) are reborn. When the time is right, inhabitants of the pure abodes descend to earth in the guise of brAhmanas to leave portents of the advent of future buddhas so that they can be recognized when they appear in the human realm. One heaven in the realm of subtle materiality is reserved for unconscious beings (S. asaMjNisattva; P. asaNNasatta) who pass their entire lives (which can last eons) in dreamless sleep, only to die the moment they awaken. As with the immaterial realm, the realm of subtle materiality is also divided into four broad strata that correspond to the four form-based meditative absorptions (RuPAVACARADHYANA) and the denizens of these strata perpetually experience the bliss of the corresponding dhyAna. Regardless of the particular heaven they occupy, all inhabitants of the brahmaloka are all classified as BrahmA gods and live in splendor that far exceeds that of the divinities in the lower sensuous realm of existence (KAMADHATU).
Brahmanaspati ::: the lord of the divine word (brahman); the Creator (by the word).
brahma ::: n. --> The One First Cause; also, one of the triad of Hindoo gods. The triad consists of Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer.
A valuable variety of large, domestic fowl, peculiar in having the comb divided lengthwise into three parts, and the legs well feathered. There are two breeds, the dark or penciled, and the light; -- called also Brahmapootra.
Brahma (Sanskrit) Brahmā [from the verbal root bṛh to expand, grow, fructify] The first god of the Hindu Trimurti or triad, consisting of Brahma, the emanator, evolver, and creator; Vishnu, the sustainer or preserver; and Siva, the regenerator or destroyer. Brahma is the vivifying expansive force of nature in its eternally periodic manvantaras. He stands for the spiritual evolving or developing energy-consciousness of a solar system which is also called the Egg of Brahma (brahmanda). Brahma is called the creator or Logos, but in the theosophic philosophy creator is simply an abstract term or idea, like army. In Burnouf’s words:
Brahma: (Skr.) The creator or creative principle of the universe, main figure of the Hindu trinity (see Trimurti). -- K.F.L.
Brahma ::: the Creator, one of the "three Powers and Personalities of Brahma the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Vis.n.u, the Preserver, and Śiva or Rudra2, the Destroyer.
brahma ::: the personal creator; one the triad of personal gods (Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Maintainer, Shiva the Destroyer).
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Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, who helped popularize Greek philosophy in Roman thought and create a philosophical language in Latin. Famous for the style of his speeches, letters, and essays, he is credited as the creator of classical Latin prose. A firm republican, he was executed for opposing the imperial factions after Caesar’s murder.
Demiurge: Greek (demiurgos) for worker for the people—an old Greek term for craftsman. In Platonic philosophy, the term was applied to the Creator of the World, and the Gnostics used it in this sense to designate the inferior deity, creator of the evil world of matter.
Demiurge ::: (Greek. “maker”). A philosophical concept found in Platonic philosophy used to designate the divine agency by which the physical world came into existence. The idea was taken over in Christian gnosticism to distinguish the creator of the physical world (often seen as evil) from the superior/good God who is completely unconnected with matter.
demiurges ::: 1. A Platonic deity who orders or fashions the material world out of chaos. 2. (in Gnostic and some other philosophies) The creator of the universe, supernatural but subordinate to the Supreme Being. ::: Demiurges.
Demiurge; The "Craftsman" or creator of the material world. Usually viewed in a negative fashion. If nothing else, the material is less than the spirit so that the creator is lower than the prime source.
dīn ::: creed, belief, religion. It is said that there is only one dīn; that which is the natural, intended, proper manner of life, acting in harmony with the will of the Creator and thereby in harmony with all of creation. The classical Arabic root d-y-n signifies that which is obedient, abased, submissive; doing service for; acting well towards; and also signifies receiving a loan, being indebted, repaying a debt. Thus dīn signifies repaying our debt to our Creator through humble submission and loving service. To do so, it is a common Sufi practice to strive to be like a perfect mirror, reflecting all of the magnificence and glory back to the Beloved and into this world, illuminating any darkness. Hazrat 'Ali said 'The love of the wise is a religion (dīn) with which Allah is served.'
“Each Cosmic Monad is ‘Swayambhuva,’ the self-born, which becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a planetary chain (of which chains there are seven in our system), and whose radiations become again so many Manus Swayambhuva (a generic name, mysterious and meaning far more than appears), each of these becoming, as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity” (SD 2:311). Thus svayambhu means the primordial or self-evolving monad of a celestial entity, whether solar system or an individual body such as a planetary chain.
Fire is spoken of as the Primary in the Stanzas of Dzyan: “The Spirit, beyond manifested Nature, is the fiery breath in its absolute Unity. In the manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery Spirit thereof — air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire; Earth, solid fire. All is fire — ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in nature and its mind. Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver. The primitive names of the gods are all connected with fire, from Agni, the Aryan, to the Jewish god who ‘is a consuming fire’ ” (ibid.).
footprint ::: n. --> The impression of the foot; a trace or footmark; as, "Footprints of the Creator."
gnosticism ::: Gnosticism This was an early form of Christian heresy, and a related Pagan faith that believed the creation of matter was flawed, and the Creator, therefore, was an evil force. In Gnosticism, Jesus is equated to the serpent of the Garden of Eden, and one of the Archons.
gods "the necessary static elements, ::: Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending levels, the highest goal"; in later Hinduism, the Preserver of the world, one of the "three Powers and Personalities . of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Śiva or Rudra2, the Destroyer; also regarded as the Lord himself (isvara) who incarnates in the avataras, and the one deva of whom all the gods are manifestations; in the Record of Yoga, usually a subordinate aspect of Kr.s.n.a, sometimes identified with Pradyumna as the personality of the fourfold isvara whose sakti is Mahalaks.mi.Vis Visnu-Narayana
“He is the Second ‘Life’ of the second or manifested trinity ‘the heavenly life and light, and older than the architect of heaven and earth’ (Cod. Naz., Vol. I, p. 145). These trinities are as follows. The Supreme Lord of splendour and of light, luminous and refulgent, before which no other existed, is called Corona (the crown); Lord Ferho, the unrevealed life which existed in the former from eternity; and Lord Jordan — the spirit, the living water of grace (Ibid. II., pp. 45-51). He is the one through whom alone we can be saved. These three constitute the trinity in abscondito. The second trinity is composed of the three lives. The first is the similitude of Lord Ferho, through whom he has proceeded forth; and the second Ferho is the King of Light — Mano. The second life is Ish Amon (Pleroma), the vase of election, containing the visible thought of the Jordanus Maximus — the type (or its intelligible reflection), the prototype of the living water, who is the ‘spiritual Jordan.’ (Ibid. II., p. 211) The third life, which is produced by the other two, is Abatur (Ab, the Parent or Father). This is the mysterious and decrepit ‘Aged of the Aged,’ the Ancient ‘Senem sui obtegentem et grandaevum mundi.’ This latter third Life is the Father of the Demiurge Fetahil, the Creator of the world, whom the Ophites call Ilda-Baoth . . . though Fetahil is the only-begotten one, the reflection of the Father, Abatur, who begets him by looking into the ‘dark water.’ Sophia Achamoth also begets her Son Ilda-Baoth the Demiurge, by looking into the chaos of matter. But the Lord Mano, ‘the Lord of loftiness, the Lord of all genii,’ is higher than the Father, in this kabalistic Codex — one is purely spiritual, the other material. So, for instance, while Abatur’s ‘only-begotten’ one is the genius Fetahil, the Creator of the physical world, Lord Mano, the ‘Lord of Celsitude,’ who is the son of Him, who is ‘the Father of all who preach the Gospel,’ produces also an ‘only-begotten’ one, the Lord Lehdaio, ‘a just Lord.’ He is the Christos, the anointed, who pours out the ‘grace’ of the Invisible Jordan, the Spirit of the Highest Crown . . .” (TG 204-5).
Hiranyagarbha (Sanskrit) Hiraṇyagarbha [from hiraṇya imperishable substance, golden + garbha womb, embryo, fetus, also the interior of anything, hence a temple] Golden egg or womb; the matrix of imperishable substance. “The luminous ‘fire mist’ or ethereal stuff from which the Universe was formed” (TG 142); applied to Brahma, described in the Rig-Veda as born from a golden egg formed out of the seed deposited in the waters when they were produced as the first vikaras of the Self-existent; according to Manu (1:9) this seed became a golden egg, resplendent as the sun, in which the self-existent Brahman while remaining transcendent in its higher parts, evolved into Brahma the Creator, who is therefore regarded as a manifestation of the Self-existent. Having continued a year in the egg, Brahma divided it into two parts by his mere thought, and with these two he formed the heavens and the earth; and in the middle he placed the sky, the eight regions, and the eternal abode of the waters.
Iadalbaoth as one of the 7, or as the creator of the
Ialdabaoth’s mother, Sophia Achamoth (wisdom of the lower four of the cosmic planes) is the daughter or manifested reflection of the Heavenly Sophia — divine wisdom, or the mahat-side of akasa. Therefore Ialdabaoth is equivalent to the Nazarene Demiourgos of the Codex Nazaraeus, which makes him identical with the Hebrew Jehovah, the creator of the physical earth and the material side of the rector of the planet Saturn. He is also identical with Tsebaoth-Adamas, “the Pthahil of the Codex Nazaraeus, the Demiurge of the Valentinian system, the Proarchose of the Barbelitae, the Great Archon of Basilides and the Elohim of Justinus, etc. Ialdabaoth (the Child of Chaos) was . . . the Chief of the Creative Forces and the representative of one of the classes of Pitris” (BCW 13:43n). In the Ophite scheme he is the first of the superior septenate.
(In later Hinduism) “The Preserver.” The second member of the Trimurti, along with Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer. 2. (In popular Hinduism) a deity believed to have descended from heaven to earth in several incarnations, or avatars, varying in number from nine to twenty-two, but always including animals. His most important human incarnation is the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita. 3. “The Pervader,” one of a half-dozen solar deities in the Rig-Veda, daily traversing the sky in three strides, morning, afternoon, and night.
In later mythology Surya is particularly identified with Savitri as one of the twelve adityas of the sun in the twelve months of the year, and his seven-horsed chariot is described as driven by Aruna (dawn). Surya was represented also as the husband of Sanjna (spiritual consciousness, cosmic or human), and the offspring of Aditi (space), mother of all the gods. One legend represents Surya as crucified on a lathe by Visvakarman — his father-in-law, the creator of gods and men, and their carpenter — and having an eighth part of his rays cut off, which deprives his head of its effulgency, creating round it a dark aureole — “a mystery of the last initiation, and an allegorical representation of it” (TG 313).
In patristic and scholastic Christianity: the creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).
In the Vedas, where neither Brahma nor Siva is known under these names, the trinity usually consists of Agni (fire), Vayu (air), and Surya (sun), the originants of the terrestrial, atmospheric, and heavenly fire respectively. The Padma-Purana states that in the beginning the great Vishnu desiring to produce the whole world, became threefold, in himself the creator, preserver, and destroyer. In order to produce the world, the supreme spirit emanated from the right side of his body, himself, as Brahma; then, to preserve the universe, he produced from the left side of his body, Vishnu; and to destroy the world he produced from the middle of his body the eternal Siva.
is compared with the Creator, he is identified as
Ishwara: Sanskrit for independent being. The personalized God, first stage in the manifestation of Brahman. Ishwara manifests himself in three aspects: Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Shiva, the Destroyer.
Jhumur: “The creative force, the poet, the creator. It is the bird of eternity.”
Kelim (Hebrew) Kēlīm Vessels, utensils; in space the Qabbalists depicted a great source or fountain of life, which becomes the beginning of a number of cosmic vases or vessels — the kelim — which are the ten Sephiroth; through which all the energies, forms, and innumerable manifested objects come into being. This source of lives, the Crown or Kether, corresponds to the productive or generative Brahma, which just before the beginning of manvantaric manifestation was nonmanifest in the bosom of its higher essence, Brahman or parabrahman. When Brahma awakens to new activity and thus becomes what Western religion and philosophy call the Creator, the cosmic demiurge or former, then the various vessels or vases spring into being, and flow forth from Brahma, the Father-Mother. Being termed vessels simply signifies that the cosmic Sephiroth are the holders or containers of all the powers, faculties, forces, attributes, etc., which bring about the building of the manifested universe, enshrining as the Sephiroth do the unfolding of the energies of the Divine in the latter’s activity during manifestation.
Kutastha: Absolutely changeless; He who is found without exception in all creatures from Brahma or the creator down to ants and Who is shining as the Self and dwells as witness to the intellect of all creatures, rock-seated, unchanging; another name for Brahman.
Limbs The Qabbalah speaks of the limbs of Microprosopus, of ’Adam Qadmon (the Heavenly Man), and of the Sephiroth. In Hindu writings, especially the Puranas, the beings created from the limbs of Brahma remain without progeny, whereas his mind-born sons become the creators. In Egyptian mythology Osiris-Ptah or Ra creates his own limbs by creating the gods destined to personify his phases.
Madhav: “A Demiurge is a secondary creator. If God is the creator, then he has many assistants, the various gods; they are the Demiurges.” The Book of the Divine Mother
mahābrahmā. (T. Tshang pa chen po; C. Dafan tian; J. Daibonten; K. Taebom ch'on 大梵天). In Sanskrit and Pāli, the "great BRAHMĀ"; the highest of the three heavens that constitute the first absorption (DHYĀNA) of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHĀTU) in the Buddhist cosmological system. The term often appears in plural, as mahābrahmānaḥ (P. mahābrahmāno), suggesting that this heaven is not the domain of a single brahmā, of whom the divinities of the two lower heavens are his subjects and ministers, but rather that a number of mahābrahmā gods inhabit this heaven. However, it is typically a single Brahmā, often called Brahmā SAHĀMPATI, who appears in the sutras. In the BRAHMAJĀLASUTTA, the false belief in a creator god derives from the fact that the first mahābrahmā divinity to be reborn in this heaven at the beginning of world cycle falsely imagined himself to be the creator of the beings who were reborn after him in the brahmā heavens, with those beings in turn believing his claim and professing it on earth after they were reborn as humans. As with all the heavens of the realm of subtle materiality, one is reborn as a divinity there through achieving the same level of concentration (dhyāna) as the gods of that heaven during one's practice of meditation in a previous lifetime. See also BRAHMALOKA.
maker ::: n. --> One who makes, forms, or molds; a manufacturer; specifically, the Creator.
The person who makes a promissory note.
One who writes verses; a poet.
marcionite ::: n. --> A follower of Marcion, a Gnostic of the second century, who adopted the Oriental notion of the two conflicting principles, and imagined that between them there existed a third power, neither wholly good nor evil, the Creator of the world and of man, and the God of the Jewish dispensation.
Mirku (Chaldean) Noble crown; the savior from death of the gods, regarded as the creator of the Dark Race (Zalmat-qaqadi). The class of intelligent beings in the universe who through evolution bring about progressive unfolding growth from within outwards of all beings and entities, who thus are at one stage of their evolution the Dark Race, because sunken in matter, but are saved by the germs of intelligence expanding into cosmic realization within themselves. Hence the describing of intellect or intelligence as noble crown.
Monadology: (also Monadism) The doctrine of monads, the theory that the universe is a composite of elementary units. A monad may also be a metaphysical unit. The notion of monad can be found in Pythagoras, Ecphantus, Aristotle, Euclid, Augustine, et al. Plato refers to his ideas as monads. Nicolaus Cusanus regards individual things as units which mirror the world. Giordano Bruno seems to have been the first to have used the term in its modern connotation. God is called monas monadum; each monad, combining matter and form, is both corporeal and spiritual, a microcosm of the whole. But the real founder of monadology is Leibniz. To him, the monads are the real atoms of nature, the elements of things. The monad is a simple substance, completely different from a material atom. It has neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility. Nor is it perishable. Monads begin to exist or cease to exist by a decree of God. They are distinguished from one another in character, they "have no windows" through which anything can enter in or go out, that is, the substance of the monad must be conceived as force, as that which contains in itself the principle of its changes. The universe is the aggregate, the ideal bond of the monads, constituting a harmonious unity, pre-established by God who is the highest in the hierarchy of monads. This bond of all things to each, enables every simple substance to have relations which express all the others, every monad being a perpetual living mirror of the universe. The simple substance or monad, therefore, contains a plurality of modifications and relations even though it has no parts but is unity. The highest monad, God, appears to be hoth the creator and the unified totality and harmony of self-active and self-subsistent monnds. -- J.M.
Monotheism: The belief in only one God, the Creator and ruler of all things in the universe.
mythology, they are the creators of the world.
Nemesis (Greek) [from nemo distribute, allot] Originally a goddess of due proportion, who restores the proper order of things, but later used for the operation of divine wrath, for people who get their desserts tend to impute the wrath they feel to the divine law which allots. Nemesis has been called the retributive aspect of karma, yet in the earlier Greek writers she is the goddess who distributes both happiness and misery. It was only among the later writers that she became specially the punisher of crimes and the corrector of overweening exultation in good fortune. One of her names was Adrasteia, she whom no man can escape. But the idea of reward is, equally with that of punishment, man-made; for “Karma-Nemesis is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a fury or a rewarding Angel: (SD 1:642).
now seated on the right hand of the Creator of
Oahspe: “A new Bible in the Words of Jehovih and His Angel Ambassadors. A Sacred History of the Dominions of the Higher and Lower Heavens on the Earth for the past Twenty-four Thousand Years.” A book published originally by the Essenes of Kosmon, a Fraternity of Faithists, and currently by Wing Anderson (Kosmon Industries, Los Angeles, Calif.) The preface to the eleventh American edition (copyright 1953 by E. Wing Anderson) states that OAHSPE (pronounced O as in clock, AH as in father, SPE as in Speak) means sky, earth and spirit and is the title of a new bible given to the world in the year 1881; it goes on to say that the book was written down, under spiritual guidance, by Dr. John B. Newbrough, who was gifted with astonishing extrasensory perception and was actively engaged in psychic research. The preface goes on to say that “OAHSPE purports to have been written at the command of God, who states that He is not the Creator but is simply chief executive officer . . . of our planet earth. He explains who the Creator is and also makes clear the difference between Lord, Lord God, God and the Creator. This strange book informs us that the world entered a new era in the year 1848, how the new era is different from those which preceded it and what changes will come to humanity within the next few years.... OAHSPE is made up of thirty-six books covering the history of the planet, the history of the human race, the history of every major religion, past and present, an analysis of today and a prophecy of tomorrow.”
objecting to the creation of man—a project the Creator had His heart particularly set on and was
Occulte, p. 222; Mathers, The Creator Key of
Odin: One of the Norse triad of deities (the other two were Thor and Freyr); the god of war, the lord of the Valhalla (Hall of the Chosen Dead). Later revered also as the creator of the world and king of all gods.
Of especial interest is the account of the hero’s journey to the regions of the dead (Tuonela), thence to bring back with him the black swan. He is sent thither with but one arrow and his bow; but he is unsuccessful in returning to the upper regions, owing to the fact that he does not know the magic words enabling him to counteract the bite of an adder from the Stream of the Dead. Similar to the Egyptian account in the story of Osiris, there is the plaint of the bereaved mother, the search for her son, and finally the recovery of the body of Lemminkainen, which had been severed into five pieces and cast into the river of death. The mother is unable to restore her son to life, however, even though with divine aid she was able to make the body whole and heal the wounds with balsam obtained by a honeybee (Mehilainen). Finally she instructs the bee how to fly to the greatest deity, Ukko, on the seventh heaven: by way of the moon and the Great Bear. The honeybee makes the flight successfully, returning with the life-giving essence (the balm of the Creator), and the mother brings her son back to life once more.
Our visible sun, though the center of its system, is not the father of the planets but their “co-uterine brother,” one of the “eight sons of Aditi.” It is not the creator of the fohatic forces, but their radiating focus. Nor is it an incandescent and cooling body; it is nature’s great laboratory of intelligently vital and electromagnetic forces for our system. “The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses” (SD 1:541). Physiologically, the sun pulsates life through the solar system, in connection with the 11 and 22 year sunspot phenomena — the solar spots being due to the contraction of the solar heart.
pachacamac ::: n. --> A divinity worshiped by the ancient Peruvians as the creator of the universe.
Pan-entheism: (Gr. pan, all; en, in, theos, god) The term for the view that God interpenetrates everything without cancelling the relative independent existence of the world of entities, moreover, while God is immanent, this immanence is not absolute (as in pantheism), God is more than the world, transcendent, in the sense that though the created is dependent upon the Creator the Creator is not dependent upon the created. God thus is held to be the highest type of Unity, viz., a Unity in Multiplicity. The term is employed to cover a mediating position between pantheism with its extreme immanence and a theism of the type which tends to extreme transcendence- -- V.F.
patent ::: n. 1. A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time. adj. 2. Obvious; plain.
Patriarchs One of the names given to rulers over men and racial periods. Chaldeo-Judaism has presented its gods as patriarchs. In the Qabbalah, the Sephiroth become the creators and afterwards temporal patriarchs, both of time and space. Mankind from the first root-race to the beginning or even middle of the third root-race, is ruled by watchers or guides; after, by patriarchs or demigods, heroes, etc., the names given to these different classes of overseeing entities varying in different countries. But the word patriarch has special reference to the genealogies in Genesis: Adam to Noah, the descendants of Noah’s three sons, the sons of Jacob. Those from Adam to Noah are given in two ways which do not agree; but, as is the case with Indian rishis, they are at times convertible and interchangeable. They represent, among other things, pre-diluvian races and ages; and if Adam be regarded as pertaining to the fifth root-race only, to pre-Adamic races. They are at different times chronological data, symbols of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods, and even of physiological functions when applied to races, as in other symbolic systems of mythological belief. The number for Enoch is 365, which is recognizable; the sons of Jacob stand for the signs of the zodiac. We have here a fragment of the ancient mystery-language with its seven keys; a single name, for instance, standing for a person, a race, or an age, etc. The Sanskrit prajapatis (progenitors) is parallel in one sense, as are the Mazdean Ameshaspentas.
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.
plastic ::: a. --> Having the power to give form or fashion to a mass of matter; as, the plastic hand of the Creator.
Capable of being molded, formed, or modeled, as clay or plaster; -- used also figuratively; as, the plastic mind of a child.
Pertaining or appropriate to, or characteristic of, molding or modeling; produced by, or appearing as if produced by, molding or modeling; -- said of sculpture and the kindred arts, in distinction from painting and the graphic arts.
Prajapati: Progenitor; Creator; a Hindu deity, also called Brahma; the creator; the name given to Brahma’s ten sons who were the first and original ancestors of the human race.
Prajapati, the Creator. “Upon that excellent
QAADA the creator 62
quote :::Deep thinkers in all ages have recognized the three-fold aspect of nature. Teachers have called these three aspects by different names according to their religious terminology, and they gave them an interpretation that suited the time and the place. Tracing back this idea, we find that it already existed among the Hindus in very ancient times; they called it Trimutri, and they personified these three aspects by giving them characters such as Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer, and Mahesh or Shiva the Destroyer or Assimilator.
rather. He is above the Eternal; for He, the Creator of times, is not under the dominion of Time, but above Time.”
Robert T. Morris ::: The creator of the Internet Worm that wreaked havoc on many Internet systems for a day or two.Morris, the son of an NSA spook, did some jail time for releasing the worm. (1995-01-12)
Robert T. Morris The creator of the "{Internet Worm}" that wreaked havoc on many {Internet} systems for a day or two. Morris, the son of an NSA spook, did some jail time for releasing the worm. (1995-01-12)
Rudra2 ::: "the terrible", a Vedic deity who is "the Violent and Merciful, the Mighty One, . . . the armed, wrathful and beneficent Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is wounded and suffers"; (in the plural) gods with the qualities of this deity, "the fierce, impetuous ones", such as the Maruts; in later Hinduism, a name of Śiva as the Destroyer, one of the "three Powers and Personalities of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Vis.n.u, the Preserver; in the Record of Yoga, sometimes identified with the Balarama personality of the fourfold isvara. rudra ananda
saguna brahman. ::: the Absolute with qualities; manifest Brahman; the Absolute conceived as the creator, preserver and destroyer of the universe; the highest attainment which is eternal and undecaying
sagun.a (saguna; sagunam) ::: with qualities; characterised by a percepsaguna tion of the gun.as or "qualities in universal Being" of which all things are the manifestation; brahman in the action of the three gun.as of the lower prakr.ti, self-displayed as "the creator and originator of works in the mutable becoming"; short for sagun.a brahman.
sanju. (J. sanku; K. samgu 三句). In Chinese, "three propositions," a unique set of precepts taught by CHoNGJUNG MUSANG (680-756, alt. 684-762) in the JINGZHONG ZONG lineage of the early CHAN school. Musang sought to summarize the method of practice taught by the founder of Chinese Chan school, BODHIDHARMA, in three propositions, which he described as "no-recollection" (wuyi), which he equated with morality (sĪLA); "no-thought" (WUNIAN), which corresponded to concentration (SAMĀDHI); and "not-forgetting" (mowang), which was the equivalent of wisdom (PRAJNĀ). In other Jingzhong zong texts, Musang's successor BAOTANG WUZHU later claims that he was in fact the creator of these three propositions and makes the explicit connection between them and the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) of mainstream Buddhism. GUIFENG ZONGMI later explains the first proposition, "no-recollection," as not tracing back the past; the second "no-thought," as not yearning for the future; and the third "not-forgetting" as "always conforming to this knowledge without confusion or mistake."
sankarasya ca karta syam upahanyamimah prajah ::: I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures. [Gita 3.24]
Savitr (Savitri) ::: the Creator or Manifester; the creative Sun. Savita [nominative]
Scarab [from Latin scarabaeus cf Greek karabos a beetle, Sanskrit śarabha a locust, Egyptian kheperȧ from kheper to become, come into being anew] The Egyptian symbol of the god Khepera — the urgent spiritual impulse of creation, or regenerative revolving and reimbodiment. In modern times applied to the beetle Scarabaeus sacer or aegyptorum — the sacred scarab. Orientalists generally regard the scarab as the symbol of resurrection because the beetle rolls a ball of dung containing its eggs, which it leaves to be hatched by the sun’s rays. This is said to represent in the small what was believed to take place in the great, that the sun was moving across the heavens holding within itself the germs which in course of stellar time evolve forth and remanifest in the solar cosmos. “Khem, ‘the sower of seed,’ is shown on a stele in a picture of Resurrection after physical death, as the creator and the sower of the grain of corn, which, after corruption, springs up afresh each time into a new ear, on which a scarabaeus beetle is seen poised; and Deveria shows very justly that ‘Ptah is the inert, material form of Osiris, who will become Sokari (the eternal Ego) to be reborn, and afterwards be Harmachus,’ or Horus in his transformation, the risen god. The prayer so often found in the tumular inscriptions, ‘the wish for the resurrection in one’s living soul’ or the Higher Ego, has ever a scarabaeus at the end, standing for the personal soul. The scarabaeus is the most honoured, as the most frequent and familiar, of all Egyptian symbols” (TG 293).
secret wisdom of the Creator. See Clavicula
Shaivism (Shivaism, Sivaism): One of the three great divisions of modern Hinduism (the other two being Vishnuism and Shaktism); the Shaivas identify Shiva—rather than Brahma and Vishnu —with the Supreme Being, and are exclusively devoted to his worship, regarding him as the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe.
Shiva: In Hindu religious doctrines, the Destroyer, one of the three aspects of Ishwara, the triune Personal God (the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Vishnu, the Preserver), the destroyer of the prison in which man’s spirit is held captive. To the devotees of Shiva (see Shaivism), the universe is merely a form assumed by Shiva.
"Silent and therefore formless, changing and therefore impermanent, now dead, now living, equal with Heaven and Earth, moving with the spiritual and the intelligent, disappearing -- where? Suddenly -- whither? . . . -- These were some aspects of the system of Tao of the ancients. Chuang Chow (Chuang Tzu) heard of them and was delighted . . . He had personal communion with the spirit of Heaven and Earth but no sense of pride in his superiority to all things. He did not condemn either right or wrong, so he was at ease with the world . . . Above he roams with the Creator; below he makes friends of those who transcend beginning and end and make no distinctions between life and death . . ." -- W.T.C.
Siva is often spoken of as the patron deity of esotericists, occultists, and ascetics; he is called the Mahayogin (the great ascetic), from whom the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained. Here he is “the howling and terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses, which are ever in the way of the development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of the inner eternal man — mystically . . . Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first die before his body does. ‘To live is to die and to die is to live,’ has been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man” (SD 1:459&n).
śiva ::: the destroyer, assimilator; in whom all things lie; one of the principle Hindu deities (Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer); personification of time.
Skandhas (Sanskrit) Skandha-s Bundles, groups of various attributes forming the compound constitution of the human being. They are the manifested qualities and attributes forming the human being on all six planes of Being, beneath the spiritual monad or atma-buddhi, making up the totality of the subjective and objective person. They have to do with everything that is finite in the human being, and are therefore inapplicable to the relatively eternal and absolute. Every vibration of whatever kind, mental, emotional, or physical, that an individual has undergone or made, is derivative of and from one of the skandhas composing his constitution. Skandhas are the elements of limited existence. The five skandhas of every human being are: rupa (form), the material properties or attributes; vedana (sensations, perceptions); sanjna (consciousness, abstract ideas); sanskara (action), tendencies both physical and mental; vijnana (knowledge), mental and moral predispositions. Two further, unnamed skandhas “are connected with, and productive of Sakkayaditthi, the ‘heresy or delusion of individuality’ and of Attavada ‘the doctrine of Self,’ both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers and intercession”; “The ‘old being’ is the sole parent — father and mother at once — of the ‘new being.’ It is the former who is the creator and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth, than any father in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas you will see what I mean” (ML 111). The human skandhas are the causal activities which by their action and interaction attract the reincarnating ego back to earth-life. The exoteric skandhas have to do with objective man; the esoteric with inner and subjective man.
&
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life’s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine knowledge and the creator of the inner worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sufism ::: process of attaining closeness to the Creator through love, which is attained by purification of the nafs; tasawwuf
Surya Savitr (Surya Savitri) ::: the Creator, the Light which is father of all things. [cf. Surya; Savitr]
Talisman ::: From the Greek "telesma". This often refers to a consecrated charm or object that is intended to aid in manifestation of a result or to produce some sort of effect for the creator or recipient of it. The mojo bag is the type of talisman worked with most on this site whereby a bag is adorned with appropriate sigils of intent and it is stuffed with physical materia intended to bring forth a certain outcome. This frequently follows the Doctrine of Signatures. On this site, generally, an amulet will be an object, natural or manmade, that is worn on the body to manifest a result or to produce some sort of effect while a talisman is thought of as stationary (e.g. on an altar) or is carried on the person (as opposed to worn). Contrasted with Amulet.
taste ::: 1. (primarily MIT) The quality of a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges it contains. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator. See also elegant, flavour.2. Alternative spelling of tayste.[Jargon File]
taste 1. (primarily MIT) The quality of a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and {kluges} it contains. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator. See also {elegant}, {flavour}. 2. Alternative spelling of "{tayste}". [{Jargon File}]
"The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator.” The Life Divine
“The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator.” The Life Divine
the Divine, the Creator.
The inhabitants of these heavens lack olfactory and gustatory sense organs, and thus do not need to consume food, but do possess the other sense organs of sight, hearing, and touch, as well as mentality (MANENDRIYA). According to Buddhist accounts, Mahābrahmā, the inhabitant of the highest of the first dhyāna heavens, presumed himself to be the creator of the world and father of all beings, but after being taught by the Buddha he subsequently realized how arrogant had been his misapprehension; he became the Buddha's follower and protector of his teachings (dharmapāla), along with the four heavenly kings and sakra. The second set of dhyāna heavens, where those who practiced the second meditative absorption in their previous lifetime are reborn, is also comprised of three levels:
the invocant the secret wisdom of the Creator.”
Theodice, Theodicy [coined from Greek theos god + dike justice] A vindication of divine justice; a system or method of intellectual theorizing about the nature of so-called divine justice, having in view vindication of the justice and holiness of God, in connection with evil. Ancient philosophers all taught that the heart of things was divine harmony and that whatever evil, distortion, and obliquity might exist in the world is ultimately traceable back to the imperfect intelligence of evolving beings, who by their manifold conflicts of thought and will thus produce disharmony, relative confusion, and hence evil, in the scheme of things. This view was replaced during Christian ages by the attempt of many writers to rescue the reputation of the Christian God, who on the one hand is said to be the creator of everything and who yet is supposed to be the fountain of love, mercy, harmony, and goodness. In view of the evils and suffering in the world, such Christian attempts have been futile, for it is obvious that if God is the creator of all that is, He must have been either directly or indirectly the creator of all the disharmony, wickedness, and misery in the world, as was indeed alleged by many Jewish rabbis, following statements in the Hebrew scriptures. But this thought has been denied by Christians who refuse to accept their God of love and justice as the creator of evil, and thus they had recourse to the Devil, who himself must have been created by their omniscient God.
The philosophies which recognise Mind alone as the creator of the worlds or accept an original principle with Mind as the only mediator between it and the forms of the universe, may be divided into the purely noumenal and the idealistic. The purely noumenal recognise in the cosmos only the work of Mind, Thought, Idea: but Idea may be purely arbitrary and have no essential relation to any real Truth of existence; such Truth, if it exists, may be regarded as a mere Absolute aloof from all relations and irreconcilable with a world of relations. The idealistic interpretation supposes a relation between the Truth behind and the conceptive phenomenon in front, a relation which is not merely that of an antinomy and opposition. The view I am presenting goes farther in idealism; it sees the creative Idea as Real-Idea, that is to say, a power of Conscious Force expressive of real being, born out of real being and partaking of its nature and neither a child of the Void nor a weaver of fictions. It is conscious Reality throwing itself into mutable forms of its own imperishable and immutable substance.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 125
“The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine knowledge and the creator of the inner worlds.” The Secret of the Veda
The_satoshi ::: is the smallest unit of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. It is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the protocol used in blockchains and the bitcoin cryptocurrency.
"The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
“The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
to the Creator, whose first manifestations they
trimurti ::: n. --> The triad, or trinity, of Hindu gods, consisting of Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer.
Trimurti: The Hindu triad of gods: Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer.
Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. …
ūrya Savitr. (Surya Savitri) ::: Sūrya2 as the Creator, "the Wisdom-..Luminous who is the bringer-out into manifest existence".
Vach-Viraj (Sanskrit) Vāc-virāj The feminine aspect or alter ego of Brahma, the creator, when considered as the Second Logos emanating the Third Logos or Viraj.
Vaidhatras (Sanskrit) Vaidhātra-s [from vi-dhātṛ producing, creating from vi-dhā to produce, bring forth, creation] Creators, producers, emanators, diffusers; the patronymic given to the kumaras who sprang from Vidhatri, a name of Brahma the creator.
Vinata (Sanskrit) Vinatā A daughter of Daksha, and the consort of Kasyapa; hence one of the creators of our world. She brought forth an egg from which was born Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu and, in our world, the symbol of the earth’s greatest time cycle.
vishnu ::: 1. (In later Hinduism) "The Preserver.” The second member of the Trimurti, along with Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer. 2. (In popular Hinduism) a deity believed to have descended from heaven to earth in several incarnations, or avatars, varying in number from nine to twenty-two, but always including animals. His most important human incarnation is the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita. 3. "The Pervader,” one of a half-dozen solar deities in the Rig-Veda, daily traversing the sky in three strides, morning, afternoon, and night.
Vishnuism: One of the three great divisions in modern Hinduism (the other two are Shaivism and Shaktism); its followers identify Vishnu—rather than Brahma and Shiva—with the Supreme Being, and are exclusively devoted to his worship, regarding him as the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the universe.
vishnu ::: n. --> A divinity of the modern Hindu trimurti, or trinity. He is regarded as the preserver, while Brahma is the creator, and Siva the destroyer of the creation.
Vishnu: One of the three gods of the Hindu Trinity (Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Shiva, the Destroyer), and as such he is one of the three aspects of Ishwara, the Personal God. To the adherents of Vaishnavism, Vishnu is the supreme deity.
visnu ::: the preserver; one of the principle Hindu deities (Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer); personification of light and the sun. (see also Brahma, Krishna and Shiva above))
Ward Cunnigham "person" The creator of the first {wiki}. (2004-07-11)
Ward Cunnigham ::: (person) The creator of the first wiki.(2004-07-11)
when the Creator contemplated destroying the
wisdom of the Creator. [R/. Gollancz, Clavicula
wisdom of the Creator.”
With the Gnostics truth itself was portrayed as a disrobed divinity, every part of her cosmic form being numbered and lettered. This divine wisdom they called Sophia, virtually the same as the Qabbalistic Shechinah. Even in the modern Occident, instinct has determined that justice shall be pictured as feminine, as also liberty and peace. “The Gnostic Sophia, ‘Wisdom’ who is ‘the Mother’ of the Ogdoad . . . is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The ‘father’ is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere — the mother of the seven planetary powers” (SD 1:72n).
Wonhyo. (C. Yuanxiao; J. Gangyo 元曉) (617-686). In Korean, "Break of Dawn"; famous monk of the Silla dynasty and probably one of the two most important monks in all of Korean Buddhist history, who was renowned for both his scholastic achievements and his efforts to propagate Buddhism among the common people. He is reputed to have written over one hundred commentaries, of which some twenty are extant. According to the hagiographical accounts of Wonhyo in the SONG GAOSENG ZHUAN and the SAMGUK YUSA, Wonhyo tried, but failed, to travel to China with his friend ŬISANG in order to study with the Chinese translator and YOGĀCĀRA exegete XUANZANG. While on the road, Wonhyo is said to have attained enlightenment after a traumatic experience in which he discovered that the earthen sanctuary in which the two travelers had taken refuge one stormy night was in fact a tomb. This experience prompted his awakening that all things are created by mind, which led Wonhyo to realize that he did not need to continue on to China in order to understand Buddhism. (Ŭisang did travel to the mainland, where he studied with the early HUAYAN exegete ZHIYAN.) As the legends about Wonhyo's enlightenment experience evolve, this story becomes even more horrific: Wonhyo is said to have discovered that the sweet water he drank in the tomb to slake his thirst was actually offal rotting in a skull, a traumatic experience that immediately prompted his realization that the mind creates all things. Wonhyo spent much of his life writing commentaries to the many new translations of Buddhist scriptures then being introduced into the Korean peninsula. A brief affair with the widowed princess of Yosok palace led to the birth of a son, who would grow up to become the famous literatus, Sol Ch'ong (c. 660-730), the creator of Idu ("clerical writing"), the earliest Korean vernacular writing system. After the affair, Wonhyo changed into lay clothes and traveled among the peasantry, singing and dancing with a gourd he named Unhindered (Muae) and practicing "unconstrained conduct" (K. muae haeng; C. WU'AI XING). ¶ In Wonhyo's many treatises, he pioneered a hermeneutical technique he called "reconciling doctrinal controversies" (HWAJAENG), which seeks to demonstrate that various Buddhist doctrines, despite their apparent differences and inconsistencies, could be integrated into a single coherent whole. This "ecumenical" approach is pervasive throughout Wonhyo's works, although its basic principle is explained chiefly in his Simmun hwajaeng non ("Ten Approaches to the Reconciliation of Doctrinal Controversy," only fragments are extant), TAESŬNG KISILLON SO ("Commentary to the 'Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna'"), and KŬMGANG SAMMAEGYoNG NON ("Exposition of the VAJRASAMĀDHISuTRA"). Wonhyo was versed in the full range of Buddhist philosophical doctrines then accessible to him in Korea, including MADHYAMAKA, YOGĀCĀRA, Hwaom, and TATHĀGATAGARBHA thought, and hwajaeng was his attempt to demonstrate how all of these various teachings of the Buddha were part of a coherent heuristic plan within the religion. Since at least the twelfth century, Wonhyo's hwajaeng exegesis has come to be portrayed as characteristic of a distinctively Korean approach to Buddhist thought.
“Zarathushtra is the Divine Universal Force that directs everything within the universe towards perfection. This force is known as Amesha-Spenta” (Shahrestani, Al-Melal Va Al-Nehal). This force is equivalent to the Gnostic primeval ruler or governor, the closest being to the creator; the active mind or intellect which is the source of divine bliss and providence, with the Manichaen pure or holy spirits; the Hebrew elohim, the Arabic Malaeka (angels); the Koranic soul within the angels; and the theosophic dhyani-chohans or dhyani-buddhas. They are the rulers of the seven globes of the earth-chain.
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1 Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad (Allah sanctify his secret).
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1 Plotinus
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
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1:All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
2:And what help will all creatures be able to give you if you are deserted by the Creator? ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
3:Each man ought to say to himself, "I was the creator, may I become again what I was". ~ Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
4:They also are triple, tisraḥ pṛthivīḥ, the three earths. And of all these worlds Surya Savitri is the creator.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda,#KEYS
5:Powers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #KEYS
6:Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
7: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
8:There is only one God, and he is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through his own Word, first of all sent forth. ~ Tertullian of Carthage, #KEYS
9:The vain main of intellect is busy finding out the why and wherefore of creation, while the humble man acquaints himself with the creator. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer, and the destroyer of all you perceive. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
11:The Creator desired that the Light be veiled in order to grant existence to the lower beings, which could not otherwise survive in its full presence. ~ Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of Kabbalah, #KEYS
12:Before the creator can be born, there must be many pangs and transformations. Yes, your life must pass through many bitter deaths, O creators. ~ Nietzsche, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:Use the visible things of creation as they should be used—earth, sea, sky, air, springs, and rivers. Whatever is beautiful and wonderful in them, attribute that to the praise and glory of the Creator. ~ Saint Leo the Great, #KEYS
14:The Creator and the creature are at ease with each other and that is the greatest satisfaction, that is salvation. ~ Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad (Allah sanctify his secret)., @Sufi_Path #KEYS
15:Through creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator. Through the world he reveals the Lord who made the world. Through all that is fashioned he reveals the craftsman who fashioned it all. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.6, #KEYS
16:The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #KEYS
17:Today this created world is raised to the dignity of a holy place for him who made all things. The creature is newly prepared to be a divine dwelling place for the Creator. ~ Saint Andrew of Crete, Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, #KEYS
18:The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
19:We shall pray without ceasing to the Creator of all things, and beg him to preserve the number of his elect throughout the whole world, through his beloved son Jesus Christ, and not let a single one of them fall away. ~ Clement I to the Corinthians, #KEYS
20:All our wisest and most divine doctors concur that visible things are truly images of invisible things and that from creatures the creator can be seen in a recognizable way as if in a mirror or in an enigma. ~ Nicolas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance I.11, #KEYS
21:St. Thomas thinks... that real freedom consists precisely in being moved from within by God, who is not 'another' in any normal sense, precisely because there is no rivalry between the Creator and any of his creatures... ~ James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, #KEYS
22:All things subsist in him who created them... All things have undoubtedly been created out of nothing, and their being would again be reduced to nothing unless the Creator of all things held them fast in his ruling hand. ~ Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 16.37, #KEYS
23:Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return. ~ Saint Bernard, #KEYS
24:We'd all be a lot happier if we'd stop assuming we're supposed to be happy." ~ Garrison" Keillor, (b. 1942) American author, storyteller, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality, best known as the creator of the Public Radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," Wikipedia., #KEYS
25:Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may." ~ John Kabat-Zinn, (b.1944) an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Wikipedia., #KEYS
26:When one knows God without beginning and end in the midst of the complex mass of things, the creator of all who takes many forms, the One who envelops the universe, he is delivered from all bondage. ~ Swetacwatara Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
27:Creation places something in the thing created according to relation only... When movement is removed from action and passion, only relation remains. Hence creation in the creature is only a certain relation to the Creator as to the principle of its being. ~ Aquinas, ST I q45 a3, #KEYS
28: The intelligence can also follow this trend, but is ceases then to be the pure intellect; it calls in its power of imagination to its aid, it becomes the image-maker, the creator of symbols and values, a spiritual artist and poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,#KEYS
29:The 'Intelligence of Will' denotes that this is the path where each individual 'created being' is 'prepared' for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine 'will' of the creatoR By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self-fully immersed in the knowledge of 'the existence of the Primordial Wisdom.'
~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates: Skrying On The Tree Of Life,#KEYS
30:Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, 40:28-31, #KEYS
31:We have in this figure of various psychological levels, each considered as a world in itself, a key to the conceptions of the Vedic Rishis.
And it is the causal Truth, represented in the person of Surya Savitri, that is the creator of all its forms. For it is the causal Idea in the infinite being,—the idea, not abstract, but real and dynamic,—that originates the law, the energies, the formations of things and the working out of their potentialities in determined forms by determined processes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Selected Hymns, Surya Savitri - Creator and Increaser,#KEYS
32:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. ~ Plotinus, The Enneads, #KEYS
33:Alas! I find no customers who want anything better than kalai pulse. No one wants to give up 'woman and gold'. Man, deluded by the beauty of woman and the power of money, forgets God. But to one who has seen the beauty of God, even the position of Brahma, the Creator, seems insignificant.
A man said to Ravana, 'You have been going to Sita in different disguises; why don't you go to her in the form of Rama?' 'But', Ravana replied, 'when I meditate on Rama in my heart, the most beautiful women - celestial maidens like Rambha and Tilottama - appear no better than ashes of the funeral pyre. Then even the position of Brahma appears trivial to me, not to speak of the beauty of another man's wife.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
34: 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
35:O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self's mission and Self's power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!
Something thou cam'st to do from the Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world goes on
Because only half God's cosmic work is done.
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,
And immortality in the secret heart,
The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm,
The passion and the beauty of the Bride,
The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,
The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?
This too is Truth at the mystic fount of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
36:To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in God's house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of the Creator's body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Chapter 1, The Cycle of Society,#KEYS
37:The Supreme Mind
'O God! we acknowledge Thee to be the Supreme Mind
Who hast disposed and ordered the Universe;
Who gave it life and motion at the first,
And still continuest to guide and regulate it.
From Thee was its primal impulsion;
Thou didst bestow on thine Emanated Spirit of Light,
Divine wisdom and various power
To stablish and enforce its transcendent orbits.
Thou art the Inconceivable Energy
Which in the beginning didst cause all things;
Of whom shall no created being ever know
A millionth part of thy divine properties.
But the Spirit was the Spirit of the Universe-
Sacred, Holy, Generating Nature;
Which, obedient unto thy will,
Preserves and reproduces all that is in the Kosmos.
Nothing is superior to the Spirit
But Thou, alone, O God! who art the Creator and Lord;
Thou madest the Spirit to be thy servitor,
But this thy Spirit transcends all other creatures;
This is the Spirit which is in the highest heavens;
Whose influence permeates all that lives;
As a beautiful Flower diffuses fragrances
But is not diminished in aught thereby.
For all divine essences are the same,
Differing only in their degree and power and beauty;
But in no wise differing in their principle,
Which is the fiery essence of God himself.
Such is the animating flame of every existence
Being in God, purely perfect;
But in all other living things
Only capable of being made perfect.' ~ Dr E.V. Kenealy, The Book of Fo.
The Supreme Mind. from path of regeneration,#KEYS
38:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#KEYS
39:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#KEYS
40:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,#KEYS
41:He is Allah, other than whom there is no deity, Knower of the unseen and the witnessed. He is the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. He is Allah, other than whom there is no deity, the Sovereign, the Pure, the Perfection, the Bestower of Faith, the Overseer, the Exalted in Might, the Compeller, the Superior. Exalted is Allah above whatever they associate with Him. He is Allah, the Creator, the Inventor, the Fashioner; to Him belong the best names. Whatever is in the heavens and earth is exalting Him. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise. ~ Koran, Chapter 59, Verses 22-24, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Beauty is in the eye of the Creator. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 2:Mind is the creator of everything. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 3:Ultimately the creator is one’s own mind. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 4:You are the creator of your own destiny ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 5:Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 6:The creator of the universe is lining up things in my favour. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 7:Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 8:All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 9:All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 10:Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 11:The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 12:The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 13:When you get the hang of this, before you know it you will KNOW you are the creator. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 14:There is no help for you, outside yourself; You are the creator of the universe. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 15:The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 16:Television allows the audience to argue with the creator in a way you don't in a movie. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 17:The end of creation is that all things may return to the Creator and be united with Him. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 18:A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 19:That the Creator himself comes to us and becomes our ransom - this is the reason for our rejoicing. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 20:The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 21:What is the purpose of life?... To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool! ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 22:When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 23:Even the idea of God as the Creator is false. Do I owe my being to any other being? Because I am, all is. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 24:The Absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 25:Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 26:We sometimes forget that we are God-beings, and that the intent of the Creator was for us to enjoy this thing called Life! ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 27:To know the Creator and the God of all the universe is to revere Him. It is to bow down before Him in wonder and awesome fear. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 28:True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is a spiritual commerce with the Creator of heaven and earth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 29:The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 30:Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 31:No one's character is completely like another'sthis infinite variety is like a mirror in which we can see the infinity of God the Creator. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 32:HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 33:Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 34:Thought is the primary energy and vibration that emanated from God and is thus the creator of life, electrons, atoms, and all forms of energy. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 35:There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 36:Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 37:God wants to be praised for nourishing and cherishing, for He cherishes all creatures. He is not only the Creator, but He is also the Sustainer and Nourisher. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 38:I do not think of myself as unusually creative. I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So, each one of us is creative. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 39:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 40:Looking through the eyes of the divine nature you see the essence within the manifestation, the creator within the creation, and it is a wonderful, wonderful world! ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 41:One of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 42:If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 43:But ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 44:Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 45:There are times you will be given intuition, you just know something, and you can't explain it. Don't override it. Don't talk yourself out of it. That's the Creator giving you inside information. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 46:The way I define happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 47:What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator? ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 48:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 49:God is within you! You yourself are the creator. If you find that place within you from which you brought this thing about, you will be able to live with it and affirm it, perhaps even enjoy it, as your life. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 50:If we look on heaven and earth as a single crucible, and on the creator as the founder, would there be any place I could not go? When it is time, I will fall asleep, and when the right time comes, I will wake up again. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 51:The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 52:The mind itself is the creator. Even this is not quite true, for the created and its creator are one. The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 53:Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 54:I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 55:Jehovah is the great Miracle Maker, the unrivaled Wonder worker. None can be likened unto Him, He is alone in wonderland, the Creator and Worker of true marvels, compared with which all other remarkable things are as child's play. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 56:When you learn to offer a vibration deliberately, you are the Deliberate Creator of your own experience. And before you learn to offer a vibration deliberately, you are just the creator of your experience—a sort of creator by default. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 57:The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 58:There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself... . Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 59:Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: "the Son, O how unlike the Father!" First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 60:We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 61:There's a widespread cultural barrenness across art and political culture. But there are some pockets of resistance on the extreme margins, like the techno-savvy protest movements, small press, the creator-owned comics, that seem to be getting some signs of hope for the future. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 62:Generations hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 63:Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 64:Life isn‚Äôt happening to you; life is responding to you. Life is your call! Every area of your life is your call. You are the creator of your life. You are the writer of your life story. You are the director of your life movie. You decide what your life will be ‚Äì by what you give out. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 65:The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 66:It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 67:It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 68:You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 69:Mind is the creator of everything. You should therefore guide it to create only good. If you cling to a certain thought with dynamic will power, it finally assumes a tangible outward form. When you are able to employ your will always for constructive purposes, you become the controller of your destiny. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 70:No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 71:You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing Itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 72:The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 73:There is a legend that when God was equipping man for his long life journey of exploration, the attendant good angel was about to add the gift of contentment and complete satisfaction. The Creator stayed his hand and said, & 74:You are the creator of your own life experience, and as the creator of your experience, it is important to understand that it is not by virtue of your action, not by virtue of your doing, it is not even by virtue of what you are saying that you are creating. You are creating by virtue of the thoughts that you are offering. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 75:Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 76:Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator... Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 77:Q: Out of what do I create this world? M: Out of your own memories. As long as you are ignorant of yourself as the creator, your world is limited and repetitive. Once you go beyond your self-identification with your past, you are free to create a new world of harmony and beauty. Or you just remain - beyond being and non-being. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 78:Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 79:There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of impact I will leave on others. I will never choose the destructive path of self and outward victimization again. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 80:For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given& 81:It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 82:There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 83:Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 84:The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that outwits the Creator in the Garden Eden, and steals from Him His favorite creature, man, and at last obliges Him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again; and this the priests of the Christian religion call redemption. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 85:To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relationg to everything He has made, but He has no Necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can dring to Him who is complete in himself. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 86:The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 87:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer. ... Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 88:The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 89:At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values... .In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 90:The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 91:From one individual was multiplied the many people who inhabit the earth's surface. And even if that intellectual spirit, sown in earth and swallowed up in shadow, does not see the light and the source of his beginning, nevertheless, you created along with him everything through which he, kindled by wonder at those things which he contacts by the senses, can sometimes lift the eyes of his mind to you, the Creator of all, and can be reunited to you in highest love and so can finally return to his source with joy ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 92:It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator. The people down here just ate that up! ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 93:Tzu Li went to see Tzu Lai who was dying. Leaning against the door, he said, & 94:Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 95:W ithdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also; cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is in shadow; labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness established in the stainless shrine. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 96:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 97:So if you blame Facebook, Trump, or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked themselves inside a self-reinforcing mythological bubble, never daring to question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their unquestioning faith in the Quran. For millennia, much of what passed for news and facts in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons, and witches, with bold reporters giving live coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit—yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 98:The divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said to dwell. And since He is invisible by reason of the abundant outpouring of supernatural light, it follows that whosoever is counted worthy to know and see God, by the very fact that he neither sees nor knows Him, attains to that which is above sight and knowledge, and at the same time perceives that God is beyond all things both sensible and intelligible, saying with the Prophet, Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me; it is high, and I cannot reach to it. In like manner, St Paul, we are told, knew God, when he knew Him to be above all knowledge and understanding; wherefore he says that His ways are unsearchable and His judgments inscrutable, His gifts unspeakable, and His peace passing all understanding; as one who had found Him who is above all things, and whom he had perceived to be above knowledge, and separate from all things, being the Creator of all. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 99:The divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said to dwell. And since He is invisible by reason of the abundant outpouring of supernatural light, it follows that whosoever is counted worthy to know and see God, by the very fact that he neither sees nor knows Him, attains to that which is above sight and knowledge, and at the same time perceives that God is beyond all things both sensible and intelligible, saying with the Prophet, “Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me; it is high, and I cannot reach to it. In like manner, St Paul, we are told, knew God, when he knew Him to be above all knowledge and understanding; wherefore he says that His ways are unsearchable and His judgments inscrutable, His gifts unspeakable, and His peace passing all understanding; as one who had found Him who is above all things, and whom he had perceived to be above knowledge, and separate from all things, being the Creator of all. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:God is the creator of all things. ~ Kelis, #NFDB
2:I am the creator of my destiny. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
3:I am the creator of my reality ~ Annette Funicello, #NFDB
4:God is the creature, not the creator. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
5:You are the creator of your own destiny. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
6:You are the creator of your own reality. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
7:The Creator is not a careless mechanic. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
8:Mind is the creator of everything. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
9:I want my life to be a hymn to the Creator. ~ Robert Muller, #NFDB
10:You are the creator of your own destiny ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
11:God is the creator of all good plot twists! ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
12:Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer. ~ Baba Hari Dass, #NFDB
13:In television, the creator is really the voice... ~ Tony Goldwyn, #NFDB
14:To dance is to give channel to the Creator. ~ Ali Abdullah Saleh, #NFDB
15:Art is the path of the creator to his work. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
16:The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
17:God is the Creator; Satan is the counterfeiter. ~ Edwin Louis Cole, #NFDB
18:Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
19:our god, the creator of heaven and earth, is completely mad ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
20:The Creator favors the man who loves over the man who hates. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
21:I sold my soul to the devil. Lucifer will have my soul. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
22:The majesty of creation forms my faith in the Creator. ~ Anthony D Williams, #NFDB
23:To mistreat God’s creation is to offend the Creator. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
24:Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
25:All power is within YOU. You are the creator of your experience. ~ Vivian Amis, #NFDB
26:Listen deeper than the music before you put it in the box. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
27:The devil doesn't wear prada; I'm clearly in a -- white tee. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
28:What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
29:By listening to the creator within, we are led to our right path. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
30:The Creator made women to please the eye, and to boggle the mind. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
31:The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles. ~ John B S Haldane, #NFDB
32:God intends... our care of Creation to reflect our love for the Creator. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
33:Disrespect earns the displeasure of the creator and the creation. ~ Abdul Qadir Gilani, #NFDB
34:The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being ~ Bret Harte, #NFDB
35:We are the flowers that make up the Creator's vast and beautiful garden. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
36:For the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indiferent place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
37:in daring speculation, that the Creator is primarily a creative artist. ~ Frank Wilczek, #NFDB
38:A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
39:Attaching love to sex is one of the most bizarre ideas the Creator ever had. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
40:Creativity is a gift to the creator not just a gift to the audience. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
41:Love is the sweetest monotony that was ever conceived of by the Creator. ~ Radclyffe Hall, #NFDB
42:man the master of his own destiny and the creator of his own desires, ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
43:According to Romans 1, those who reject the Creator will create an idol. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
44:creativity is a gift to the creator, not just a gift to the audience). ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
45:In reality, our mind is the creator of all the things we experience. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
46:MAN IS NOT A SLAVE OF CIRCUMSTANCES, HE IS THE CREATOR, CONTROLLER AND MASTER OF THEM
~,#NFDB
47:You are still the creator of your own destiny. Don't overlook the journey. ~ Jennifer Shirk, #NFDB
48:Attaching love to sex is one of the most bizarre ideas the Creator ever had. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
49:Swords don't glorify the creator-God. Love does. Self-giving love, best of all. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
50:The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
51:The universe is pregnant with signs that recall the presence of the Creator. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
52:He was my tormentor and my solace; the creator of the dark and the light within ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
53:The beauty you see in them is a reflection of the Creator, so you love them. ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
54:Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. ~ Geronimo, #NFDB
55:You’re a Frankenstein!”
“Don’t confuse the monster with the creator. ~ Stephen King,#NFDB
56:All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
57:All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
58:He was my tormentor and my solace; the creator of the dark and the light within. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
59:Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
60:The Creator is not dependent on His creation in achieving His purposes. ~ Christopher W Morgan, #NFDB
61:The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
62:problem now be resolved with Divine Love according to the Creator’s will. ~ Christiane Northrup, #NFDB
63:The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the Creator and Redeemer. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
64:The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the creator and Redeemer. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
65:The cardinal error of science lies in shutting the Creator out of His Creation. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
66:The first thing to be remembered: the creation and the creator are not two, they are one. ~ Osho, #NFDB
67:What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature? ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, #NFDB
68:Each man ought to say to himself, “I was the creator, may I become again what I was”. ~ Upanishad, #NFDB
69:He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbor. ~ Venerable Bede, #NFDB
70:Life is the force of the absolute, the supreme, the Creator who creates everything. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
71:Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny. ~ Albert Ellis, #NFDB
72:Wherever you may go, the least plant may bring you clear remembrance of the Creator. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
73:army has ever marched into battle thinking that the Creator had sided with their enemy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
74:I'm a really, really, smart, multi-talented almost-genius, who's very annoying. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
75:Karta (The Creator) and Karim (The beneficient) are the names of the same God. ~ Guru Gobind Singh, #NFDB
76:The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
77:When you get the hang of this, before you know it you will KNOW you are the creator. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
78:No one is more sensitive to the issue of overeating than the creator of Stuart Smalley. ~ Al Franken, #NFDB
79:The creator wished to look away from himself,--thereupon he created the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
80:There is no help for you, outside yourself; You are the creator of the universe. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
81:When we love, we see the infinite in the finite. We find the Creator in the creation. ~ Eliphas Levi, #NFDB
82:YOU are the creator of your experience, therefore: all problems must be met within YOU. ~ Vivian Amis, #NFDB
83:If I’m a monster, then you must be the creator of them all. You’re my Dr. Frankenstein. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
84:We sin because we want something in the created world more than we want the Creator. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
85:The whole creation is so tenderly balanced - this manifests the mastery of the Creator. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
86:Vegetation is the basic instrument the creator uses to set all of nature in motion. ~ Antoine Lavoisier, #NFDB
87:Vish, the creator; and Shiv, the destroyer, are simply two faces of the very same coin. ~ Ashwin Sanghi, #NFDB
88:Appreciate the creation, respect the creator of it, and admire the source of all creativity. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
89:Creation points us to the Creator, but it can never give us what the Creator can give. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
90:The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
91:All abuse and waste of God's creatures are spoil and robbery on the property of the Creator. ~ Adam Clarke, #NFDB
92:Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator. ~ Michael Gungor, #NFDB
93:God is not the Creator, He is creativity. Creativity is His being. He has always been creating. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
94:I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
95:Television allows the audience to argue with the creator in a way you don't in a movie. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
96:the Creator of all things is looking throughout the whole earth for a certain kind of heart. ~ Jim Cymbala, #NFDB
97:The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
98:The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator to explain it. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
99:Whenever I sign a garment with my name, I consider myself as the creator of the masterpiece. ~ Paul Poiret, #NFDB
100:Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress,
The Creator's Self, as it were, not a mere creature! ~ Rumi,#NFDB
101:God is in no sense the Creator of natural forces and laws; He is the director of them. The ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
102:I study theology in the works of creation and find in it new reasons for adoring the creator. ~ Jan Potocki, #NFDB
103:Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
104:no army has ever marched into battle thinking that the Creator had sided with their enemy. ~ Terry Goodkind, #NFDB
105:Powers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #NFDB
106:The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.” —Louis Pasteur ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
107:The Creator has given us souls equal to all the world, and yet satiable not even with a world. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
108:the Creator in whom we find our “rest” is only all too eager to welcome us into communion. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
109:A child is a life that has not gone too far away from the Creator. Know a child to know life. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
110:I slipped myself some pink Xannies/And danced around the house in all-over print panties. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
111:The Creator of the universe is your manufacturer. You can’t get any more prestigious than that. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
112:The end of creation is that all things may return to the Creator and be united with Him. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
113:All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
114:Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator from the sphere of rational discussion. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
115:God is not a demiurge [demigod] or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
116:(because in the end, creativity is a gift to the creator, not just a gift to the audience). ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
117:DEDICATION “To The Creator, who gives us the Light by which we more clearly see the Darkness… ~ Chet Williamson, #NFDB
118:For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth? ~ Mikhail Lermontov, #NFDB
119:The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
120:[The Creator] shines in the cosmic consciousness as a painting in the mind of an artist. ~ Swami Venkatesananda, #NFDB
121:Beauty is the vocation bestowed on the artist by the Creator in the gift of artistic talent. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
122:I am the creator of my very own self and I intend to treat me like my greatest masterpiece. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
123:A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
124:We human beings are created and yet we are more rational than the creator himself who spawned us. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
125:I am held by the creator of the world. I am opening, I am unbounded, I am luminous, I am powerful. ~ Kenny Loggins, #NFDB
126:My deepest gratitude to the Creator for His gift to me...the joy I receive in creating my music. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
127:whenever you ask creation to do what only the Creator can do, you are on your way to addiction. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
128:You trouble me so, Rand al'Thor. Light, sometimes I think the Creator made you just to trouble me. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
129:He is the creator, and sustainer and Lord of all things and He is worthy of your honor and obedience. ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
130:Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
131:One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor ~ Edvard Munch, #NFDB
132:Should Muslims really be free to believe that the Creator of the universe is concerned about hemlines? ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
133:That the Creator himself comes to us and becomes our ransom - this is the reason for our rejoicing. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
134:The market is the creator of social wealth and the wellspring of self-sustaining economic development. ~ Li Keqiang, #NFDB
135:To cognize the Divine Essence - this is the highest purpose of soul, sent by the Creator to the Earth! ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
136:As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
137:God is one, but he has innumerable forms. He is the creator of all and He himself takes the human form. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
138:I want the cheesy dates at the movies, the stupid walks at the beach and sharing straws in a cup ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
139:Nature is the most beautiful thing we have. It's better than art because it's from the creator. ~ Olivia Newton John, #NFDB
140:Second, the origin of evil is not the Creator but the creature’s freely choosing sin and selfishness. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
141:There's only one reason we live. It's very simple. To find the creator. That's just my understanding. ~ Jon Anderson, #NFDB
142:The truth I know for sure is that god is the creator of all things. And to not take ourselves too seriously. ~ Kelis, #NFDB
143:Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. ~ Antonio Gaudi, #NFDB
144:Sometimes you get the sense that the Creator is getting to that point of "Yeah, we might have to reboot." ~ Tim Allen, #NFDB
145:My guru, awake in God, knew this world to be nothing but an objectivized dream of the Creator. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
146:The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
147:When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it. ~ Ilka Chase, #NFDB
148:Man is simply playing by nature's rules,and art is man's attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
149:Having the Creator in my life, having the spiritual connection to the divine intelligence that created me. ~ John Assaraf, #NFDB
150:The Creator, then, being uncreated, is also wholly immutable. And what could this be other than Deity? ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
151:When the creator of the show is gone, the actors end up being the people who have been there the longest. ~ Lauren Graham, #NFDB
152:Everything in the Universe was as the Creator willed it - nothing superfluous, nothing lacking - a harmony. ~ Joseph Hertz, #NFDB
153:On the day of your birth, the Creator filled countless storehouses, set aside for your use and yours alone. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
154:He who made man can restore man; He who was at first the creator of our nature can new create it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
155:It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
156:May you shelter in the palm of the Creator's hand, and may the last embrace of the mother welcome you home. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
157:When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
158:Because when the Creator of matter, tell you you matter, then you have a purpose and then you have self-esteem. ~ Brad Stine, #NFDB
159:Heaven isn't an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator King. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
160:Heaven isn’t an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator King. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
161:The perfect orchestration of the symphony of life is one of the Creator's greatest and most beautiful miracles. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
162:If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
163:The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
164:When you Rectify your Relationship with the Creator, He Rectifies your relationship with All of the Creation. ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
165:I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator. ~ Allen Ginsberg, #NFDB
166:Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
167:The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
168:What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
169:Imagination is biblical reasoning in its Sunday best, lost in wonder at the creativity of the Creator. Being ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
170:The bliss of the Creator forever permeates all of creation, and it is only in the forgetting that misery exists. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
171:When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
172:Genre, it had always seemed to me, was a set of assumptions, a loose contract between the creator and the audience. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
173:if the creator of the universe is spending all his time watching you, it must surly be because he loves you. ~ David Mazzucchelli, #NFDB
174:I think it's very important to maintain the classical Christian distinction between the Creator and creation. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
175:yet if we are to think I've got it all, we must do it by adapting creature-thoughts and creature-words to the Creator ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
176:Live to discover, as long as discovery leads to a love that comes from the Creator... writing was the mirror to life. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
177:Man was so engineered by God that the presence of the Creator within the creature is indispensable to His humanity. ~ W Ian Thomas, #NFDB
178:Life is a gift from the Creator, meant to be savored and enjoyed, not spent pining over things that could never be. ~ Julie Lessman, #NFDB
179:Poetry is designed to inspire love, and islam is about falling in love with the creator of the universe. ~ Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, #NFDB
180:Being spiritual is a far more intelligent way to exist. It means being in tune with the intelligence of the Creator. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
181:Life is the ultimate artistic masterpiece, and it's up to you, the creator, to make it as wildly dazzling as possible. ~ Laura Resau, #NFDB
182:Nothing teaches us so much the preciousness of the Creator, as when we learn the emptiness of all besides. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
183:Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. ~ Mark Rothko, #NFDB
184:If you are not willing to stand up for anything or anybody, then why should the Creator take a single step to help you? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
185:I think Kitchimanidoo is not the Creator but the possibility of creation, all creation, good and bad.
p 130 ~ William Kent Krueger,#NFDB
186:That's right I was speaking to the creator of universe as though we had just been introduced at a cocktail party. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
187:The Absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
188:No law made by man can overturn that of the Creator without dramatically affecting society in its very foundation. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
189:Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
190:Fighting for and defending the values from the pulpit is critical. You can't love the Creator, and disrespect the creation. ~ Van Jones, #NFDB
191:Only after Satan had exposed the evil in creation—and, by implication, in the Creator—could honesty and healing begin. ~ Robert L Moore, #NFDB
192:That's what's important really, Keeper says. Learning how to be what the Creator created you to be. Face your truth. ~ Richard Wagamese, #NFDB
193:We sometimes forget that we are God-beings, and that the intent of the Creator was for us to enjoy this thing called Life! ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
194:A light there is in the beyond which makes the Creator visible to the creature, who only in beholding Him finds peace. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
195:Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
196:...a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet. ~ Min Jin Lee, #NFDB
197:Generally, if I can't be true to the creator's intention and spirit, I will probably shy away from working on a character. ~ Darwyn Cooke, #NFDB
198:The Creator gave us the complete, unchallengable right of prerogative over the one thing, and only thing we own, our mind. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
199:When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. Mahatma Gandhi ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
200:Calvinism is the consistent endeavor to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord, working all things after the counsel of His will. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
201:I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour. ~ William Ralph Inge, #NFDB
202:The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
203:This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
204:Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
205:Body of earth, don't talk of earth Tell the story of pure mirrors The Creator has given you this splendor-- Why talk of anything else? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
206:Civilized people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator. ~ John Ashcroft, #NFDB
207:I don't smoke at all. I think that cigarettes are actually retarded. I don't understand why people do that to themselves. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
208:If, forgetting the respect due to the Creator, I were to attempt a criticism of creation, I would say ‘Less matter, more form! ~ Bruno Schulz, #NFDB
209:I know that the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
210:Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
211:When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. Mahatma Gandhi It ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
212:you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
213:The next time you’re feeling uncertain, remind yourself that you’re the creator of your life, not a manager of circumstances. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
214:But they fight in the name of the creator."
"I don't care if they fight in the name of broccoli. The goal remains the same. ~ Maria V Snyder,#NFDB
215:For someone who has sinned as much as I have, every moment of contemplation becomes an unexpected gift from the Creator Himself. ~ Javier Sierra, #NFDB
216:In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
217:Sometimes when you’re struggling to see kindness in the world, you need to be the creator of it to remind yourself it does exist. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
218:The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. ~ Louis Pasteur, as quoted in The Literary Digest (18 October 1902), #NFDB
219:These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
220:Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
221:According to Gallup, 35 percent of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
222:A man who worships in Spirit and Truth no longer honors the Creator because of His works, but praises Him because of Himself. ~ Evagrius Ponticus, #NFDB
223:God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
224:Our task is to move toward the transformed state of being in which we trust the Creator completely and without hesitation. Earlier ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
225:The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
226:All life is one weaving, one design by the hand of the Creator, the Great Mystery. All life is connected, thread by thread. ~ William Kent Krueger, #NFDB
227:Being empowered with the knowledge that you are the creator of your own reality, is the best way to accelerate healing and learning. ~ David Wolfe, #NFDB
228:For you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
229:If you think one thing is sacred but you cannot stand the other, if you love the Creator but hate the creation, that is vulgarity. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
230:The creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
231:The hand of the Creator is actively involved in every atom, every plant, every creature, and yourself, in every cell in your body. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
232:I never thought of God as humorous,” said Father Stone. “The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now! ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
233:A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. — FRANK HERBERT, unpublished notes ~ Brian Herbert, #NFDB
234:I don't trust white critics' judgment about most things that deal with black life, particularly when a black person is the creator. ~ Terry McMillan, #NFDB
235:...remember and think about the closeness of the Creator. If you live in this wisdom, it will give you endless strength and hope. ~ Frank Fools Crow, #NFDB
236:Similarly, the Supreme Lord is the enjoyer and the creator, and we, as subordinate living beings, are meant to cooperate to satisfy Him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
237:For the creator must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself, and in Nature to which he has attached himself. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
238:I think the writer is always the creator, because he's starting with nothing, but the actor comes in and gives flesh and blood. ~ Michel Hazanavicius, #NFDB
239:Jesus is the Creator who walked among us in humility to experience our fragility and to rescue us from our hopeless human condition. ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
240:The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
241:Body of earth, don't talk of earth
Tell the story of pure mirrors
The Creator has given you this splendor--
Why talk of anything else? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
242:I create my own calm and I keep my balance, because I know that it's not really me, by myself... The Creator always gives me the energy. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
243:I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which His hand has drawn. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
244:The bottle of the creature cracks and dries up, but the well of the Creator never fails; happy is he who dwells at the well. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
245:The science of the earth... invites us to be present at the origin of things, and to enter into the very worship of the Creator. ~ John William Dawson, #NFDB
246:Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer, and the destroyer of all you perceive. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
247:I know a man who, when he saw a woman of striking beauty, praised the Creator for her. The sight of her lit within him the love of God. ~ John Climacus, #NFDB
248:So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
249:Everything is a gift from God: it is only by recognizing this crucial dependence on the Creator that we will find freedom and peace. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
250:If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have got no further because of all the people saying "What colour? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
251:Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
252:To be a storyteller is to be able to speak truth, to be able to use your imagination, to use the creative gifts that the Creator has given you. ~ Common, #NFDB
253:You can't accuse the creator of The Boondocks, ... Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil and the government is lying about 9/11. ~ Aaron McGruder, #NFDB
254:So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet... ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
255:Supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
256:Yo I'm seventeen, already sniffin blow. I tell my friends its asthmary time I itch my throat, I got a new show for MTV, Pimp My Boat. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
257:a knowledge of the invisible God is revealed to us through that which is visible. The creation itself screams out the reality of the Creator. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
258:Before the creator can be born, there must be many pangs and transformations. Yes, your life must pass through many bitter deaths, O creators. ~ Nietzsche, #NFDB
259:C.S. Lewis said that conscience is nothing more than the voice of God within our souls; the bridge that links the creature to the creator ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
260:How can the creation challenge and control the Creator? Oh mortal man, know that there is an immortal God with an immortal power! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
261:True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is a spiritual commerce with the Creator of heaven and earth. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
262:Charity even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator's love for it. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
263:Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator. It is a book of beauty that our intellect reads, but through the passageways of our five senses. ~ Thomas Dubay, #NFDB
264:He would have thought God could make his own decisions, but Weston believes the creator may be pushed and coaxed and maybe bribed a little. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
265:The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it`s fate are people. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
266:The Creator made us for each other. Me here. Zelia there. Space was put between us by human error. But our hearts listened to divine will. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
267:This is your world
You’re the creator
Find freedom on this canvas
Believe, that you can do it,
‘Cuz you can do it.
You can do it. ~ Bob Ross,#NFDB
268:An entrepreneur is someone who, almost artistically, designs a living entity which embodies the values, beliefs, and ambitions of the creator ~ Jake Lodwick, #NFDB
269:Indeed, all of creation and human history are aimed at one simple end: to glorify the Creator (Rom. 11:36; 1 Tim. 1:17; Jude 25; Rev. 4:9–11). ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
270:The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
271:The Creator, the fountain of all wisdom, the approver of perpetual order, the eternal and superessential spring of geometry and harmonics. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
272:There is no balm in Gilead, but there is balm in God. There is no physician among the creatures, but the Creator is Jehovah-rophi. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
273:They sang to his father as he crossed that last dark river, heading to the distant land of light where the Creator of all waited in welcome. ~ Debra Holland, #NFDB
274:God is just what happens when humanity is connected. Humanity connected is god. Each one of us is a creator but, together, we are THE creator. ~ Jim Gilliam, #NFDB
275:The man who invented Doritos has passed away at the age of 97. He asked to be buried with the creator of Fritos and Cheetos in a variety pack. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
276: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, #NFDB
277:Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
278:Thanksgiving day was a holiday when everybody in the country was expected to express gratitude to the creator of the universe mainly for food. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
279:Whenever I'm stuck in traffic, I can't help but wonder, 'Where did the creator of The Jetsons go, and why hasn't he done something about this?' ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
280:It's a book. Books are written by men. If the creator wanted to tell us something, why would he use a book, and not write on the sky with fire? ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
281:No one's character is completely like another'sthis infinite variety is like a mirror in which we can see the infinity of God the Creator. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
282:We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans... In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of the Creator in us. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
283:What you call intelligence and what you refer to as the Creator are not different. The Creator is pure intelligence, intelligence beyond logic. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
284:Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
285:Self turned to God is the glory of allowing the Creator to reveal Himself in us. Self turned away from God is the very darkness and fire of hell. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
286:The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator of it. The same is true for discovering your life’s purpose: Ask God. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
287:Unmaking, decreating, is the only task man may take upon himself, if he aspires, as everything suggests, to distinguish himself from the Creator. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
288:Almost any idea is good if a man has ability and is willing to work hard. The best idea is worthless if the creator is a loafer and ineffective. ~ William Feather, #NFDB
289:A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder, #NFDB
290:I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
291:That first Prime Monitor,” he said, “was sent by the Creator, from another dimension of the early universe, into our evolving space-time system. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
292:HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
293:Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and is widely regarded as the most important innovator in scientific and technical computing today. ~ Stephen Wolfram, #NFDB
294:The Creator of the universe longs to have a relationship with me. He is my Husband, my Provider, and my closest Confidant as a single parent.
~ Lorilyn Roberts,#NFDB
295:We cannot resist the conviction that this world is for us only the porch of another and more magnificent temple of the Creator's majesty. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
296:I exist for you, Nina. This mortal being so precious to the Creator of the Universe that it allowed for my existence. Tell me that's not incredible. ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
297:In dream consciousness we make things happen by wishing them, because we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator. ~ Vilayat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
298:It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
299:The encapsulated bird your conspirators sent you to fetch. The sterilized male chicken with the Creator DNA sequences. The plot capon. Where is it? ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
300:For any one group today to think it has the best grasp on the creator of the universe is a form of insanity. Run away—far and quickly—when you see this. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
301:Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
302:Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator...until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, "No. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
303:Religion is defined by the relationship between God and man. And Islam is the submission and the acknowledgment of the human being to the creator. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf, #NFDB
304:Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
305:The source of creation is within you. You can be just a piece of flesh, or you can be the Creator himself - this is the choice and potential you have. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
306:Thought is the primary energy and vibration that emanated from God and is thus the creator of life, electrons, atoms, and all forms of energy. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
307:To reflect on the essence of the Creator ... is forbidden to the human intellect because of the severance of all relation between the two existences. ~ Muhammad Abduh, #NFDB
308:Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name unutterable which means the All. Talks ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
309:Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:- yet he is the creator. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
310:Creation is the great redemption from suffering and all life's growing light. But the creator must be suffering if needed and accept much change. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
311:Stand up , be bold , be strong !
Know that you are the creator of your own destiny . All the strength and succour you want is within yourself. ~ Swami Vivekananda,#NFDB
312:The four rules of writing... 1. Write to discover. 2. There is no greater discovery than love. 3. All love comes from the Creator. 4. Write what you will. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
313:They’d built that place to keep their people together and to ask for mercy from the Creator, since justice was so sketchily applied on earth. Hinsdale ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
314:Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator... until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, "No." ~ David Platt, #NFDB
315:Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through. ~ Rebecca Miller, #NFDB
316:In my 39 years on this earth, the Holy city of Makka had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of all and felt like a complete human being ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
317:I SAIAH 40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
318:No one, no one, ever goes to the Creator with all their business complete. We all get a different length of time, but it needs to be enough, regardless. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
319:Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real. Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal. You are the creator of your whole world around you; remember this. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
320:All the religions of the world say God is the creator. If he is really the creator, then the only way to meet him will be to become a creator in some measure. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
321:Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator... ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
322:Creation is not a light-hearted game. The creator commits to a terrible adventure, which is to take up-on himself all of the dangers that his creatures run. ~ Jean Genet, #NFDB
323:I believe the geometric proportion served the creator as an idea when He introduced the continuous generation of similar objects from similar objects. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
324:If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles. ~ J B S Haldane, #NFDB
325:I learned a long time ago that I can't control the challenges the creator sends my way, but I can control the way I think about them and deal with them ~ Wilma Mankiller, #NFDB
326:The law established by the Creator, which has existed from the beginning, extends over the whole globe, is everywhere and at all times binding upon mankind. ~ Rufus King, #NFDB
327:they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Rom. 1:25). ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
328:The creator seeks companions, not corpses or herds or believers. The creator seeks fellow-creators, those who inscribe new values on new tables. The ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
329:The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling... every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
330:They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
331:Our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
332:There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
333:Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
334:If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles. ~ John B S Haldane, #NFDB
335:The principle of saying no to self lies at the heart of my attitude toward the world as it maintains its alien stand in rebellion against the Creator. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
336:Dan said the other day to the guide, "Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo! ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
337:Only one possibility remains: the movement by which the will turns from enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
338:The genie within is your birthright and manifesting the glory of the Creator by carrying out your purpose is the highest and best gift you can give the Giver. ~ Eldon Taylor, #NFDB
339:God wants to be praised for nourishing and cherishing, for He cherishes all creatures. He is not only the Creator, but He is also the Sustainer and Nourisher. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
340:I am the creator of my own prism of infinite realities. Every one I peel back will lead to another. And I will never really be sure if any of them are real. ~ Jeremy Robinson, #NFDB
341:I do not think of myself as unusually creative. I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So each one of us is creative. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
342:I like my raps but I'm never too happy with some of 'em because I feel like they could be better. But every time I hear my flow on that song I wow myself. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
343:That is my best friend because it is a gift of the creator to Africans. It is a spirit. Marijuana has five fingers of creation...it enhances all your five senses. ~ Fela Kuti, #NFDB
344:All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy. ~ Abby Sunderland, #NFDB
345:One thing I've learned that is basic but bears repeating constantly: You are created with free will. Not even the Creator can help you unless you ask for help. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
346:Cultivate will power, that massive creative force that God the creator built into you. Do not let it remain flabby but strengthen it by use and exercise. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
347:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
348:In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
349:Instead, John emphasizes that Jesus is the Creator, the only begotten of the Father, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and even the “I AM ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
350:It is sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out. ~ George Soros, #NFDB
351:No matter how I may encounter rejection in the world around me, I am welcomed to abide in the Creator of heaven and earth and the perfect Son of the Most High God. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
352:Sin may have the power to kill and destroy, but God is the Creator of life. He can create it from nothing, and He can restore it from death.(John 11:25-26) ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
353:The twelve gods of Olympus aren’t entities we worship. They’re nothing more than fallen angels who turned away from the Creator for their own selfish gain. ~ Elisabeth Naughton, #NFDB
354:The creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself. ~ Olaf Stapledon, #NFDB
355:There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
356:...to create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement. Once created, the creature was separate from the creator, and needed no seconding to fully exist. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
357:An angel is a nonphysical being who has no ego - so we know angels are not human. An angel is a pure essence of the Creator's desire to connect with human beings. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
358:Golf Media is basically my brain in one place. It does just about everything except cure asthma. If you find an app that cures asthma, definitely let me know. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
359:How do I know the Bible isn't the word of God? Well if it was the word of God it would be clear and easy to understand...considering God was the creator of LANGUAGE! ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB
360:This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
361:Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
362:should I respect the work of the creator, of the gardener, or should I accept the survival instinct with which nature endowed this plant, which I now call a ‘weed’? ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
363:25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
364:Christians, in particular, realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
365:Everyone should strive to become a citizen of the world. Boundaries were created by man, not the Creator. There is no such thing as 'them vs. us'. There is only 'we'. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
366:I believe that the Source from which we come is alive in us as our breath, and as we speak and sing and breathe, we release the beauty of the Creator into the world. ~ Jan Phillips, #NFDB
367:THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is, the ‘new’ Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
368:The creator made us creative. Our creativity is our gift from God. Our use of it is our gift to God. Accepting this bargain is the beginning of true self-acceptance. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
369:What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
370:As one justice explained, “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. ~ Jeffrey Toobin, #NFDB
371:Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
372:Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
373:God is the Creator God, he doesn't want to say, "Okay, creation was very good, but I'm scrapping it." He wants to say, "Creation is so good that I'm going to rescue it." ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
374:It is in [the] process of making something... that the creator contacts a concrete reality outside his subjective life and moves into the realm of the transcendent. ~ Joseph C Zinker, #NFDB
375:The creator seeks companions, not corpses- and not herds or believers either. The creator seeks fellow-creators - those who grave new values on new law-tablets. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
376:To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
377:When you are appreciating creation as much as the Creator, then the Creator will ask, 'Who is appreciating my creation as much as me. Let me see this person.' ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
378:Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses — and not herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh — those who grave new values on new tables. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
379:I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
380:All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
381:We [people] may enjoy this fleeting beauty [of life] for such a brief instance. And then we are compost. G - , the creator-destroyer, certainly has a strange sense of humor! ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
382:When you are infinitely indebted for your body, for Knowledge, for things you have received, and for your own life, then you bask in the abundance of the Creator ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
383:which is more moral: helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think the creator of the universe will reward you for it? Mother ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
384:But God fears women even more that He fears the devil- and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
385:But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed,through which the creator passes. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
386:Doing one movie every two years is about all I can handle 'cause, being the creator at '30 Rock', my year there starts in the middle of June and goes back around until March. ~ Tina Fey, #NFDB
387:just watch whether you are for the Creator or against the Creator, every moment in your life. If you see this, everything will be settled. If you can’t think of your Creator, ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
388:The Creator was immensely wise and charitable when He forbade us knowledge of the future, while He has vouchsafed us the delights of memory and the enchantments of hope. ~ Maurice Druon, #NFDB
389:The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property. ~ Salmon P Chase, #NFDB
390:I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be his name, is not a body, and that he is free from all accidents of matter, and that he has not any form whatsoever. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
391:Of all the attributes of the Creator that are encompassed by the Light, the essential and defining one is an infinite and unbounded desire to give and share of itself. The ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
392:For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
393:Some of my students have had really bad experiences with religion. They moved away from talking to God. For a lot of people, angels are a gentle route back to the Creator. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
394:This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
395:Avoiding sin isn’t about us not getting in trouble; it is about us trusting that the Creator knows his creation best and has designed the world to work in a certain way. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
396:Netflix is amazing 'cause they trust the creator to do their job, and they trust us to do our job. They're really smart and just let us do our thing and deliver a great job. ~ Laura Prepon, #NFDB
397:We tend to think of the Faustian man, the one who fabricates, manipulates, seduces and ends up destroying. But the new image will be man the creator, the artist, the player. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
398:We will be one step down from the Creator," she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. "Imagining a world and then making it. ~ Walter Mosley, #NFDB
399:You are the Creator of your reality... you were granted this ability. You have free will... you are an unlimited aspect, a portion of God... of the Creator... of All That Is. ~ Darryl Anka, #NFDB
400:But we believe that the Octavo must be read to avert catastrophe—otherwise why did the Creator leave it behind?” “Perhaps He was just forgetful,” suggested the astrologer. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
401:If you want to be a real entrepreneur you have to be the cause, you have to be the creator of someone else's new realty. Which eliminates time, space, motion, and friction. ~ Ashton Kutcher, #NFDB
402:I saw it, and I knew that he spoke the truth. I would always see it. I would see the spark of the Creator in every human life I ever encountered, and in every human life I took. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
403:I think of stress as the creator of cancer and heart attacks, like a tiny little ball you feed. I believe that one of the reasons I've never got ill is that I'm not stressed. ~ Simon Cowell, #NFDB
404:My favorite songs are my favorite songs because they just feel like a certain moment, or a certain photo, just a snapshot for whatever three or four minutes the song is. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
405:The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers - earth, water, ether, sun and air - who is a servant of God, the Creator of all these, ought not to fall ill. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
406:Those who are rich in the things of this world need to remember that all they possess come from the Creator. He owns it all. This is a relevant reminder in our day as well: ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
407:...but God fears woman even more than He fears the devil -and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man... ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
408:Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
409:Mort was getting interested in the rock. It had curly shells in it, relics of the early days of the world when the Creator had made creatures out of stone, no one knew why. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
410:Everam, he began, but no words came to him. What did prayer matter? Either the Creator existed or He did not. Either He would help them in their hour of need, or He would not. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
411:The machine has helped the creator of the machine to survive. No, it hasn't helped him. It has kept him alive. Gave him reason. A thing he felt his life was deeply lacking in. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
412:At some point, we must bow the knee to the Lord and confess that He is the Creator who does not owe us any answers. Only then will we begin to understand our place in the universe. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
413:The Creator favors the man who loves over the man who hates. If you teach hatred to your children, one day your child will have that hatred reflected back onto them, or onto you. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
414:I am in love with the creator of heaven and earth. I see the morning sun and thank the Lord for everything that he has blessed me with. That is a perfect start to every morning. ~ Jason Collins, #NFDB
415:The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences. ~ Teresa de Lauretis, #NFDB
416:One of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
417:Open yourself to consider the glorious possibilities that lie just beyond how you have seen, held, and related to the masculine energy of the Creator that is embodied in all men. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
418:Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
419:If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
420:The word griot...is the word for what I do and the role that the filmmaker has in society...the griot is a messenger of one's time, a visionary and the creator of the future. ~ Djibril Diop Mambety, #NFDB
421:If you enter into the spirit of Life, you are really reproducing in yourself the qualities of the Creator of that which allows something to be manifested and created in the first place. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
422:Living from the Creator Orientation is actually more challenging. In the Victim Orientation, I didn't have to exercise conscious choice; I just reacted to my circumstances. ~ David Emerald Womeldorff, #NFDB
423:Possessions and positions may promote our happiness but cannot create it. Happiness is a state created by self through the realization of how the self is important to the creator. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
424:The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
425:The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#NFDB
426:I revere the fullness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and creation. In the gospel moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
427:Self defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone to resist the first approaches of tyranny. ~ Elbridge Gerry, #NFDB
428:When Newton breached this philosophical barrier by rendering all motion comprehensible and predictable, some theologians criticized him for leaving nothing for the Creator to do. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
429:Believing that the power to destroy belongs to the Creator alone I affirm... that any theory which, when carried out, demands the annihilation of force, is necessarily erroneous. ~ James Prescott Joule, #NFDB
430:he knew that nothing ever surprised the Creator of heaven and earth. As the circuit preacher had said a month or so ago, “God never leans over the balcony of heaven and gasps.” James ~ Tamera Alexander, #NFDB
431:Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell?
-Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
432:The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #NFDB
433:Good and evil, and joy and pain, and I and you- colored vapors did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,- and so he created the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
434:I am the creator of my world and so are you. We can widen our world by breaking free from the maze of expectations. We can shrink our world by entrapping ourselves with expectations. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
435:I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world. ~ Anthony Braxton, #NFDB
436:Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
437:Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
438:The focus in the Creator Orientation is on a Vision or an Outcome. You orient your thoughts and actions toward creating what you most deeply want to see or experience in life. ~ David Emerald Womeldorff, #NFDB
439:In the Navajo cosmogony the agent of change (as distinct from the creator) was alive. It was Locust. In Darwin’s cosmogony it had to be scientifically inanimate. Locust was renamed Evolution. ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
440:She was not meant to live simply to endure, but to thrive, to create, and in doing so reflect the glory of creation itself, and the Creator who had fashioned her for this purpose. Before ~ Marie Bostwick, #NFDB
441:the artist can never be an outsider to his own work, for the painting, or any other artwork, as an artistic creation , will in a sense always be nothing more than an extension of the creator. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
442:28 ‡ Do you not know? Have you not heard?† The LORD is the everlasting† God, the Creator† of the ends of the earth.† He will not grow tired or weary,† and his understanding no one can fathom.† ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
443:An angel is an intelligent essence, always in motion. It has free will, is incorporeal, serves God, and has been bestowed with immortality. Only the Creator understands its true nature. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
444:...believing in Jesus Christ brings out the individual tallents of men in a way that is not otherwise possible, ... I percieve that those who worship the Creator are exceedingly creative. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
445:Can't you see the Creator of the universe, who understands every secret, every mystery, sitting patiently and listening to a four-year-old talk to Him? That's a beautiful image of a father. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
446:How rude for the created to tell the Creator "I wasn't worth it. You didn't do a good job when you made me. I wasn't worth dying for." You don't get a choice! He's the one who gets to decide. ~ Mark Lowry, #NFDB
447:I will give you intelligence," submitted the Creator, "enough knowledge to destroy everything on earth, but you will have to use it."
"Done!" said our ancestor and that was our Genesis. ~ Joseph Heller,#NFDB
448:Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, gives us access to the Creator to reveal hidden things and invites us to seek out our sacred responsibility to perceive God’s unscripted presence here and now. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
449:Although the works of the Creator may be in themselves all equally perfect, the animal is, as I see it, the most complete work of nature, and man is her masterpiece. ~ Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, #NFDB
450:Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions. ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
451:If you make provision for the desires of the flesh and bear a grudge against your neighbor on account of something transitory, you worship the creature instead of the Creator. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #NFDB
452:Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
453:The Creator desired that the Light be veiled in order to grant existence to the lower beings, which could not otherwise survive in its full presence. ~ Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of Kabbalah, #NFDB
454:There has been a concerted effort to frame caring about climate change and the environment as an alternate religion - one that worships the creation rather than the creator, so to speak. ~ Katharine Hayhoe, #NFDB
455:All that is most valuable can be had for nothing. They come as presents from the hand of the Creator, and neither air nor sky, nor beauty, genius, health, or strength, can be bought or sold. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
456:Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
457:The bottle of the creature cracks and dries up, but the well of the Creator never fails; happy is he who dwells at the well, and so has abundant and constant supplies near at hand. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
458:Art really does instruct us in how to think, feel, and behave. To be an artist is to have great power. To be the creator of others' dreams, it is a responsibility that must not be taken lightly. ~ Rod Dreher, #NFDB
459:...the Creator has made man, in spite of himself, a logical animal; and consequences will work themselves out, whether he designs it or not, to those results which the premisses dictate. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney, #NFDB
460:Your principal concern appears to be that the Creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
461:The Gospel is true because it deprives men of all glory, wisdom, and righteousness and turns over all honor to the Creator alone. It is safer to attribute too much glory unto God than unto man. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
462:They imagined that with a rightly honored commodity they could “purchase” security in a world that seemed devoid of the creator. “Godmaking” amid anxiety is a standard human procedure! But ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
463:Don't be afraid to think too highly of yourself. If the Creator made you and is not ashamed of the job, certainly you should not be. He pronounced His work good, and you should respect it. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
464:I blinked. “You met freaking God? The Creator?”
Gabriel actually rolled his eyes. “He’s my dad, Gaia. Of course I see him.”
“Well, you’ve never mentioned hanging with him before,” I mumbled. ~ Sunniva Dee,#NFDB
465:Our goal, our purpose, and our only reason for being in the world is to transform our desire to receive for ourselves alone into a desire to share—and by doing so, to become one with the Creator. ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
466:Then there was a time I woke up and there was your world coming at me like a custard pie thrown by the Creator and, well, I landed in the sea not far from the Circumfence widdershins of Krull. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
467:What we pluralists have to do is to say to the people standing on the faith line, particularly the young ones, no, pluralism is the wish of the creator. It is the greatest opportunity for humanity. ~ Eboo Patel, #NFDB
468:Bright-kindled from heavenly flames,
framed of Love's all-consuming fire,
Ignited of purest passion,
Burning in the Creator King's heart,
A splendor of bliss to illuminate Albion! ~ Stephen R Lawhead,#NFDB
469:Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. —Isaiah 40:28 ~ Colleen Coble, #NFDB
470:Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. The Lord, who is the creator of the universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
471:The way I define happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be. ~ Leo Babauta, #NFDB
472:We might also wonder, in passing, which is more moral: helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think the creator of the universe will reward you for it? ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
473:ISA40.28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
474:The Creator does not care what happens in this world, nobody has heard from Him since he marked Cain. We are alone. Orphaned children, cursed, to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive !! ~ Darren Aronofsky, #NFDB
475:God is the Creator, is He not?" she had said with a smile. "So when we create, even if it is a mere length of lace and not the stars in the heavens, we honor Him. We bear His likeness when we work. ~ Jocelyn Green, #NFDB
476:He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion. ~ William H. Crogman, #NFDB
477:If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me. ~ Greg Graffin, #NFDB
478:It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage...Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
479:know that deep and comforting truth: that our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
480:The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
481:I am defined by my will to survive, not by intelligence or cunning or money or good looks. The Creator didn't see her way clear to give me those things, instead she gave me a strong will. ~ Jaune Quick to See Smith, #NFDB
482:Through all of history mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet. ~ Ray Manzarek, #NFDB
483:Wayne's cool. I ran into him at my hangout back home, and he's just cool. I actually have this beat that I want him on, but I was too scared to get it to Clancy to get to them, but Wayne's cool. ~ Tyler The Creator, #NFDB
484:Paul McCartney is a genius ... Paul married Rock & Roll to beauty, and forever raised the bar for composers, musicians, and fans ... an incredible solo performer ... the creator of our favorite songs. ~ Alec Baldwin, #NFDB
485:that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
486:CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
487:If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond "Es Muss sein! ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
488:The creator of stars, heaven and earth
surpassed himself when he also created pain. Lips like rubies, delicious-smelling hair, blooming flowers, how many of you are
already buried in earthy soil? ~ Omar Khayy m,#NFDB
489:It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place. The Creator does not create at the whim of a scientist. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
490:What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?... Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its stars? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How could it be without the creator? ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
491:When all my life is oriented around glorifying God, I see the value and glory and joy in the little. I see the Creator of all things in the details of my life. His presence there makes nothing little. ~ Rachel Jankovic, #NFDB
492:It is faith that looks up at the creator God and knows him to be the God of love. And it is faith that looks out at the world with the longing to bring that love to bear in healing reconciliation, and hope. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
493:Don't hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
494:The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
495:A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects every year. The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His creatures. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
496:Isis, the Egyptian goddess of renewal is symbolized for the Hindus by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the sustainer, and Shiva the transformer or destroyer - the Cycle of creation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
497:The Creator did not give humans wards. Humans created them out of unified need. Alone, the symbols had no power. It was the resolve of their makers, the hope and prayers of the masses huddling behind them. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
498:Thoth was also the “tongue” of the Creator, and he at all times voiced the will of the great god, and spoke the words which commanded every being and thing in heaven and in earth to come into existence. ~ E A Wallis Budge, #NFDB
499:Once at Golgotha where he would be crucified, the people continued their festival of shame, not knowing that their attempts to heap shame on the Creator God were the most disgraceful acts in human history. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
500:When Sigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, Luigi, and Zelda, heard the complaints about video games, he simply shrugged his shoulders. “Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock ’n’ roll. ~ David Sheff, #NFDB
501:If one person “wastes” away his day by spending hours connecting with God, and the other person believes he is too busy or has better things to do than worship the Creator and Sustainer, who is the crazy one? ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
502:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches, for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
503:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches: for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
504:If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
505:When one knows God without beginning and end in the midst of the complex mass of things, the creator of all who takes many forms, the One who envelops the universe, he is delivered from all bondage. ~ Swetacwatara Upanishad, #NFDB
506:We call the Creator father, because we rely upon Him to protect us, guide us, feed us, keep us warm, to discipline us and all those things. I try to take my cue from the Creator, with regard to my children. ~ Terrence Howard, #NFDB
507:I committed crimes of passion and my soul was suspected, But it was thrown out of court because of course the Creator and I connected. He told me, "Fear not for thou art protected. Your life is being requested. ~ Cee Lo Green, #NFDB
508:Pelagianism denies God, … It has only the creator, i.e. Nature as a basis, not the Saviour, … – in a word, it denies God; … as a consequence of this, it elevates man into God, … Augustinianism denies man[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
509:People talk about the Creator -
But surely he didn't create man only
to destroy him later! Because we are bad? And
who's to blame for that? Or because we are beautiful?
I can't make any sense of it. ~ Omar Khayy m,#NFDB
510:God is within you! You yourself are the creator. If you find that place within you from which you brought this thing about, you will be able to live with it and affirm it, perhaps even enjoy it, as your life. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
511:Never give your soul to a creature, because it belongs to God alone; see in all creatures a motive for rejoicing, in homage to the Creator; never seek yourself in another, but discover yourself in yourself ~ Isabelle Eberhardt, #NFDB
512:But resurrection is more than defeat of an enemy. It is the inauguration of God’s new world, the new creation which has already begun to take over the present creation with the unstoppable power of the creator God. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
513:Contemplating the beauty of creation inspires us to recognize the love of the Creator, that Love which “moves the sun and the other stars”. (Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace. 1 January, 2010) ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
514:In other words, I believe that faith in the Creator is necessarily transrational (not antirational) and mystical. I try to remember that as I work through intellectual challenges—and I mean work through, not avoid. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
515:If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed, I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
516:If man is to remain the creator and master of his world then, Stirner maintains, ... all that has been accepted, that has taken on the secure guise of the 'fact', must be return to a state of flux, or be rejected. ~ John Carroll, #NFDB
517:Our restlessness in this world seems to indicate that we are intended for a better. We have all of us a longing after happiness; and surely the Creator will gratify all the natural desires he has implanted in us. ~ Robert Southey, #NFDB
518:The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless” (Is 40:28b-29). ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
519:We may think that our skill lies in creating something out of nothing, but it is not so. God is the Creator of all things. Our years of training serve only to teach us how to recognise what lies beneath the surface. ~ Ann Swinfen, #NFDB
520:When man turns his back on the Creator's plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order. If man is not at peace with God, then earth itself cannot be at peace. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
521:I was performing with the Pussycat Dolls when I was approached by a company who wanted to do a workout series. I hired the creator of the Dolls, and as a team we went in and rehearsed and put together this series. ~ Carmen Electra, #NFDB
522:You can't look at the Noah story and not see some kind of environmental connection. The Creator wants to start over. He wants creation to be given a shot at survival, and the true enemy is the wickedness of men. ~ Darren Aronofsky, #NFDB
523:Rastafari means to live in nature, to see the Creator in the wind, sea and storm. Other religions pointed to the sky, and while we were looking in the sky, they dug up all the gold and diamonds and went away with them ~ Jimmy Cliff, #NFDB
524:God’s reply to Job makes one simple point: while human beings may have questions about how the Lord rules His world, they have no justification for demanding answers from Him. He is the Creator, but we are the creatures. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
525:In the future, as in the past, the great ideas [of mathematics] must be simplifying ideas, the creator must always be one who clarifies, for himself, and for others, the most complicated issues of formulas and concepts. ~ Andre Weil, #NFDB
526:How can we ultimately fail to twig that the apparent impiety of contemporary art is only ever the inverted image of sacred art, the reversal of the creator's initial question: why is there something instead of nothing? ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
527:When you find inner peace, neither the presence nor absence of any person, place or thing, condition, circumstance, or situation can be the Creator of your state of mind or the cause of your experience of being. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
528:Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed. ~ Lord Dunsany, #NFDB
529:If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
530:Stand unshod upon it for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator,” Alan Paton wrote. “Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.”4 ~ Alexandra Fuller, #NFDB
531:There is abundant evidence that the Bible, though written by men, is not the product of the human mind. By countless multitudes it has always been revered as a communication to us from the Creator of the Universe. ~ John Ambrose Fleming, #NFDB
532:When a man and woman married, nothing they did together had any shame or immodesty. It was all in the name of God. There was fruitfulness and joy in it, and it followed the Creator's own plan for continuing the human race. ~ Naomi Ragen, #NFDB
533:Had mankind listened to the Creator when he advised his children to never create his image, or give him a name, then humanity would not be so confused and divided in believing that every faith is worshiping a different god. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
534:In the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
535:The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
536:If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is the Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. That means that no part of my life must be outside of His lordship. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
537:The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
538:You will not dishonor the divine perfections by judgments unworthy of them, provided you never judge of Him by yourself, provided you do not ascribe to the Creator the imperfections and limitations of created beings. ~ Nicolas Malebranche, #NFDB
539:As Trout departed, he sent this telepathic message to the Creator of the Universe, serving as His eyes and ears and conscience: “Am headed for Forty-second Street now. How much do you already know about Forty-second Street? ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
540:Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
541:Creation-that is the great redemption from suffering, and life's growing light. But that the creator may be, much suffering is needed and much change. Indeed, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
542:I still believe that man, not having been given the power of creation, does not posses the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The perogative of destruction belongs solely to the Creator of all that lives. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
543:Love is the Creator’s greatest invention and, as St. Ambrose said, that is especially true when our entire spirit and body are involved in this extraordinary rite, which is after all the rite of our own birth and of our descent. ~ Dario Fo, #NFDB
544:Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
545:The Christian Miracle’s chief disclosure is this: the Creator of the universe is not at war with us. Neither is his favor for sale; no number of brownie points can possibly buy it. God loves us freely and unconditionally. ~ Michael Guillen, #NFDB
546:I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
547:As Muslims the way we show respect to the creator is by respecting creation and this is why we have to reconcile ourselves with the objectives of the Revelation and the objective is really to honor nature as part of Creation. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
548:Everything Christ taught He taught to women as well as men. Indeed, in the restored light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a woman including a young woman, occupies a majesty all her own in the divine design of the Creator. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
549:Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” (Is 40:28 KJV). This question rebukes our slowness to believe in God’s majesty. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
550:If your daily life seems poor to you, do not blame that: blame yourself. Tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor and unimportant place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
551:It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
552:I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me - I actually took my teachers seriously! ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
553:Some would say the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he's a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
554:A rewarding relationship occurs when there is a common spiritual goal, shared spiritual values and a mutual desire to build a relationship upon a spiritual foundation and for the purpose of connecting to the light of the creator. ~ Yehuda Berg, #NFDB
555:The Declaration of Independence summarizes the civic principles of American life. It agrees with this biblical perspective when it affirms that we are all created equal and endowed by the Creator, God, with our unalienable rights. ~ Alan Keyes, #NFDB
556:The will of God, the creator and ruler of the universe, embraces all possible wills, His own as well as that of every man born into this world. If this is so, intervened Jesus with sudden insight, then each man is a part of God. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
557:Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
558:Johannes Kepler published his book Harmonices Mundi in 1619. In it he proposed that it was the Creator who “decorated” the whole world, using mathematical and musical harmonic proportions. The spiritual and the physical are united. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
559:Men therefore need a God-given identity if they are to fulfill their true purpose. We must learn what God originally intended for them. To do this, we must go back and rediscover the Creator’s original plan for both men and women. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
560:There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God’s counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
561:It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. ~ Kent Nerburn, #NFDB
562:People who do good work often think that whatever they’re working on is no good. Others see what they’ve done and think it’s wonderful, but the creator sees nothing but flaws. This pattern is no coincidence: worry made the work good. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
563:The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
564:Understand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night and their enemies. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
565:As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the Creator. ~ Carl Linnaeus, #NFDB
566:Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization? ~ William Henry Harrison, #NFDB
567:Jehovah is the great Miracle Maker, the unrivaled Wonder worker. None can be likened unto Him, He is alone in wonderland, the Creator and Worker of true marvels, compared with which all other remarkable things are as child's play. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
568:Nolan Bushnell, the creator of the Atari video game system, once stated, ‘Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea, It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference. ~ Mark Batterson, #NFDB
569:This speck of human life is so insignificant, and still the very source of creation is active in it. The Creator still finds it worthwhile to be active in this speck. That means there must be something else other than the speck, isn’t it? ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
570:America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the creator of life. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
571:The God of the universe--the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor--loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
572:Thought is the primary energy and vibration that emanated from God and is thus the creator of life, electrons, atoms, and all forms of energy. Thought itself is the finest vibratory energy, the speediest power among all powers. ~ Paramhansa Yogananda, #NFDB
573:The wonder of prayer is rediscovered in who we're speaking to. Prayer is a mystical event by which we get to talk to the Creator of all-the One who fashioned our world with a few words-knowing that God not only listens but answers. ~ Margaret Feinberg, #NFDB
574:By making man the master of his own destiny and the creator of his own desires, God makes man ultimately responsible for the life he leads and the choices he makes. God does not interfere with fate; he simply helps man cope with it. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
575:How did you deal with it? How do you stop loving someone?”
“The Creator didn’t make love conditional,” Jona said. “Love is what makes us human. What separates us from the corelings. There is value in it, even when it is not requited. ~ Peter V Brett,#NFDB
576:...if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
577:The simple answer is that there is something in the creature that does not reside in the Creator—sin. That does not mean that the creature has something greater than the Creator; rather, the creature has something far less than the Creator. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
578:I believe in God - not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
579:When we have completed all the journeys and adventures through our variety of lives we are supposed to return to the creator with our accumulation of knowledge. It is then absorbed. In this way we are considered cells in the body of God. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
580:The words we use for the Creator are a reflect of ourselves. If we think of God as fear and shame, we are scared and have something to be ashamed of ... But if we see love, compassion and kindness, it is because we possess these qualities. ~ Shams Tabrizi, #NFDB
581:"Based on a true story" is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of "no loan request refused." For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
582:Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures. ~ Tiffany Madison, #NFDB
583:The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
584:[T]he declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, "Who created the creator?" After all, what is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one? ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
585:The physical union of a man and a woman, in essence, is a supernatural act, a reminiscence of paradise, the most beautiful of all the hymns of praise dedicated to the Creator by the creature; it is the alpha and the omega of all creation. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
586:The proper understanding of human thinking and reasoning, then, must begin with a proper understanding of creation, and therefore of the Creator. In other words, the proper understanding of logic requires a proper understanding of theology. ~ Joel McDurmon, #NFDB
587:This is not language, this is the world being turned inside out, not mathematically in super-dimensional planes, not artistically in violaceous daring, but biologically, atomically, so that not even the creator can any more recognize his world. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
588:We say to the Creator of all this magnitude and majesty, ‘Well, I’m not sure You are worth it…. You see, I really like my car, or my little sin habit, or my money, and I’m really not sure I want to give them up, even if it means I get You.’ ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
589:What is emitted from the divine, though it be only like the reflection from the fire, still has the divine reality in itself, and one might almost ask what were the fire without glow, the sun without light, or the Creator without the creature? ~ Max Muller, #NFDB
590:You are the hip-hop violinist, the creator, the visionaire, ... and therefore you should do whatever the hell you wanna do because whatever you do is right. They're not gonna have like 20 hip-hop violinists in the company. I know what to do. ~ Miri Ben Ari, #NFDB
591:The Secret To The Universe Is Hidden Within Our Language. To Discover It Might Be To Destroy It - So It Should Forever Remain A Mystery, Or Forever May Fail To Be - EXCEPT When The Secret Is Revealed By THE CREATOR. ~ Melchizedek, #NFDB
592:[Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it. ~ Philip Johnson, #NFDB
593:The universe and everything in it will someday pass away and be made new by the Creator. Therefore, the events of today that seem so important are not really very significant, except for those matters that will survive the end of the universe. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
594:We're wanting you to come to the place where you're beginning to offer your thought deliberately. Where you are guiding your thoughts on purpose, where you are the creator of your own experience. Because you are the manager of your own thought ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
595:There Are The Words That Couldn’t Be Twice Said
There are the words that couldn’t be twice said,
He, who said once, spent out all his senses.
Only two things have never their end –
The heavens’ blue and the Creator’s mercy.
~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
596:She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man, and in all ways has proved Herself a more deserving object of man’s worship than Christ, that unshaven fanatic who lusted for the end of the world. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
597:Don't ever be afraid of giving. Give. Give of your time, your forgiveness, your understanding, your love. Give of your money. Give to the creation, and you'll be given by the Creator. Be generous, and the Most Generous will be generous with you. ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
598:There is a persuasion in the soul of man that he is here for cause, that he was put down in this place by the Creator to do the work for which he inspires him, that thus he is an overmatch for all antagonists that could combine against him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
599:In our spiritual vision we are not only to see each thing in sharp relief, standing out in all the brilliance of its specific being, but we are also to see each thing as transparent: in and through each created thing we are to discern the Creator. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
600:Although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed. That's the great Generosity of women and the great generosity of the Creator who worked it out is that there are no unilateral agreements on sexuality. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
601:God Almighty created each and every one of use for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves, is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating is. ~ Marcus Garvey, #NFDB
602:If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost... However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts... for they have already been given to another. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
603:Movies are movement. A comic-book is immobility. From one still picture to another, but no movement. You need to make the movement in your head. In the movies, you see the movement. It's different. What is the same is the mind of the creator. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, #NFDB
604:Faced with the arrival of humanity, the creator-species, the giants of legend, the spiders’ thought was not How can we destroy them? but How can we trap them? How can we use them? What is the barrier between us that makes them want to destroy us? ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
605:Now nobody will begin to understand Thomas philosophy, or indeed Catholic philosophy, who does not realize that the primary and fundamental part of it is entirely the praise of Life, the praise of Being, the praise of God as the creator of the world. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
606:Positively, it is a summons to us to recognize that God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable-and hence a summons to us to humble ourselves, to listen ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
607:With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the fact of the world and see the collapse of this pygmy giant. Then will I wander god-like and victorious through the ruins of the world. And giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
608:Your people must learn to give up their arrogance. They are not the only ones placed on this earth. Theirs is not the only way. People have worshiped the Creator and loved their families in many ways in all places. Your people must learn to honor this. ~ Kent Nerburn, #NFDB
609:A real rattlesnake looked like this: The Creator of the Universe had put a rattle on its tail. The Creator had also given it front teeth which were hypodermic syringes filled with deadly poison. *** Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
610:I know that people who don't believe in God might scoff at the idea that the creator of the universe has the time or inclination to try incessantly (and with not much long-term success) to change my heart. I get it. I just have no other explanation. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
611:My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
612:Nevertheless, the declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, “Who created the creator?” After all, what is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one? ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
613:It is the Creator´s Grand Army, and he is the Commander-in-Chief... With these facts before you, now try to guess man´s chiefest pet name for this ferocious Commander-in-Chief? I will save you the trouble but you must not laugh. It is Our Father in Heaven. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
614:No awesome thing in creation was meant to give you what only the Creator is able to give. Every awesome thing in creation is designed to point you to the One who alone is worthy of capturing and controlling the awe of your searching and hungry heart. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
615:The Prophets even express their surprise that God should take notice of man, who is too little and too unimportant to be worthy of the attention of the Creator; how, then, should other living creatures be considered as proper objects for Divine Providence! ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
616:Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
617:How ironic, then, and how poetic, that humankind may have created the Creator out of want for one. Man creates God, who then creates man. Is that not the perfect circle of life? But then, if that turns out to be the case, who is created in whose image? ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
618:From the creation learn to admire thy Lord! And if any of the things thou see exceed thy comprehension, and thou are not able to find the reason thereof, yet for this glorify the Creator, that the wisdom of these works surpass thine understanding. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #NFDB
619:Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Everyone always blames the monster--but no one ever blames the one who created it. Isn't that right?" He sneered at Moira's limp form. "Tell me, who is the monster? The creation or the creator? It has to start somewhere. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
620:Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
621:sitting at the table for six or eight hours straight. When he got up he would lurch with fatigue, his hands shook, and he was scarcely coherent. The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
622:...the existence and increase of our race and nation, the sustenance of its children and the purity of its blood, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, and the nation's ability to fulfill the mission appointed to it by the Creator of the universe. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
623:Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the “disorganizer,” the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, “defensive research” aimed at perpetuating today, predominates. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
624:Farid says: Creator is in the creation and creation in the Creator! Why should we then be blaming others when that One is everywhere? [2667.jpg] -- from Anthology of Great Sufi & Mystical Poets of Pakistan, by Paul Smith
~ Baba Sheikh Farid, Fathom the ocean
,#NFDB
625:It might be judged an affront to your understanding should I go about to prove this first principle; the existence of a Diety and that He is the Creator of the universe, for that would suppose you ignorant of what all mankind in all ages have agreed in. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
626:The creator had nothing to do with her rescue.” “Yeah, he should have cried, thank the Flea!” Quain said. “Ooh, I like. We should use it all the time,” Loren added. They tried out variations of it as they headed inside with Flea trotting behind them. “Guess ~ Maria V Snyder, #NFDB
627:Even someone like Mrs. Bonnaventura, who had lived a mostly blameless life, when ushered into the awesome presence of the Creator of the infinite universe and also of the butterfly, would discover ten thousand fearsome new layers of meaning in the word humility. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
628:He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn’t one. The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn’t been one of them. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
629:There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself.... Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
630:If God had been conscious and had created the finished article, there would have been nothing more to do... But we see it is not so, and that every time we add to our own consciousness it is the growing consciousness of the Creator. ~ Carl Jung in interview with M.I. Rix Weaver, #NFDB
631:Her feeling was rather that, given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog, that oddity of human history probably unplanned by the Creator. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
632:Rojer nodded, but his eye grew wet. Leesha squeezed his hand. "Herb Gatherers see death often," she told him. "No one, no one, ever goes to the Creator with all their business complete. We all get a different length of time, but it needs to be enough, regardless. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
633:Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: ''the Son, O how unlike the Father!'' First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
634:God takes center stage in every story of Scripture. He is the Creator of life, the Judge, and the Savior. So while the Bible does talk about marriage, let’s be careful not to use the Bible just to find helpful tips on marriage. There is a much, much bigger picture. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
635:In former times, God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
636:Second, an art work has value as a creation because man is made in the image of God, and therefore man not only can love and think and feel emotion but also has the capacity to create. Being in the image of the Creator, we are called upon to have creativity. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
637:The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
638:The creator of Bambi was secretly writing pornographic novels on the side. This single fact tells you everything you need to know about turn-of-the-century Vienna, and why it was the perfect place for Sigmund Freud and his far-fetched theories about the human psyche. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
639:How could this fatuous, emotional thing be without beginning and without end, the creator of all? I had taken the dead letter of Scripture at its very deadest, and it had killed me, according to the saying of St. Paul: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
640:The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. ~ Babatunde Olatunji, #NFDB
641:The incarnation is “a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
642:The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. When ‘man turns his back on the Creator’s plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
643:He whose birth we commemorate this season is more than the symbol of a holiday. He is the Son of God, the Creator of the earth, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, the Redeemer of mankind, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
644:I can easily say "no" to a project if the script isn't great, but when the script is good, then I start asking the other questions. Who's going to direct it? Who's the creator? Who are the actors? When are we shooting? Where is it shooting? All that kind of stuff. ~ Dominic Monaghan, #NFDB
645:...the conscious need of the strong poet [defined broadly as the creator of new metaphors]...to come to terms with the blind impress which chance has given him, to make a self for himself by redescribing that impress in terms which are, if only marginally, his own. ~ Richard M Rorty, #NFDB
646:Around the world, we can see the results of exploitation which destroys much without taking future generations into account. Today, all men have a duty to show themselves worthy of the mission given them by the Creator by ensuring the safekeeping of that creation. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
647:Christians sometimes make themselves into elephants afraid of mice. You have the Creator of the universe on your side; not to mention, you've been given eternal life. 'Whom or what shall you fear?' To be afraid of anything other than God himself is like an insult to God. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
648:He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
649:Our generation delimited the definition & horizon of Love in a box that mainly refers to love between a boy & a girl. Love has a broader & profound meaning beyond this box. Surely, the highest state of love is Love of God, a love between creations & the Creator. ~ Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, #NFDB
650:We came to the comforting conclusion that the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no such things as 'wasted' lives, saving and except when am individual wilfully squanders and wastes his own life. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB
651:Man is a marvelous curiosity...he thinks he is the Creator's pet...he even believes the Creator loves him; has passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks he listens. Isn't it a quaint idea. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
652:Take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and
its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
653:The incarnation is "a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
654:embryos of different animals closely resemble each other, so that at an early stage of their existence they cannot be distinguished. But what of this? It only shows the unity of design in the works of the Creator which is one of the grand characteristics {191} of the world. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
655:How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified. ~ Amin Maalouf, #NFDB
656:I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form—or the master of the classic form?"
"I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master but really—"
"Not a master. The master. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover,#NFDB
657:Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. ~ Louis Pasteur, as quoted in The Literary Digest (18 October 1902), #NFDB
658:The unceasing activity of the Creator whereby, in overflowing bounty and goodwill, He upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for His own glory. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
659:It's crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe - the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor - loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
660:Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
661:We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
662:We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.… ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
663:H.P. Owen’s book “Concepts of Deity” provides a good standard version: “Theism may be defined as belief in one God, the Creator, who is infinite, self-existent, incorporeal, eternal, immutable, impassible, simple, perfect, omniscient and omnipotent” (Owen 1971, p. 1). ~ John Michael Greer, #NFDB
664:I am Squanto. I am known to all those who gather here: English, Pokanoket, Nemasket, even a few of my own surviving Patuxets. I speak to you as a pniese, a man of honor. I will never leave this land. I give thanks for all of our people to the Creator of All Things. ~ Joseph Bruchac, #NFDB
665:According to kabbalistic teaching, humility is simply the understanding that nothing we have is ours. Our intelligence, our wealth, our beauty, even our spiritual greatness really belong to that part of ourselves that was hewn from the great mountain of the Creator. Humility ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
666:I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
667:If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to it. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
668:For generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature(3). ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
669:It is the job of the creator to explode. It is the task of the academic to walk around the bomb site, gathering up the shrapnel, to figure out what kind of an explosion it was, who was killed, how much damage it was meant to do and how close it came to actually achieving that. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
670:Nothing is too great or too good to be true. Do not believe that we can imagine things better than they are. In the long run, in the ultimate outlook, in the eye of the Creator, the possibilities of existence, the possibilities open to us, are beyond our imagination. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
671:There's a widespread cultural barrenness across art and political culture. But there are some pockets of resistance on the extreme margins, like the techno-savvy protest movements, small press, the creator-owned comics, that seem to be getting some signs of hope for the future. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
672:Then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking for that reward which might come from without. For the creator must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself, and in Nature to which he has attached himself. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
673:If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or slightly remodel the present ones, leaving all the rest of nature unchanged, we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
674:The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the created holds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker... The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
675:We take what we need: what the Creator put in this world isn’t anyone’s property, the fruits of the earth belong to all men and, if we don’t like some place, we just move to another. Nothing and no one ties us down. We don’t care about the risks; what do laws and decrees mean to us? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
676:24 Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. •Amen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
677:/Farsi & Turkish Body of earth, don't talk of earth Tell the story of pure mirrors The Creator has given you this splendor-- Why talk of anything else? [1961.jpg] -- from The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi, by Andrew Harvey
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Body of earth, dont talk of earth
,#NFDB
678:The work on "Weeds" was wonderful! It was pure fun, from the people involved in the production to Jenji Kohan, who was the creator of the show, to Justin Kirk, who was my partner and who was terrific to work with because he's a great friend. The whole experience was just wonderful. ~ Meital Dohan, #NFDB
679:We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name "Jesus" means: 'God saves'. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
680:God the Creator had made man in His own image, and that meant that every man and woman who dwelt under God’s light was a creator of some kind, a person with an urge to stretch out his hand and shape the world into some rational pattern. The black man wanted—was able—only to unshape. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
681:How does the genius make itself known? In the way that in nature
Shows the Creator himself,e'en in the infinite whole.
Clear is the ether, and yet of depth that ne'er can be fathomed;
Seen by the eye, it remains evermore closed to the sense.
~ Friedrich Schiller, Geniality
,#NFDB
682:I look on the opposite sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky on a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship, I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of the motions, and then I wish both of them goodnight. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
683:It's a truly disgusting idea that the creator of the universe - capable of inventing the laws of physics and designing the evolutionary process - that this protégé of supernatural intellect couldn't think of a better way to forgive our sins than to have himself tortured to death. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
684:Generations hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
685:Life isn’t happening to you; life is responding to you. Life is your call! Every area of your life is your call. You are the creator of your life. You are the writer of your life story. You are the director of your life movie. You decide what your life will be – by what you give out. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
686:When the man touches through
to the exact center of the woman,
he lies motionless, in equilibrium,
in absolute desire, at the threshold
of the world to which the Creator Spirit
knows the pass-whisper, and whispers it,
and his loving friend becomes his divinity. ~ Galway Kinnell,#NFDB
687:expresses how the Creator solves the problems he needs to solve in order to bring creation out of chaos. Therefore, we have every reason to suppose that the succession of days was not meant to refer to a chronological succession but to a logical, thematic, and literary succession. In ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
688:The Sufi relates to God not as a judge, nor as a father figure, nor as the creator, but as our own Beloved, who is so close, so near, so tender.
In the states of nearness the lover experiences an intimacy with the Beloved which carries the softness and ecstasy of love. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
689:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; the sculptor cuts away here, smoothes there, makes this line lighter, this other purer, until he or she has shown a beautiful face upon the statue. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
690:Power is given only to those you allow to have power over you. No man was born with a master. The only master of all is the Creator, and he created all men to be free. Freedom is a God-given right, not a human-granted gift. No man should have to fight to breathe in good health and peace. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
691:The most important thing for me is having a relationship with God. To know that the owner, the creator of the universe loves you, sent His Son to die for your sins; that's very empowering. Knowing Him and knowing that He loves me gives me encouragement and confidence to move forward. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
692:Creating a world in need of development, God in some way sought to limit himself in such a way that many of the things we think of as evils, dangers or sources of suffering, are in reality part of the pains of childbirth which he uses to draw us into the act of cooperation with the Creator. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
693:Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far. We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
694:Human life may not be more than a meaningless interlude in a vicious drama of flesh and bones that we call evolution; that the Creator may not care any more for the destiny of man or the self-perpetuation of individual men than He seems to have cared for the dinosaurs or the Tasmanians. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
695:If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
696:Says Farid, you must fathom the ocean; it contains all you need and desire. Why soil your hands searching the little ponds? Says Farid, the Creator is in the creation and the creation in the Creator. Whom shall we blame when He is everywhere?
~ Baba Sheikh Farid, You must fathom the ocean
,#NFDB
697:The Prophets even express their surprise that God should take notice of man, who is too little and too unimportant to be worthy of the attention of the Creator; how, then, should other living creatures be considered as proper objects for Divine Providence! ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
698:According to Valentinus, what Clement and Ignatius mistakenly ascribe to God actually applies only to the creator.42 Valentinus, following Plato, uses the Greek term for “creator” (demiurgos),43 suggesting that he is a lesser divine being who serves as the instrument of the higher powers. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
699: The intelligence can also follow this trend, but is ceases then to be the pure intellect; it calls in its power of imagination to its aid, it becomes the image-maker, the creator of symbols and values, a spiritual artist and poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,#NFDB
700:But, once in a while, people enter your life that you love—not for what they give you—but for what they are. The beauty you see in them is a reflection of the Creator, so you love them. Now suddenly it isn’t about what you’re getting, but rather what you can give. This is unselfish love. ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
701:Do you worry it is sinful?" I asked.
She took a breath. "No," she said firmly. "God is the creator, and anything on this earth is here by His permission. I cannot think He minds if we use His creations - only how. For good or ill. What we seek is for good, so I will not worry about it. ~ Kenneth Oppel,#NFDB
702:Hinduism professes no false certitudes. Its capacity to express wonder at Creation and simultaneously scepticism about the omniscience of the Creator are unique to Hinduism. Both are captured beautifully in this verse from the 3,500-year-old Rig Veda, the Nasadiya Sukta or Creation Hymn: ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
703:The creation of powerful magical tools, generally, is the result of one of three things: the desire to impress a lover; an accident while trying to create something else entirely; or a side project created to assist while working toward something considered more significant by the creator. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
704:All life is sacred. Since life is an affirmation of the Creator, I shall live on, even when I am gone. In trailing clouds of glory shall I return to my Creator only to find that I had never really left. I shall walk among the lilies of the field and leave my trail in stardust in the sky. ~ John Harricharan, #NFDB
705:Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far. We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community. *** ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
706:A self-made man”—not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast-moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of me. I’m gonna begat myself. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
707:Geology has shared the fate of other infant sciences, in being for a while considered hostile to revealed religion; so like them, when fully understood, it will be found a potent and consistent auxiliary to it, exalting our conviction of the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of the Creator. ~ William Buckland, #NFDB
708:It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
709:Think of it: of the infinity of real numbers, those that are most important to mathematics—0, 1, √2, e and π—are located within less than four units on the number line. A remarkable coincidence? A mere detail in the Creator's grand design? I let the reader decide. ~ Eli Maor, e: The Story of a Number (1994)., #NFDB
710:We're not gonna die.” Blue Fire shouted back between club-swings, “we can't die, Dodge. And you know why? Because we are so...” *thump* “very...” *crack* “pretty. We are just too pretty for the creator to let us die.” *thump* “Look at this flank, huh? You ever seen booty this fine anywhere else? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
711:I always want to do music that inspires or influences another generation. You want what you create to live, be it sculpture or painting or music. Like Michelangelo, he said, “I know the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
712:Both of us seek for truthin the world without thou dost seek it,
I in the bosom within; both of us therefore succeed.
If the eye be healthy, it sees from without the Creator;
And if the heart, then within doubtless it mirrors the world.
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Agreement
,#NFDB
713:Emer was troubled at how all interpretation now devolved in matters of race or gender or religion. There was no art anymore, even in children's stories. Why wasn't the crow female? Why was The Creator a He? Wasn't Bald Eagle insensitive to men with hair loss? This is how we spend our time now. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
714:The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. ~ James Jeans, #NFDB
715:Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
716:The heavens and the earth are around us that it may be possible for us to speak of the unseen by the seen, for the outermost husk of creation has correspondence with the deepest things of the Creator.
He is not a God that hides himself, but a God who made all that he might reveal himself. ~ George MacDonald,#NFDB
717:To reverence the impersonal creation instead of the personal God who created us is a perversion designed for escaping moral accountability to the Creator. God indicts those who worship the creation instead of its Creator (Rom 1:18-23); and warns of the corruption of morals and behavior which results. ~ Dave Hunt, #NFDB
718:By thus rending the veil of monotony and showing that everything is in constant need of and obedient to His Lordship, He dispels heedlessness and turns humanity and jinn from (natural) causes to Himself as the Creator of causes. This basic principle is evident in the Qur’anic explanations. ~ Bedi zzaman Said Nurs, #NFDB
719:The creator of Alice in Wonderland was not just an expert in poetic nonsense; Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgson, to use his real name) was also an Oxford mathematician with a taste for symbolic logic and a distaste, in the sunset of the Victorian era, for new-fangled maths theories and practices. ~ Sinclair McKay, #NFDB
720:As the Maestro is never loath to tell us, a human who suffers from too much ambition succeeds only in exemplifying the Creator’s own lack of anticipation. The D.K., wishing His Vision to be innovative, had created the human will as an instinct all but free of Him. Once again, God had miscalculated. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
721:Before the heart unlocks itself for the world, God wants to open it for himself; before the ear takes in the countless voices of the day, it should hear in the early hours the voice of the Creator and Redeemer. God prepared the stillness of the first morning for himself. It should remain his. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
722:Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. And, since the creator of the universe is to them unknowable so far, they serve as best they can the highest abstraction of which they have some understanding, which is their community. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
723:It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
724:It is not the possession of money that constitutes wealth, that gives the highest satisfaction, and awakens the consciousness of noble achievement, the assurance that one is fulfilling his mission, and that he is reading aright the sealed message which the Creator placed in his hand at birth. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
725:We have devoted ourselves to the government and extension of the Church, and, among other objects, we have conceived it to be our duty to foster especially literature and the fine arts ... next to knowledge and true worship of the Creator, nothing is better or more useful to mankind than such studies. ~ Pope Leo X, #NFDB
726:A self-made man" - not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of myself. I'm going to begat myself ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
727:I look back at the glimpse of light in the center of Magdalene, near her heart, and remember the beauty to be found even in sorrow--beauty as a result of transformation, an admission of weakness, and a total dependence on the Creator. Even in the darkest hour, our hearts can allow us to see the light. ~ Erika Robuck, #NFDB
728:I saw- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together... Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
729:As a Christian we know why a work of art has value. Why? First, because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator. The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator created: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
730:Education in those rulers' virtues that master even one's benevolence and pity: the great educator's virtues . . . the affect of the creator must be elevated – no longer to work on marble! – The exceptional situation and powerful position of those beings . . . The Roman Caesar with Christ's Soul. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
731:Even if it cannot be resolved in a positive way, it will never be resolved in the negative way either – you yourself know this property of your heart, and therein lies the whole of its torment. But thank the Creator that he has given you a lofty heart, capable of being tormented by such a torment. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
732:And one of the things I learned is that one should live in spite of. Although, one should eat. Although, one should love. Although, it must die. Even it is often the same even though it pushes us forward. It was despite the fact that it gave me an unhappy anguish that was the creator of my own life. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
733:A sacramental understanding of the world is simply a shorthand way of describing the psalmist’s claim that "The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it" (Ps. 24:1), echoed in Paul’s claim that in the Creator God "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
734:... this task entrusted to us by God the Creator requires us to grasp the rhythm and logic of creation. But we are often driven by pride of domination, of possessions, manipulation, of exploitation; we do not "care" for it, we do not respect it, we do not consider it as a free gift that we must care for. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
735:When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it. But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along. ~ Francis Collins, #NFDB
736:Go, all of you poor people, in the name of God the Creator, and let him forever be your guide. And henceforth, do not be beguiledby these idle and useless pilgrimages. See to your families, and work, each one of you, in your vocation, raise your children, and live as the good Apostle Paul teaches you. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
737:Rather than seeing ourselves as insignificant specks in the immensity of the cosmos, we can consider that immensity an indicator of our worth. It seems the Creator invested a great deal—a universe of 50 billion trillion stars, plus a hundred times more matter, all fine-tuned to mind-boggling precision—for us. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
738:You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
739:In their perverted way all humanity imitates you. Yet they put themselves at a distance from you and exalt themselves against you. But even by thus imitating you they acknowledge that you are the creator of all nature and so concede that there is no palace where one can entirely escape from you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
740:John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music -- John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator. ~ Albert Ayler, #NFDB
741:The woman bent down to pick up the fallen pomegranate from the grass. It was ripe, it had burst open in the fall, stained her white dress. The vision of the laden barge, the pale island, the flowery meadow returned to her loving spirit along with the Creator's words: 'This is my body...Take and eat... ~ Gabriele D Annunzio, #NFDB
742:...You think if I haven't had your religious experience I can't appreciate the magnificence of your god. But it's just the opposite. I listen to you, and I think, his god is too small! One paltry planet, a few thousand years -- hardly worth the attention of a minor deity, much less the Creator of the universe. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
743:Sin is a revolutionary act in which the sinner seeks to depose God from His
throne. Sin is a presumption of supreme arrogance in that the creature vaunts his own wisdom above that of the Creator, challenges divine omnipotence with human impotence, and seeks to usurp the rightful authority of the cosmic Lord. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
744:The fundamental idea which defines a human being as a Muslim is the declaration of faith: that there is a creator, whom we call God - or Allah, in Arabic - and that the creator is one and single. And we declare this faith by the declaration of faith, where we... bear witness that there is no God but God. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf, #NFDB
745:We may appreciate the efforts, and even the greatness of the men who have tried to find the universal, the general 'behind' appearances; yet at the same time their quest was doomed to fail, for all universals break down as soon as the Creator, He who made man in His image, is denied or left out of account. ~ Hans Rookmaaker, #NFDB
746:You didn’t create yourself, so there is no way you can tell yourself what you were created for! If I handed you an invention you had never seen before, you wouldn’t know it’s purpose, and the invention itself wouldn’t be able to tell you either. Only the creator or the owner’s manual could reveal it’s purpose. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
747:All of life's experiences are teachers in some sense, challenging us to grow and evolve. Although the Persecutor certainly provokes a reaction, the Challenger elicits a response by encouraging the Creator to acquire new knowledge, skill, or insight. Both roles provoke change, but in different ways. ~ David Emerald Womeldorff, #NFDB
748:Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only more hatred. Who wants that? And why? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
749:The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. ~ John B S Haldane, #NFDB
750:Why are we here? We, all of us, are here because of the Creator’s love, who seeks both our flourishing and our response of love and gratitude. “Find out what pleases the Lord,” Paul told the Ephesians. We are here to please God. It brings God pleasure to see us thrive, and we thrive by living as God intended. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
751:According to Christian teachings of the day, God controlled the heavens, rendering them unknowable to our feeble mortal minds. When Newton breached this philosophical barrier by rendering all motion comprehensible and predictable, some theologians criticized him for leaving nothing for the Creator to do. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
752:Mind is the creator of everything. You should therefore guide it to create only good. If you cling to a certain thought with dynamic will power, it finally assumes a tangible outward form. When you are able to employ your will always for constructive purposes, you become the controller of your destiny. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
753:...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
754:There's an aspect of human nature in which we want to think we're better than somebody else. They're a different color. They speak a different language. They have a different name for the Creator. Whatever it is, that makes it okay for me to hate them, to try to get some of their land or some of their resources. ~ John Denver, #NFDB
755:A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
756:Do you believe the corelings are our own fault?” Arlen asked. “That we deserve them?” “Of course I believe,” she said. “It is the word of the Creator.” “No,” Arlen said. “It’s a book. Books are written by men. If the Creator wanted to tell us something, why would he use a book, and not write on the sky with fire? ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
757:You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing Itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
758:The work of a suffering and tortured God, the world then seemed to me. The dream and fiction of a god, the world then seemed to me.; coloured smoke before the eyes of a discontented god. [...] The creator wished to look away from himself; so he created the world. [...] a drunken joy to its imperfect creator. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
759:Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make. ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
760:Things wabi-sabi have no need for the reassurance of status or the validation of market culture. They have no need for documentation of provenance. Wabi-sabi-ness in no way depends on knowledge of the creator's background or personality. In fact, it is best if the creator is no distinction, invisible, or anonymous. ~ Leonard Koren, #NFDB
761:There is a legend that when God was equipping man for his long life journey of exploration, the attendant good angel was about to add the gift of contentment and complete satisfaction. The Creator stayed his hand and said, 'No, if you bestow that upon him you will rob him forever of all joy of self-discovery.' ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
762:The existence of matter and energy in the universe did not require the violation of energy conservation at the assumed creation. In fact, the data strongly support the hypothesis that no such miracle occurred. If we regard such a miracle as predicted by the creator hypothesis, then the prediction is not confirmed. ~ Victor J Stenger, #NFDB
763:True worship is the living human being, who has become a total answer to God, shaped by God's healing and transforming word. And true priesthood is therefore the ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people in to an offering to God and makes the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
764:Currently there's no other way to get a movie into 3,000 theaters except with a studio. We have a first-look deal with Universal, and it's been fun to work with them. But studios are a part of our life. I think they'll always be, but they'll play a different role. The consumer and the creator are getting closer together. ~ Jason Blum, #NFDB
765:Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you may be even more unreasonable than they by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who through their actions all but utter this word: 'We set out on this long journey for the perpetuation of our species. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
766:The complex order we now observe [in the universe] could *not* have been the result of any initial design built into the universe at the so-called creation. The universe preserves no record of what went on before the big bang. The Creator, if he existed, left no imprint. Thus he might as well have been nonexistent. ~ Victor J Stenger, #NFDB
767:Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
768:Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
769:My poetry will consist only in the attack by all means in my power upon Man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who should never have created such vermin. Volumes shall pile upon volumes until the end of my life, but only that one idea will be found therein . . . that one thought ever present in my consciousness! ~ Comte de Lautr amont, #NFDB
770:It is more difficult to find the Creator in a barbecue sandwich than in your favorite Sunday-morning song, but when you do, when you begin to find Him in all the stuff of life, everything starts singing. Every moment breaks into song. Every breath becomes sacrifice, and the songs become sweetness. This is living praise. ~ David Crowder, #NFDB
771:It is perhaps significant that the German word for the Creator is Schopfer, and for certain schopfen-'to scoop' in the sense of drawing water in buckets from a well. The Creator is thus visualized as creating the world out of His own depth, and the creative mind with a small c is supposed to apply a similar procedure. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
772:Mostly I think I've learned to trust God more. I mean, if I start getting worried or freaked, I just try to put it in God's hands. Sometimes I imagine God cradling the globe in his hands, and I tell myself that as long as I'm with God, the Creator of the universe, I can be comfortable and at home anyplace on the planet. ~ Melody Carlson, #NFDB
773:Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
774:Outside, it feels like there is less standing between the Creator and us. There is a lingering visceral connection we can hear and see and smell, reminders of the bond between Creator and creation, like the mountain sage crushed up in the pocket of the sweatshirt I was wearing on a short, muddy hike the other day. “In ~ Cathleen Falsani, #NFDB
775:As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
776:Oh, and it also features God. Yes, God. The Creator. The Lord Of All That Which Is And Is Not. The God of the Earth below and the sky above. The God of the Moon and the stars and Cher. No, I’m not high. At least, not at the moment. Oh, and he doesn’t like me calling him God. He prefers Jack. Yes, Jack. Again, I’m not high. Let ~ J R Rain, #NFDB
777:The creator of the heavens obeys a carpenter; the God of eternal glory listens to a poor virgin. Has anyone ever witnessed anything comparable to this? Let the philosopher no longer disdain from listening to the common laborer; the wise, to the simple; the educated, to the illiterate; a child of a prince, to a peasant. ~ Anthony of Padua, #NFDB
778:Liberal politics are incompatible with . . . a [religious] community, unless it is further believed that the individual members of the community have been endowed with reason and free will by their Creator and that they have no certain knowledge of what were/are the Creator’s intentions. —Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism ~ Mustafa Akyol, #NFDB
779:To be enlightened is not a condition of certainty. It is to move from limited knowing to boundless unknowing, from gravitas to grace. It is to awaken to a condition of borderless ignorance, of limitless uncertainty. When you are no longer bound by the limitations of creation, you are blessed with the freedom of the Creator. The ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
780:One of the Franciscans says later, "A monk should own nothing but his harp"; meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in His creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
781:The bird does not have an instinct to fly South in winter without a real South to match it; nor has the Creator given to us these heart yearnings, soul longings for a larger, completer life, for an opportunity for a full expression of our possibilities, nor the longing for immortality, without a reality to match them. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
782:It took Christians many years to realize that we cannot love God and also keep humans as slaves. It has taken even longer for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and also regard women as second-class humans. Now is the time for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and hate the Creator's nonhuman creatures. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
783:People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without, as if he were an object, for with him there is no outside nor can the Creator be set side by side with the creature. ~ Olivier Clement, #NFDB
784:The absolute desire of 'having more' encourages the selfishness that destroys communal bonds among the children of God. It does so because the idolatry of riches prevents the majority from sharing the goods that the Creator has made for all, and in the all-possessing minority it produces an exaggerated pleasure in these goods. ~ Oscar Romero, #NFDB
785:If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for men because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
786:Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
787:Science and religion are not antagonists. On the contrary, they are sisters. While science tries to learn more about the creation, religion tries to better understand the Creator. While through science man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion he tries to harness the force of nature within him. ~ Wernher von Braun, #NFDB
788:The whole effort of the spiritual process is to break the boundaries you have drawn for yourself and experience the immensity that you are. The aim is to unshackle yourself from the limited identity you have forged, as a result of your own ignorance, and live the way the Creator made you—utterly blissful and infinitely responsible. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
789:Adoration will heal our Church and thus our nation and thus our world... Adoration touches everyone and everything... [because it touches the Creator, Who touches everything and everyone]... When we adore, we plug into infinite dynamism and power. Adoration is more powerful for construction than nuclear bombs are for destruction ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
790:Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can never succeed at creating happiness because we are the created, not the Creator. ~ Pauline Creeden, #NFDB
791:More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring God's creations really serving God - or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
792:Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
793:There can only be two contexts of your life. Either you are the author of your life, or He (the Creator) is the author of your life.
People who feel that their creation is the responsibility of the Creator, find opportunities unexpectedly.
Those who feel that their lives are their own, have to fashion their own means. ~ Wasif Ali Wasif,#NFDB
794:For the Creator, the past is never lost, never beyond recovery—because it can always be reclaimed by weaving it into a wider pattern of ultimate goodness so that even the most horrendous disasters of life may come to play a significant part in achieving the intended purpose of Creation. In this way, the past can be redeemed. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
795:I always say, 'Man, the Creator is preparing me for something. He's keeping the sun on me for some reason. He's keeping me aligned with that generation.' Because I genuinely love people, I love hip-hop, and I love using it as a tool to communicate and to create a better vibration. Life is short. I guess I'm lined up for a reason. ~ Doug E Fresh, #NFDB
796:Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
797:The most beautiful life that has been imagined is the life of the knight Don Quixote who created danger where he did not find it. But more beautiful still is the lived life of him who finds danger in all places. All creation stands on the edge of being; all creation is risk. He who does not risk his soul can only ape the creator. ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
798:The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The Creator of life being created. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
799:This sense of time, the awareness that countless others have come before and that others will follow in endless generations, distinguishes man from other animals. With this discovery of the meaning of death—that man’s own life is limited—the life of architecture begins. And so begins man the creator’s effort to conquer time. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
800:You must learn to bend to open windows, my friend. That is why artists and dancers are closest to God. They clench their chests every day to salute the Creator, while opening up portals to the universe. The artist mediates and prays as he/she creates, knowing somewhere, deep down --- creativity is the highest transmission of love. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
801:Music is mere tuning a song with words; to some degree you have a beautiful endeavor of cosigning God's blank checks and you're actually co-creating. You're certainly not the creator with the capital C, but you're embarking on an endeavor, you're using the building blocks that have been given to you by the author of time and space. ~ Jon Foreman, #NFDB
802:The Coach is the antidote to the Victim's Rescuer in the DDT...Mainly, a Coach supports, assists, and facilitates the Creator in manifesting a desired outcome. A Coach holds others to be whole, resourceful, and creative...They help you dig deep inside yourself to gain clarity about what you want to create in your life. ~ David Emerald Womeldorff, #NFDB
803:A man of God would never burn or harm a temple of any kind - regardless of religion. A true man of God would see every temple or divine mansion built to glorify the Creator - as an extension of the temple closest to his home, regardless of its shape, size, or color. A man who truly recognizes and knows God can see God in all things. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
804:And this means that, instead of always waiting for their needs to be satisfied by some external source, human beings can work inwardly by means of their thought, their will, and their spirit to obtain the nourishing healing elements they need. This is why the teaching I bring you is of the spirit, of the creator and not of matter … ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
805:From this moment dates the idea (hostile to every concept of
ancient thought, which, on the contrary, reappeared to a certain extent in the mind of revolutionary
France) that man has not been endowed with a definitive human nature, that he is not a finished creation
but an experiment, of which he can be partly the creator. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
806:Our obsession with material things brings trouble and heartache into our lives. So we tell ourselves that we’ll do better—we commit ourselves for a time to new budgets, we go on temporary diets, we hold garage sales. But none of it lasts for long because deep inside us, we treasure the creation more than we treasure the Creator. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
807:The Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us bearings that guide us as stewards of his creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers matters concerning the environment and its protection intimately linked to the theme of integral human development. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
808:There is but One God, His name is Truth, He is the Creator, He fears none, he is without hate, He never dies, He is beyond the cycle of births and death, He is self illuminated, He is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. He was True in the beginning, He was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, He is also True now. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
809:We are formed by what we do. It is our actions that ultimately make us. What we do slowly, slowly becomes the creator of our lives and our souls. What we are doing in life decides how we are creating ourselves. What our behavior is in life decides the directions our soul will travel, the paths it will move on, the new worlds it will explore. ~ Osho, #NFDB
810:Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
811:If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator and reflected back onto YOU. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
812:Nature is another important aspect of nourishing the soul. After a hike in the mountains where we live, for instance, I feel a remarkable sense of gratitude and awe. My mind quiets down and allows me to see more clearly the beauty of creation. And through that gratitude, the beauty of the universe is reflected back to the creator. ~ Joan Z Borysenko, #NFDB
813:Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life … while theology extracts … the final meaning according to the Creator’s designs. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
814:No doubt, wherever public life and its law of equality are completely victorious, wherever a civilization succeeds in eliminating or reducing to a minimum the dark background of difference, it will end in complete petrifaction and be punished, so to speak, for having forgotten that man is only the master, not the creator of the world. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
815:There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
816:your life-and everyone else in the Universe is playing the part that you have assigned to them. You can literally script any life that you desire, and the Universe will deliver to you the people, places, and events just as you decide them to be. For you are the creator of your own experience-you have only to decide it and allow it to be. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
817:Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
818:God does not give us the spirit of fear, so I do not chose to give in to fear because I know that the creator designed us to win no matter what we face. When I am faced with a circumstance that in the past I would have been fearful about I turn it over immediately to Christ. When I learned this principle as a Christian, I became fearless. ~ Kel Mitchell, #NFDB
819:Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain. ~ P T Barnum, #NFDB
820:None of it had prepared him, however, for this naked confrontation with gross injustice, this horrific reminder that despite all the honors with which we shower ourselves, we are, ultimately, fodder, mere meat for the inferior, soulless things of which I dreamt the night before, no less than us the Creator's children." - The Monstrumologist ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
821:What is an artistic picture? An artistic picture is very simple. The creator is not the producer. The creator is not the star. The creator is the director, the person who realizes the picture, like a poet, like an artist. The creator of the picture is free to do whatever he wants, how he wants to do it. That is an artistic picture. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, #NFDB
822:Because we worship our way into sin, ultimately we need to worship our way out. When Christians commit sin, they do not cease worshiping. Rather, their worship is directed away from the Creator and toward created things. Repentance is the act of turning from sin and returning to God by trusting in Jesus Christ who is the perfect worshiper. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
823:Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
824:The Bible judges the church; the church does not judge the Bible. The Bible is the foundation for and the creator of the church; the church is not the foundation for or creator of the Bible. The church and its hierarchy must be evaluated by the believer with the biblical gospel as the touchstone or plumb line for judging all truth claims. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
825:It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
826:This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden,then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
827:Faustina is a great work of the Creator. She has nothing of what you call brains; she doesn't need them for her destiny... It is to be glorious for a few years: not to outlive some dull husband and live on his money till she is eighty, going to lectures and comparing the attractions of winter tours that offer the romance of the Caribbean. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
828:If the universe is created, then there must be reality beyond the universe...The Creator is the source of life and establishes its meaning and purpose....To study the origin and development of the universe is, in a sense, to investigate the basis for any meaning and purpose to life. Cosmology has deep theological and philosophical ramifications. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
829:The collaboration which sometimes follows is seldom based on good will: usually on desire, rage, fear, pity or longing. The modern illusion concerning painting (which post-modernism has done nothing to correct) is that the artist is the creator. Rather he is a reciever. What seems like creaton is the act of giving form to what he has recieved. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
830:This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden, then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
831:What a thunderbolt of talent the Creator must have hurled into that cottage, into the heart of that quick-tempered country boy, for the shock of it to have opened his eyes to so much beauty—by the stove, in the pigsty, on the threshing floor, in the fields; beauty which for a thousand years others had simply trampled on and ignored. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
832:The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
833:We were made to be more connected to what is above us than to what is below us. To put it another way, our lives were designed to be shaped more by our attachment to the Creator than by the creation. We were made to experience, to be part of, to be consumed by, and to live in pursuit of the one glory that is truly glorious—the glory of God. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
834:Christianity explains why truth is not merely a human construction. The world is not a creation of my own mind. It is the handiwork of God. The human mind cannot usurp the Creator’s role and function. The biblical concept of creation gives logical grounds to support what humans inescapably conclude by experience from the time we are toddlers. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
835:The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings appeared justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period. Science seemed to have disposed of the Creator God, and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
836:I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience. I believe that to the degree people live by this inspired conscience, they will grow to fulfill their natures; to the degree that they do not, they will not rise above the animal plane. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
837:That is faith. You cannot measure it with weights and doses like your herbs. You cannot classify it in your books, or test it with chemics. But it is there, more powerful than any bit of old world science. Only the Creator can see the path ahead. He makes of us what he wants—what the world needs—us to be. But we can have a glimpse, looking back. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
838:Eastern mysticism embraced both the tangible and the intangible, through the yin and yang of duality. The god Shiva was both the creator and the destroyer of worlds; indeed, one aspect of the deity Nishkala Shiva was the Shiva “without parts”—the void. Through their ability to divorce numerals from physical reality, the Indians invented algebra. ~ Chris Anderson, #NFDB
839:This creation is so perfect that you can forget the Creator – you can just discard him, dump him – and still it goes on. So a true compliment to the Creator is when you forget about him. (Laughs) That is a real compliment to the wonderful piece of creation he has made; it is so perfect within itself that it does not need to draw from anything outside. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
840:Now, may our God be our hope. He Who made all things is better than all things. He Who made all beautiful things is more beautiful than all of them. He Who made all mighty things is more mighty than all of them. He Who made all great things is greater than all of them. Learn to love the Creator in His creature, and the maker in what He has made. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
841:You have heaven adorned, earth beautified, the sea populated with its own creatures, the air filled with birds which scour it in every direction. Studious listener, think of all these creations which God has drawn out of nothing; . . . recognize everywhere the wisdom of God; never cease to wonder, and, through every creature, to glorify the Creator. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
842:For they have always unanimously maintained that nature, rather the Creator Himself, has given man the right of private ownership not only that individuals may be able to provide for themselves and their families but also that the goods which the Creator destined for the entire family of mankind may through this institution truly serve this purpose. ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB
843:Hearing my story seemed to give him a license he had been longing for someone to give him: the license to believe what he had seen with his own eyes--to KNOW that deep and comforting truth: that our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
844:The fifth member of the team preferred to work at home. Ahmed was the hacker, the forger, the creator of all illusions, but he didn’t have the nerve to carry guns and such. He worked from his basement in Buffalo and had never been caught or arrested. He left no trails. His 5 percent would come off the top. The other four would take the rest in equal ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
845:When you put all these truths in the gospel together, you realize that the most offensive and countercultural claim in Christianity is not what Christians believe about homosexuality or abortion, marriage or religious liberty. Instead, the most offensive claim in Christianity is that God is the Creator, Owner, and Judge of every person on the planet. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
846:24Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their own hearts to [sexual] impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], 25because [by choice] they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. [Jer 2:11] ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
847:Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
848:The adversary’s global attack on marriage is actually an attack on society itself, and ultimately an attack on God, the creator and manufacturer of society and marriage. The adversary knows that if he can destroy marriage he can destroy families; if he can destroy families he can destroy society; and if he can destroy society he can destroy humanity. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
849:... you are a microcosm of Me - the Divine All, the Holy Everything, the Sum and Substance. .. the Alpha and the Omega. .. Yes, I am God, as you now understand Him. I am Goddess as you now comprehend Her, I am the Conceiver and the Creator of Everything you now know and experience, and you are My children. .. even as I am the child of another. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
850:The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. … It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
851:There is no such “mother” as Mother Nature. Nature itself is powerless to produce life of any kind. In itself, nature is barren. The power to produce life resides in the Author of nature—God. To substitute nature as the source of life is to confuse the creature with the Creator. All forms of nature worship are acts of idolatry that are detestable to God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
852:The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. ... It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
853:The twenty-first century will be a time of awakening, of meeting the creator within. Many beings will experience oneness with God and with all life. This will be the beginning of the golden age of the new human, of which it has been written; the time of the universal human, which has been eloquently described by those with deep insight among you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
854:Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation. A satisfactory spiritual life will begin with a complete change in relation between God and the sinner; not a judicial change merely, but a conscious and experienced change affecting the sinner’s whole nature. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
855:The Creator has planned precisely how and when this world will end, and neither global warming nor global terrorism will be to blame. Just as with the Flood, the final destruction will be God’s doing. This earth will not last forever. But a new earth will be created in its place, one which will last forever because it will never be touched by sin. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
856:evil is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light. For goodness is the light of the mind, and, similarly, evil is the darkness of the mind. Light, therefore, being the work of the Creator and being made good (for God saw all that He made, and behold they were exceeding good(8)) produced darkness at His free-will. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
857:If the man who observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each swinging clear of the other's orbit-if, I say, the man who sees this cannot realise the Creator's attributes without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
858:But, if the knowledge of the occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to fetish-worship and superstition. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
859:In this moment, here and now, we celebrate the spirit of what is good in each of us and in those friends who stood with us in the dark and chased away death's shadow." He lifted his eyes to the night sky. "We give thanks to the Creator and we pray that in the battle between love and fear, which is always raging in the human heart, love will triumph. ~ William Kent Krueger, #NFDB
860:In a world which is creating itself, the idea of a divinity does not remain outside, but is embedded in the totality of self-organization dynamics at all levels and in all dimensions. This self-organization dynamics has been identified in an earlier chapter with mind. God, then, is not the creator, but the mind of the universe. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
861:For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given--in the breath of life--the individual soul, the stamp of approval as it were of the Creator; with the ability to know itself to be itself, and to make itself, as one with the Creative Forces--irrespective of other influences. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
862:If religion is about the sacred as opposed to the profane, the spirit as opposed to matter, the Creator as opposed to the created, Confucianism plainly does not qualify. But perhaps what we are to learn from this tradition is not that Confucianism is not a religion but that not all religious people parse the sacred and the secular the way Christians do. ~ Stephen R Prothero, #NFDB
863:Satan has long been known as the Adversary, but God fears women even more than He fears the devil—and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man, and in all ways has proved Herself a more deserving object of man’s worship than Christ, that unshaven fanatic who lusted for the end of the world. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
864:The heart, with all its potential, loses its balance too easily when it loves a creature. It throws itself upon the creature loved and wants to possess it; and possessiveness kills. It holds on to the creature so passionately that it loses sight of the creator. Moreover it ruins the object of its love by its obsession with it. It ruins it, makes it a slave. ~ Carlo Carretto, #NFDB
865:Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
866:There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of impact I will leave on others. I will never choose the destructive path of self and outward victimization again. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
867:The God who made the moon and the stars and the mountains and the oceans, the Creator who did all of those things, believed that you and your baby were meant to be a pair. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be a perfect fit. That doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes. It does mean that you need not fear failure because you can’t fail a job you were created to do. ~ Rachel Hollis, #NFDB
868:BITCHES LIE! Normally Matt would not stop and study something like this. Today he did. The letters were red and slanted. Even if you couldn’t read, you could feel the rage here. Matt wondered about the creator—what inspired him to write this. He wondered if this act of vandalism had diluted the creator’s wrath—or been the first step toward greater destruction. He ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
869:Yes, fasting is not merely a commandment from God but a godly gift, a grace and a blessing. God the creator of our body and soul knows of our need to fast for its benefit for our spiritual life, development and our eternity. He granted us the knowledge and manner of fasting. As a kind Father and a wise Teacher, He has recommended fasting for us. ~ Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, #NFDB
870:God beckons storm clouds and they come. He tells the wind to blow and the rain to fall, and they obey immediately. He speaks to the mountains, 'You go there,' and He says to the seas, 'You stop here, and they do it. Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator...until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, 'No. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
871:According to kabbalistic teaching, the origin of all negativity is the desire to receive for ourselves alone. This self-serving desire, in any of its countless forms, cuts us off from the Light, distances us from the Creator, and makes true fulfillment impossible. To the extent we are connected to this desire, we are disconnected from the essence of the Creator. Yet ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
872:That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God's dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
873:To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles. ~ Francis Collins, #NFDB
874:That.” Jona pointed. “That is faith. You cannot measure it with weights and doses like your herbs. You cannot classify it in your books, or test it with chemics. But it is there, more powerful than any bit of old world science. Only the Creator can see the path ahead. He makes of us what he wants—what the world needs—us to be. But we can have a glimpse, looking back. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
875:I’m up from nothin’, I come from nowhere goin’ solo on the road to everywhere Don’t need the hard sellin’, feelin’ the ground swellin’ The blade of my saber sickle-cellin’ the haters flossin’ traitors to vapors while I be makin’ that paper if I want ya I’ll take ya, circumvent your equator There’s nobody can save ya, my shit is greater and greater I’ve become the Creator “Up ~ Joe Ide, #NFDB
876:I wrapped my arms around him and held on as hard as I could. He was my tormentor and my solace: the creator of the dark and the light within. I didn’t care that he would undoubtedly hurt me at any moment, right now; I just needed somebody to hold me… To tell me these exact words. Its going to be okay. It wasn’t of course, I knew that. But I didn’t care, I needed the lie. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
877:The Creator is being reimagined all the time and can be reimagined through the lens of any culture, of any time and place. No one culture, and certainly not the (largely white male affluent) Western culture I inhabit, can claim superior status for reimagining God once and for all. The Creator doesn’t need any of us to sit atop the mountain and speak down to everyone else. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
878:When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. God is not a demiurge [demigod] or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. Evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
879:as he read through the Levitical laws, he received a vision of Yahweh’s holiness so pure and intense, it was like a blinding light that pierced his soul. Israel was a royal priesthood of Yahweh’s perfection. And he understood again that Yahweh’s laws were not restrictive, but freeing. They were the boundaries for experiencing the best that the creator offered to humanity. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
880:My passion today is not only justice for the Black man and woman of America, but for all those who cry out to the Supreme Being for justice in their lives - and that's Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White, for the whole of humanity has been deprived of that which The Creator has ordered for us, and that is freedom, justice, equality, and submission to the Will of Allah. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
881:The gnostic is Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no separate individual existence of his own. He is like the birds and the flowers in his yielding to the Creator; like them, like all the elements of the cosmos, he reflects the Divine to his own degree. He reflects it actively, however, they passively; his participation is a conscious one. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
882:Art really has its source in the transcendent, the unmanifest field of pure consciousness, which is the non-changing, immortal field of all possibilities...When the awareness of the artist is in tune with this center of infinite creativity, his piece of art breathes fullness of life, nourishes the creator, the artist, and inspires his admirers with waves of bliss. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
883:If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
884:No, the cross was not primarily about exacting punishment; it was about prevailing over sin's power. In the Son, God didn't just punish sin, but he served up the antidote that Christ was able to endure until sin itself was destroyed. Now, all who embrace him can live in the effects of the andidote, prevailing over sin through a growing relationship to the Creator of all. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
885:[The laws of logic] were placed in our minds by the Creator during the act of creation. We speak because God has spoken. God is not the author of confusion, irrationality, or the absurd. Furthermore, his words are meant to be understood by his creatures, and a necessary condition for his creature's understanding of those words is that they are intelligible and not irrational. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
886:No, the cross was not primarily about exacting punishment; it was about prevailing over sin's power. In the Son of God didn't just punish sin, but he served up the antidote that Christ was able to endure until sin itself was destroyed. Now, all who embrace him can live in the effects of the andidote, prevailing over sin through a growing relationship to the Creator of all. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
887:Perfect worlds do not exist. There are only the funny, strange, weeping, singing, truncated, and imperfect universes created by the gods of paintbrush and musical instruments, the gods who infuse their creations with their own blood, their own soul. When he looks at these worlds, the true Lord of Hosts, the creator of the universe, probably cannot help but smile mockingly ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
888:Truth is this: you deserve all good things life has to offer. You know that inherently, because you feel awful when you are experiencing the lack of good things. All good things are your birthright! You are the creator of you, and the law of attraction is your magnificent tool to create whatever you want in your life. Welcome to the magic of life, and the magnificence of You! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
889:God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
890:I do think that copyrights and intellectual property are important - it's important to be able to keep people from making verbatim copies of a particular creation that could somehow hurt the creator. If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that's not cool. ~ Shepard Fairey, #NFDB
891:If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
892:God is the creator of all things, right? He is the force that dictates the laws of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. He is absolute morality... We claim to be doing good. But the Lord Ruler - as God - defines what is good. So by opposing him we're actually evil. But since he's doing the wrong thing, does evil actually count as good in this case? ~ Brandon Sanderson, #NFDB
893:this chapter much has been said of the active measures which a boy should take in order to become strong and well. We should be equally concerned in saving and storing up natural forces we already have. In the body of every boy, who has reached his teens, the Creator of the universe has sown a very important fluid. This fluid is the most wonderful material in all the physical world. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
894:He freely chose instead to see even the worst acts of his enemies as a form of service to the Creator. They had provided him with an opportunity to comport himself with courage and certainty, and thereby to reveal more Light in the world. By no means was Rabbi Akiva blind or oblivious to evil. On the contrary, he had the strength to see it for what it truly was and still is. There ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
895:I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation. ~ Brad Templeton, #NFDB
896:I have long dreaded the thought of getting to the end of life and regretting that I allowed my own timidity or other people's expectations to determine the course of my life. I had decided at a much younger age that several of my beliefs should determine the course of my life...I...believe that Waengongi, the Creator, has an epic script into which my minute presence has been written. ~ Steve Saint, #NFDB
897:There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell…. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
898:A man of God would never burn or harm a temple of any kind -- regardless of religion. A true man of God would see every temple or divine mansion built to glorify THE CREATOR -- as an extension of the temple closest to his home, regardless of its shape, size, or color. A man who truly recognizes and knows God can see God in all things. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
899:For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
900:In many inner cities, there are issues of less economic stability, poorer education, community centers being stripped away, arts being removed from the school system leaving many children imbalanced, isolated from their most powerful self... the independent thinker, the creator, the dreamer often leaving children more susceptible to other harmful things out of boredom or feelings of rejection. ~ Mya, #NFDB
901:Then he gave thanks as the Senecas always had, to the whole universe beginning with the ground at their feet and moving upward and outward. He thanked the earth, the waters, the fish, the plants, the edible plants, the medicinal herbs, the animals, the trees, the birds, the four winds, the thunders that bring rains, the sun, the moon, the stars, all spirit messengers, and the Creator. ~ Thomas Perry, #NFDB
902:I think there is a reason Jesus said He went to prepare a place for us, that His Father's house has many mansions. not that we were created to fellowship with others, for we are, but perhaps that desire to have a space of one's own is but a shadow of what is to come, what we will experience in eternity. A place just for us, created by the Creator. Some, like you, feel it more keenly. ~ Michelle Griep, #NFDB
903:In contrast, paganism among the sedentary societies of Arabia had developed from its earlier and simpler manifestations into a complex form of neo-animism, providing a host of divine and semi-divine intermediaries who stood between the creator god and his creation. This creator god was called Allah, which is not a proper name but a contraction of the word al-ilah, meaning simply “the god. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
904:The Creator is infinite. This means he has all possible existence, perfection, and excellence. This means he must also have all possible honor and respect. In every way God is first and supreme. His excellent qualities are the supreme beauty and glory, the original good, and the fountain of all good. This, of course, means that he must in every way have the highest regard and honor. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
905:With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
906:You are the creator of your own reality, and so you are not in jeopardy. You do not need to control the behavior of others in order for you to thrive. Your attention to things that you think they do that keeps you from your thriving is, in fact, what keeps you from your thriving... It is not what they do to you; it's what you do to you in fear of what you think that they will do to you. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
907:I live in a thought world which is filled with creativity; inside my head there is creative imagination. Why? Because God, who is the Creator, has made me in His own image, I can go out in imagination beyond the stars. This is true not only for the Christian, but for every man. Every man is made in the image of God; therefore, no man in his imagination is confined to his own body. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
908:I would like to say, historically, from the very beginning, our people have time and again expressed the need for people to live in harmony with the creator, the mother earth, fellow man, and respect our brother's vision. In the past and the present, we have been respon-sible for the greatest gains; cultivated foods and medicines; democratic government, and many other areas of concern. ~ Leonard Peltier, #NFDB
909:The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising… and it’s magic and wonderful and strange. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
910:I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. ~ Pope Francis, interviewed in "How the Church will change" by Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica (1 October 2013), as translated from Italian to English by Kathryn Wallace, #NFDB
911:It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
912:The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising... and it’s magic and wonderful and strange. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
913:The Ten Commandments are preoccupied with goodness. Each commandment is a moral tour de force. Together they present the most compelling plan ever devised for a better life and good world. Yet, they were written—and in the eyes of hundreds of millions, revealed by the Creator—three thousand years ago. The Ten Commandments are what began humanity’s long, arduous journey toward moral progress. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
914:He is the principle of order and purpose that permeates all things, drawing them to unity in God, and so making the universe into a “cosmos”, a harmonious and integrated whole. The Creator-Logos has imparted to each created thing its own indwelling logos or inner principle, which makes that thing to be distinctively itself, and which at the same time draws and directs that thing towards God. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
915:In the current economic situation, the temptation for the more dynamic economies is that of chasing after advantageous alliances that, nevertheless, can have harmful effects for poorer states, prolonging situations of extreme mass poverty of men and women and using up the earth's natural resources, entrusted to man by God the Creator-as Genesis says-that he might cultivate and protect it. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
916:Nothing could be better than the moment when a woman opened her legs for you. That first time! If you had an eye for the little differences, you knew twice as much about her as you could learn from her face. Alois Senior would attest to that. The female organ! Whoever designed this form had certainly been sly about the job. (This was about as close as Alois ever came to admiring the Creator.) ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
917:I believe in the truthfulness of this instinct and that man prays because there is something in prayer. And when the Creator gives His creature the power of thirst, it is because water exists to meet its thirst—and as when He creates hunger there is food to correspond to the appetite. So when He inclines men to pray it is because prayer has a corresponding blessing connected with it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
918:Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
919:Shall I think that the Creator has made man so as to leave him to debate endlessly in the intellectual miseries that surround us? I cannot believe this: God prepares a firmer and calmer future for European societies; I am ignorant of his designs, but I will not cease to believe in them [merely] because I cannot penetrate them, and I would rather doubt my enlightenment than his justice. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
920:In reading over the Constitutions of all fifty of our states, I discovered something which some of you may not know: there is in all fifty, without exception, an appeal or a prayer to the Almighty God of the universe. Through all fifty state Constitutions, without exception, there runs this same appeal and reference to God who is the Creator of our liberties and the preserver of our freedoms. ~ D James Kennedy, #NFDB
921:Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
922:Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
923:Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. So why is man your god, and not the Creator? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
924:Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth as well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
925:There was nothing else to do but call upon the Creator,
praying, begging, pleading, bargaining—anything to make
him protect Xavier. I couldn’t have him ripped away from
me like that. I could survive emotional turmoil; I could
survive the most intense physical torture. I could survive
Armageddon and holy fire raining down upon the earth, but I
could not survive without him. ~ Alexandra Adornetto,#NFDB
926:I want women to know God can use everything the enemy meant for evil in their lives for good. He can take their stories of shame and redeem them-- first for their own freedom and then to help others.
I want women to know that they are not less than, weaker, second, or not enough. They are created in God's image-- greatly valued, loved, chose, wanted and adored by the Creator of the universe. ~ Christine Caine,#NFDB
927:God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence. ~ Robert Bellarmine, #NFDB
928:Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
929:The creativity that comes from silence, from a quiet heart, feels different from that of ambition to both the creator and the observer. When the artist or the worker is out of the way, both the creator and the observer experience the art as simply a gift, an expression of the impersonal intelligence shared by all. The creator has no need to take credit for it, the observer no need to possess it. ~ Catherine Ingram, #NFDB
930:Mr. Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey” as well as the upcoming NBC period drama “The Gilded Age,” is adapting “Doctor Thorne,” the 1858 novel by Anthony Trollope, for ITV in Britain. The novel is the third in a series of six set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire, and depicts a tumultuous engagement. Like “Downton Abbey,” the story deals with social status, seduction, and illegitimacy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
931:The Creator had His relative successes and His abysmal failures. While it must be admitted that He never gave up, even if He was not always in firm control of the earth He had fashioned, it is also incontestable that earthquakes and ice ages brought many an interruption to His experiments and savaged many of His pursuits. Why? Because He had incorrectly designed this globe of earth in the first place. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
932:For people who make up stories for a living, that is the ultimate success: knowing that, when the book closes, when the series ends, the adventure is not over. It goes on without the creator, in the minds of the people who love it. You can’t stop the signal. Once it’s broadcast, it continues on forever, pulsing past star clusters, lighting up new worlds, collecting new fans, till the end of time itself. ~ Sharon Shinn, #NFDB
933:But you have no religious faith." Richard had said, smiling, "you're not even a believer." Jennifer hadn't tried to explain to him that religious belief was not the point. The will to believe created its own power, its own faith, and, ultimately, its own will. Through the practice of faith, whatever its specific rituals, one brought into existence the object of that faith. The believer became the Creator. ~ Nancy Kress, #NFDB
934:Everybody is in your business, gossiping and being mean spirited. It's different. Sometimes I'm like, "Do I want to do this?," because it's not about the art anymore. It's a struggle. There's part of me that wants to share my gift, which is art, and if I don't, am I taking away something that the Creator gave me to share? At the same time, I don't want to be a part of feeding the dumbing down of society. ~ Tinsel Korey, #NFDB
935:Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection “species loneliness”—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors. It’s no wonder that naming was the first job the Creator gave Nanabozho. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
936:From American Idol to The Matrix participatory media - where old and new media converge by involving fans - is influencing our culture by creating new forms of interactive storytelling. Yet by enabling people to participate in such various media they can converge as a crowd to alter the story to create new modes of engagement, some not necessarily endorsed by the creator - or the brands that back them. ~ Henry Jenkins, #NFDB
937:Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The Creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you—these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you have created. If ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
938:Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapult you into heaven would seem transparent to a god, any god,for if ones heart is not in allignment with the creator of that heaven, then... what is the point? ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
939:They had taken on the disguise of divinity in order to draw worship away from the Creator, who was known in antediluvian times as Elohim. He had other names, such as El Shaddai, which meant God Almighty; El Elyon, which meant God Most High; and the secret covenant name of Yahweh, the eternally self-existent one. Ishtar smiled to herself. Drawing worship away from Elohim was not all the Watchers were after. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
940:One of the things in the Mary Shelley [Frankenstein] is that the creature tells his story, so this begins with the creature's point of view. So, it literally starts with the creature opening his eyes and is born - but is obviously in his 30s. But because they're the creator and the created we thought it would be really interesting if they could look at each other every other night and play each other's roles. ~ Danny Boyle, #NFDB
941:I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then, it is the eternal dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
942:If it can't be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will attain the answer on earth, and may God bless your path. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
943:I more or less think that the trombone was chosen for me. I first selected a violin, which I didn't do too well with, and, ironically, the only thing left was the trombone. My next choice was a saxophone, but they didn't have any; so I think that the Creator had a lot to do with what I did...Because things just happened, you know, and I had no control over it. And I ended up with my instrument that I play now. ~ Curtis Fuller, #NFDB
944:The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
945:At the beginning these two things, the real and the imaginative life, are one and the same thing, because the infant at the beginning does not perceive objectively, but lives in a subjective state, being the creator of all. Gradually, in health the infant becomes able to perceive a world that is a not-me world, and to attain this state the infant must be cared for well enough at the time of absolute dependence. ~ D W Winnicott, #NFDB
946:We seem to crave privilege, merited not by our works but by our birth, by the mere fact that, say, we are humans and born on Earth. We might call it the anthropocentric - the 'human-centered' - conceit. This conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in God's image: The Creator and Ruler of the entire Universe looks just like me. My, what a coincidence! How convenient and satisfying! ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
947:What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God! ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
948:All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
949:I was on a par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but that half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
950:Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker, #NFDB
951:I happen to be a scientist. My background is in nuclear physics. I was a nuclear engineer. But I don't see any incompatibility at all with my religious faith and God the creator of everything and the incompatibility between when the earth was created as specified in the Bible. I don't see any incompatibility there because those that were interpreting God's overall message didn't know anything about modern-day science. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
952:Only God-the One through whom "all things were made" (1:3, cf. v. 10), in whom "was life" and "light" (v. 4)-can reverse creation's death and dissipate the darkness caused by sin.
2. But since that death and darkness are within creation, within man, the Word must become flesh in order to restore it from within. The Creator must enter His own creation, groaning as it is under the burden of alienation from Him. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,#NFDB
953:Our best hope is not found in correct theology, the Bible or any other book, but in the love we express through action rather than words. Our best hope is that love predates creation and thus that the Creator sees us as ever young. Our hope is that when we look at God through the eyes of the loving Christ we will see who God really is. Our ultimate hope is that God will be looking back at us as we’d like to be seen. ~ Frank Schaeffer, #NFDB
954:When you create stuff, you're always going to be progressing and where you're at a year down the line, as the creator, it's always going to feel immature. You're going to notice the flaws and the things that you've learned in that year aren't going to be there. So, I think it's important to see stuff as a capture of time - that's what I was doing at that time - and not be ashamed of it. That's how I try to approach music. ~ Tom Odell, #NFDB
955:As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
956:He is announcing to the most powerful ruler of the ancient world that these people may be your slaves but they are My children. The story of the exodus is as much political as theological. Theologically, the plagues showed that the Creator of nature is supreme over the forces of nature. Politically it declared that over every human power stands the sovereignty of God, defender and guarantor of the rights of humankind. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
957:If it can’t be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will attain the answer on earth, and may God bless your path. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
958:All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I'll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: 'Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
959:I dreamed I spoke in another's language, I dreamed I lived in another's skin, I dreamed I was my own beloved, I dreamed I was a tiger's kin. I dreamed that Eden lived inside me, And when I breathed a garden came, I dreamed I knew all of Creation, I dreamed I knew the Creator's name. I dreamed--and this dream was the finest-- That all I dreamed was real and true, And we would live in joy forever, You in me, and me in you. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
960:The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The 'thing in itself' (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
961:Thou art the Creator, Thou alone art my friend; Thou, O Lord, art all-pervading. True meditation revealeth Thee in all Thy perfection; And the snares of illusion are rendered ineffective. Vast and vicious is this mesh of illusion, Whose intricate tentacles suck one dry. Sing with all thy heart, the Name of the Lord; It costs thee nothing, O Nama, to repeat His Name.
~ Namdev, Thou art the Creator, Thou alone art my friend
,#NFDB
962:When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting's own plan. This is often expressed as 'The brush takes the next stroke.' In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express ~ Julia Margaret Cameron, #NFDB
963:Gruber speaks of an "evolving systems" approach to the study of creativity: that is, one monitors simultaneously the organization of knowledge in a domain, the purpose(s) pursued by the creator, and the affective experiences he or she undergoes. While these systems are only "loosely coupled," their interaction over time helps one understand the ebb and flow of creative activity over the course of a productive human life. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
964:The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
965:WITHIN this earthen vessel are bowers and groves, and within it is the Creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within;
And within this vessel the Eternal soundeth, and the spring wells up.
Kabr says: "Listen to me, my Friend! My beloved Lord is within."
The Earthern vessel is the body
Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, Poem 3
,#NFDB
966:List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
1. Italo Calvino
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
4. The creator of MySpace
5. Richard Brautigan
6. J.K. Rowling
7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite
8. Ann Sexton
9. David Foster Wallace
10. Gaugin and the Caribbean
11. Charles Schulz
12. Liam Rector ~ Shane Jones,#NFDB
967:The Accuser continued, “Regarding the covenant preamble, we have this difficult matter of the sovereignty of the Creator. Really, is not the sovereignty of the suzerain the foundation of the entire edifice? If this cornerstone is rejected, do not all other bricks crumble to the ground?” He brilliantly used leading questions. Enoch thought to himself how he would like to see the cornerstone fall on the Accuser and crush him. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
968:We are one with the Creator in a very literal sense, as we are an inseparable part of the infinite, intelligent consciousness that not only brings forth physical reality but also makes up its very fabric. Indeed, the energy that makes up the fabric of existence that we looked at in the first two chapters is nothing but the physical manifestation of the nonphysical consciousness that created it all and maintains its existence. ~ Ziad Masri, #NFDB
969:You'll wrest a burning sword from an angel, but you're afraid of bats?" "I'm not afraid of them. I just don't like them. They're...furry. Flying things shouldn't be furry. It's not right. And if I ever meet the Creator, I'm taking that one up with him." "That I'd like to see. Your one and possible only chance to get the answer to every question in the universe, and you ask, 'Why are bats furry?'" "I will. You just wait. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
970:It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
971:There exists a powerful energizing force in the spiritual life principle. All energy began with the Creator, who infused it not only in all natural processes, but also into that higher form of nature called human nature. The more closely, then, that a person identifies with the Creator, the more surely that person will experience within his or her own nature the process of re-creation which operates in all creation. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
972:We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct - magnanimity, in short - does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term "human," which we so regularly define by its lower reaches. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
973:What, I ask, has the fixed and solid nature of the earth to do with the right of appropriation?
(...)
But the creator of the land does not sell it: he gives it; and, in giving it, he is no respecter of persons. Why, then, are some of his children regarded as legitimate, while others are treated as bastards? If the equality of shares was an original right, why is the inequality of conditions a posthumous right? ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon,#NFDB
974:Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation. Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators! Thus are ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness. For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the child-bearer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
975:Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion. --Benjamin Franklin ~ W Cleon Skousen, #NFDB
976:I believe that you are not a mistake—and feeling guilt about who you are (working, staying at home, overweight, underweight, overeducated, uneducated, emotional, bookish, street-smart, or whatever) does a disservice to yourself and the Creator who made you. There are hundreds of ways to lose yourself, but the easiest of them all is refusing to acknowledge who you truly are in the first place. You—the real you—is not an accident. ~ Rachel Hollis, #NFDB
977:God abandons himself many times in a sequence of evolutions in which he transforms himself, accepting all the risks introduced by indeterminacy and free will in the play of evolutionary processes. God is thus not absolute, he evolves himself—he is evolution. Since we have called the self-organizing dynamics of a system its mind, we may now say that God is not the creator, but the mind of the universe. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
978:How wonderful is the certainty that each human life is not adrift in the midst of hopeless chaos, in a world ruled by pure chance or endlessly recurring cycles! The Creator can say to each one of us: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jer 1:5). We were conceived in the heart of God, and for this reason “each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary”.[39] ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
979:Prayer is important. It's the cornerstone of our relationship with God, our private time with the creator. In addition to that, preparing and taking action is as important as praying. Preparation is for our benefit and edification. Preparation is also bold faith in action. You pray because you believe God is going to do what you've prayed for. But we have to put in the work and prepare so that when the harvest comes, we're ready! ~ DeVon Franklin, #NFDB
980:The idea that the Creator is on your side, guiding your footsteps, taking a personal interest in your troubles, deriving pleasure from your victories, providing solace in your defeats, orchestrating the world such that, in the words of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ‘All things work together for good to those who love God’ – all this must have a dramatic impact on the efficacy of a sportsman, or indeed anyone else. As Muhammad ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
981:We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of "the created." We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us. We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck. But once we realize that we are truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators. When we understand this fact, the doors will burst wide open for human potential. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
982:You'll wrest a burning sword from an angel, but you're afraid of bats?"
"I'm not afraid of them. I just don't like them. They're...furry. Flying things shouldn't be furry. It's not right. And if I ever meet the Creator, I'm taking that one up with him."
"That I'd like to see. Your one and possible only chance to get the answer to every question in the universe, and you ask, 'Why are bats furry?'"
"I will. You just wait. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
983:Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the creator really is. Instead, we draw limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves. And if we receive a gift beyond our imagining, we often send it back. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
984:If the actors speaking Dothraki or High Valyrian or Castithan or whatever make a mistake, who would know but the creator? Who would care? The truth is probably one in a thousand people will notice, and of those who do, maybe a quarter will care. In the 1980s that amounts to nothing. In the new millennium, though, one quarter of 0.001 percent can constitute a significant minority on Twitter. Or on Tumblr. Or Facebook. Or Reddit. Or ~ David J Peterson, #NFDB
985:Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
986:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is j the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; k his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but l they who wait for the LORD shall ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
987:I do not ask for a path with no trouble or regret.
I ask instead for a friend who'll walk with me down any path.
I do not ask never to feel pain.
I ask instead for courage, even when hope can scarce shine through.
And one more thing I ask:
That in every hour of joy or pain, I feel the Creator close by my side.
This is my truest prayer for myself and for all I love, now and forever, Amen. ~ Kersten Hamilton,#NFDB
988:It is precisely women’s experience of God that this world lacks. A world that does not nurture its weakest, does not know God the birthing mother. A world that does not preserve the planet, does not know God the creator. A world that does not honor the spirit of compassion, does not know God the spirit. God the lawgiver, God the judge, God the omnipotent being have consumed Western spirituality and, in the end, shriveled its heart. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
989:As Kraynak notes, “the Founders believed that freedom was based on moral order, not moral relativism.” They drew their natural law principles from John Locke, Cicero, and others, as well as from the strong natural law tradition in Christian thought. Thus, for Kraynak, “Without natural law—meaning an objective moral law put into nature and human nature by the Creator—the ideal of republican liberty lacks an ultimate foundation.”13 The ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
990:Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
991:Spirituality is not just about sitting in a room encountering a mystical god in meditation or about seeing God in a sunset. Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make. ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
992:The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all." ~ Daniel Dennett, #NFDB
993:All things are permeated and maintained in being by the uncreated energies of God, and so all things are a theophany that mediates his presence (pp. 21-23). At the heart of each thing is its inner principle or logos, implanted within it by the Creator Logos; and so through the logoi we enter into communion with the Logos (p. 33). God is above and beyond all things, yet as Creator he is also within all things—“panentheism”, not pantheism ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
994:But when one researches the meaning behind the original Hebrew words, their truer fuller meaning comes to light. Elohim is revealed as a more generic plural reference to the Creator as all humankind can know through general revelation.[7] El Elyon has a linguistic affinity to the Ugaritic “Elyon Ba’al” a name for the Most High God of Canaan, and therefore a polemical stance against him. Ba’al is not the Most High, the God of Israel is.[8] ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
995:Isaiah 40:21–31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (vv. 28, 31) ~ Kathleen Long Bostrom, #NFDB
996:But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world — and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road. ~ Brian Doyle, #NFDB
997:Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. ~ Richard Baxter, #NFDB
998:In description we hear and feel the absorption of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene. .. This personal absorption is what we mean by 'style.' It is strange that we would choose so oddly surfacey a word - style - for this most soulful aspect of writing. We could, perhaps more exactly, call this relation between consciousness and its subject 'integrity.' What else is the articulation of perception? ~ Patricia Hampl, #NFDB
999:They are from the perspective of the Creator. The first meaning of "I am the reason you walk" is "I have created you and therefore you walk." The second meaning is "I am your motivation." The third meaning is "I am that spark inside you called love, which animates you and allows you to live by the Anishinaabe values of kiizhewaatiziwin." The fourth and final meaning is "I am the destination at the end of your life that you ware walking toward. ~ Wab Kinew, #NFDB
1000:'Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God' (Jn. 20:!7). He is our Father by grace through the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15), but His Father by nature on account of His divinity. Similarly, He is our God as the creator of our human nature, but His God by reason of the dispensation whereby He became man. He made these distinctions so that we might understand the difference. ~ Gregory Palamas, #NFDB
1001:Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1002:Phil Cousineau has created a fine companion book to accompany the important film he and Gary Rhine have made in defense of the religious traditions of Native Americans. [Native Americans] are recognized the world over as keepers of a vital piece of the Creator's original orders, and yet they are regarded as little more than squatters at home. This book features impressive interviews, beautiful illustrations, and gives a voice to the voiceless. ~ Peter Coyote, #NFDB
1003:Say thank you! I want to hear you say it now. Out loud. 'Thank you.' You're saying thank you because your faith is so strong that you don't doubt that whatever the problem, you'll get through it. You're saying thank you because you know that even in the eye of the storm, God has put a rainbow in the clouds. You're saying thank you because you know there's no problem created that can compare to the Creator of all things. Say thank you! ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1004:Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1005:The self-generating power of the soul is man’s true and final secret, by virtue of which he is made in the likeness of God the creator and distinguished from all other living things. These images, ideas, values, and potentialities of the treasure hidden in the unconscious are brought to birth and realized by the hero in his various guises—savior and man of action, seer and sage, founder and artist, inventor and discoverer, scientist and leader. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
1006:It is not force or power, but the perversion of force which constitutes evil. The magician says: "Demon est deus inversus." We may say: "The Demon is power perverted." Therefore man, the perverter of power, is the creator of demons, because he is the lowest creature capable of exercising authority from within his own being. The lower kingdoms are forced to react upon group impression and obey unquestioningly. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
1007:By morning, Adelaide was beginning to understand why she'd never completely understood how God worked. Given that He had made the bewildering, maddening, incomprehensible species that was man from His own image, it stood to reason that the Creator would be a complicated mass of logic never meant to be understood by the female mind. That, or the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had taken them even further off the path than she'd ever realized ~ Kristi Ann Hunter, #NFDB
1008:The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle, but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. This, of course, is a huge burden full of great cares and toils. But you have been created by God to be a husband or a wife that you may learn to bear these troubles. Those who have no love for children are... unworthy of being called men or women; for they despise the blessing of God, the creator and author of marriage. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1009:Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator. ~ Michael Gungor, #NFDB
1010:To say yes to the world, to reproduce it, is simultaneously to re-create the world and oneself, to become the great artist, the creator. Nietzsche's message is summed up in the word creation, with the ambiguous meaning it has assumed. Nietzsche's sole admiration was for the egotism and severity proper to all creators. The transmutation of values consists only in replacing critical values by creative values; by respect and admiration for what exists. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1011:You, my Lord, are the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. You will not grow tired or weary, and Your understanding no one can fathom. You give strength to the weary and increase the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but when I hope in You, O, Lord, my strength will be renewed. I will soar on wings like eagles; I will run and not grow weary, I will walk and not faint. (Isa. 40:28–31) ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1012:Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names.” Toward ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1013:The goal of the Creator is for each entity to make a conscious choice to again seek Oneness, out of our own free will - not because anyone else forced us to. If we are told what to do and what to believe, then we have learned nothing and will not make any progress. Perhaps the single most basic realization to make is that we live in a loving Universe. If we are all One Being, then it is foolish for us to hate anyone, as we are only hating ourselves. ~ David Wilcock, #NFDB
1014:The “Intelligence of Will” denotes that this is the path where each individual “created being” is “prepared” for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine “will” of the creator. By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self—fully immersed in the knowledge of “the existence of the Primordial Wisdom. ~ Israel Regardie, #NFDB
1015:We are not our thoughts. Instead, we are the creators of the thoughts that flow through our minds and, given this fact, we can change our thoughts if we choose to do so. Just as you are not your thoughts, you are not your moods. You are the creator of the moods you experience, moods that you can change in a single instant. If you choose to do so, you can feel peace in a moment of stress, joy in a time of sadness and energy during a time of fatigue. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1016:The Watchers spread out over all the land, claiming their peoples and unveiling secrets to the sons of men — dark occult secrets that humanity should never have known. They taught mankind the ways of sorcery and alchemy, incantations and the cutting of magical roots, casting of spells and the arts of divination, necromancy, and astrology. Elohim fast became a distant memory for mankind as they worshipped and served the creation instead of the Creator. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1017:It was necessary that the very noble form of man, which is the image and likeness of God... should be joined to the substance of dust and darkness, the source of all defect and loss. For these reasons the Creator gave to the form of man power, rule, and dominion over the substance;—the form can subdue the substance, refuse the fulfillment of its desires, and reduce them, as far as possible, to a just and proper measure. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1018:Jesus, who comes across in the Gospels as extraordinarily strong, begged in the garden, with drops of sweat like blood running down his face, that he might be spared the terrible cup ahead of him, the betrayal and abandonment by his friends, death on the cross. Because Jesus cried out in anguish, we may too. But our fear is less frequent and infinitely less if we are close to the Creator. Jesus, having cried out, then let his fear go, and moved on. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
1019:Know that the difficulties which lead to confusion in the question what is the purpose of the Universe or of any of its parts, arise from two causes: first, man has an erroneous idea of himself, and believes that the whole world exists only for his sake; secondly, he is ignorant both about the nature of the sublunary world, and about the Creator's intention to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible, because existence is undoubtedly good. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1020:All creation has come to existence because of God and continues existing because of God. Were God's sustaining power suddenly removed from creation, it would immediately vanish into nothingness. This includes the soul, which - precisely because it is a creature and not the Creator - cannot subsist without God's sustaining power. It is not that we live because we have a soul, but rather that we have a soul and we live thanks to God's sustaining grace. ~ Justo L Gonz lez, #NFDB
1021:How we understand the person and character of God the Father affects every aspect of our lives. It affects far more than what we normally call the "religious" aspect of our lives. If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. His Holy character has something to say about economics, politics, athletics, romance - everything with which we are involved. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1022:Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1023:To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relationg to everything He has made, but He has no Necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can dring to Him who is complete in himself. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1024:If there are a bunch of fruit trees, one can say that whoever created these fruit trees wanted some apples. In other words, by looking at the order in the world, we can infer purpose and from purpose we begin to get some knowledge of the Creator, the Planner of all this. This is, then, how I look at God. I look at God through the works of God's hands and from those works imply intentions. From these intentions, I receive an impression of the Almighty. ~ Arno Allan Penzias, #NFDB
1025:The attainment of knowledge is the high and exclusive attribute of man, among the numberless myriads of animated beings, inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. On him alone is bestowed, by the bounty of the Creator of the universe, the power and the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is the attribute of his nature which at once enables him to improve his condition upon earth, and to prepare him for the enjoyment of a happier existence hereafter. ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB
1026:As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we're silent when someone uses the word "gay" as an insult, we are falling short. When we don't vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short. When we support musicians like Tyler, the Creator, we are falling short. We are failing our communities. We are failing civil rights. There are injustices great and small, and even if we can only fight the small ones, at least we are fighting. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
1027:The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1028:The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that outwits the Creator in the Garden Eden, and steals from Him His favorite creature, man, and at last obliges Him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again; and this the priests of the Christian religion call redemption. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1029:For Paul this was of course the ultimately shocking and ultimately glorious thing: that in becoming human to fulfil his own promises, Israel’s God, the creator, had chosen to die on a cross. The cross became, for Paul, the fullest possible revelation of both the love and the justice of God, and then, in its outworking, the extraordinary saving power of God, defeating the powers that held people captive in pagan darkness and breaking the long entail of human sin. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1030:Oh, you who are! "Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1031:I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.
I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.
I dreamed--and this dream was the finest--
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you. ~ Clive Barker,#NFDB
1032:you not know? Have you not heard? •Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never grows faint or weary; there is no limit to His understanding. 29 He gives strength to the weary and strengthens the powerless. 30 Youths may faint and grow weary, and young men stumble and fall, 31 but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1033:And just as the functions of the bodily organs of plants and animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator of privileged classes and castes and of new monopolies. ~ Rudolf Rocker, #NFDB
1034:Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1035:The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1036:here departs from his master, and holds that the spheres and the intellects had a beginning, and were brought into existence by the will of the Creator. He does not attempt to give a positive proof of his doctrine; all he contends is that the theory of the creatio ex nihilo is, from a philosophical point of view, not inferior to the doctrine which asserts the eternity of the universe, and that he can refute all objections advanced against his theory (ch. xiii.-xxviii.). ~ Maim nides, #NFDB
1037:The true value of the Christian religion rests, not upon speculative views of the Creator, which must necessarily be different in each individual, according to the extent of the knowledge of the finite being, who employs his own feeble powers in contemplating the infinite: but it rests upon those doctrines of kindness and benevolence which that religion claims and enforces, not merely in favour of man himself but of every creature susceptible of pain or of happiness. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
1038:The wife is the dramaturge of the marriage, the one whose work is essential to what is produced, even if her contributions are never directly recognized. There is glory in this role. My wife, Mathilde, for instance, gave up her job years ago to make mine run more smoothly. She loves to cook and clean and edit my work, it makes her happy to do these things. And what piece of jerk chicken would condescend to say that she was lesser for not being the creator in the family? ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
1039:A pineapple is a compilation of berries that grow and fuse together. When joined, they create a single fruit. And within each eyelet, contains a location where a flower may grow. I see the Creator of all existence as the crown on a pineapple, and all religions of the world as the spiky eyelets, where each eyelet symbolizes a different religion or race under the same crown. Each garden of faith may have different perspectives of God, yet every garden belongs to the same God. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1040:Jesus is much more than an example to us in all these things. He is the one who enables us to become like him because he frees us from the guilt we feel when we see how short we have fallen of his perfection. We were created to be true men—men of courage and industry and goodness. But that glory has been buried because of our ongoing rebellion against the Creator. It’s not just that we can’t be perfect; it’s that we don’t want to be perfect and so we hate the One who is. ~ Darrin Patrick, #NFDB
1041:The first verses establish an immediate correspondence with what Revelation was later to recount about the creation of humankind: “He [God] taught Adam the names of all things.”8 Reason, intelligence, language, and writing will grant people the qualities required to enable them to be God’s khalifahs (vicegerents) on earth, and from the very beginning, Quranic Revelation allies recognition of the Creator to knowledge and science, thus echoing the origin of creation itself.9 ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
1042:Today we celebrate Earth Day. I exhort everyone to see the world through the eyes of God the Creator: the earth is an environment to be safeguarded, a garden to be cultivated. The relationship of mankind with nature must not be conducted with greed, manipulation and exploitation, but it must conserve the divine harmony that exists between creatures and Creation within the logic of respect and care, so it can be put to the service of our brothers, also of future generations. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1043:It is high time that we grew up and left the Garden. We are indeed Eden’s children, yet it is time to place Genesis alongside the geocentric myth in the basket of stories that once, in a world of intellectual naivete, made helpful sense. As we walk through the gates, aware of the dazzling richness of the genuine biological world, there might even be a smile on the Creator’s face — that at long last His creatures have learned enough to understand His world as it truly is. ~ Kenneth R Miller, #NFDB
1044:Zen brings creativity. And remember, if you want to be one with the creator, you will have to learn some ways of creativity. The only way to be one with the creator is to be in some moment of creativity, when you are lost. The potter is lost in making his pottery; the potter is lost while working on the wheel. The painter is lost while painting. The dancer is lost; there is no dancer, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments, where you touch God, where God touches you. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1045:It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1046:The refusal to be creative is an act of self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we are open to our creativity, we are opening to God: good, orderly direction. As we pursue our creative fulfillment, all elements of our life move toward harmony. As we strengthen our creativity, we strengthen our connection to the Creator within. Artists love other artists. Our relationship to God is co-creative, artist to artist. It is God's will for us to live in creative abundance. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1047:There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:
What is the purpose of life?
Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:
To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1048:Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone. Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him. He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance. Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that. He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1049:The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. ... I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with his grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
1050:28Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1051:Depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and beliefs in some kind of beauty- depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity and use to express yourself the things that surround you,the images of your dreams and the objects of your memory. If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1052:Trusting God even when we can’t or don’t want to because nothing makes sense—especially then—is freedom, freedom from the pressure of needing to be certain when certainty has left us. Choosing to trust the Creator then and there isn’t irrational, but a humble admission that our rational faculties are limited for grasping the eternal and infinite. To call such trust irrational has already put on a pedestal the rationalistic pattern of faith that deeper faith calls us to transcend. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1053:We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
1054:Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!
It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same. ~ Mark Twain,#NFDB
1055:Most of us love a non-self, or something extrinsic and apart from our inner life; but a mother's love during the time she is a flesh-and-blood ciborium is not for a non-self but for one that is her very self, a perfect example of charity and love which hardly perceives a separation. Motherhood then becomes a kind of priesthood. She brings God to man by preparing the flesh in which the soul will be implanted; she brings man to God in offering the child back again to the Creator. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1056:. . .nature is still predominant, and there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator-they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things. ~ Thomas Cole, #NFDB
1057:Brahma is God who creates all forms, hence is called the creator; but he has not yet found the perfect form and is still yearning and searching, making him unworthy of worship. Vishnu is God who has realised that no form is perfect and so works with the limited forms. This is why he is called the preserver and is worshipped in various forms. Shiva is God who breaks free from all forms, having found all of them limited, hence he is the destroyer who is worshipped as the linga. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1058:John’s journey with his Lord took a different turn from that of the others. He laid his head on the chest of the Creator of the universe. He saw the excruciating ordeal of the criminal death of an innocent Man. He was also given an amazing stewardship—the ongoing care of Jesus’ mother, Mary (see John 19:27). I would give over the care of my mother only into the very best hands. I wonder what Jesus saw in John. What was different in him? Did he have an uncommon love for his Master? ~ James W Goll, #NFDB
1059:Pastor Jón Prímus: Do you remember when Úa shook her curls? Do you remember when she looked at us and laughed? Did she not accept the Creation? Did she reject anything? Did she contradict anything? It was a victory for the Creator, once and for all. Everything that was workaday and ordinary, everything that had limitations, ceased to exist when she came: the world perfect, and nothing mattered anymore. What does Úa mean when she sends people telegrams saying she is dead? ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
1060:An artist's voice, communication, that's very important. The learning, the building of your energy to communicate deeper and deeper even without words, the expanse of your source-spark energy to reach people at deeper energy levels is very beautiful to learn about since it's our mission here as artists to help beings transcend limitations and any feeling, thing keeping their love down to show them that we are all artists with very special sides of energy light from the creator. ~ Giuseppe Andrews, #NFDB
1061:Dualism is on a collision course with Christianity. The Christian faith has no stock in dualism. Satan may be opposed to God, but he is by no means equal to God. Satan is a creature; God is the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite.
The list could go on. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any sense. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1062:The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
1063:When I was in my teens I had a series of intensely religious experiences. They deepened my sense of God as the creator of all things. And they also deepened my sensitivity towards creation itself so that concern for God's creatures and animal rights followed from that. Some people think I'm an animal rights person who just happens, almost incidentally, to be religious. In fact, it's because I believe in God that I'm concerned about God's creatures. The religious impulse is primary. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
1064:Perhaps one of the many reasons why Revelation has been literally a closed book for so many, and for so much of the church, is that it powerfully and dramatically contradicts this popular view. God’s kingdom is not simply designed for ‘heaven’, because God is the creator of the whole world, and his entire purpose is to reclaim that whole world as his own and to set it on the way to become the place he always intended it to be, before human rebellion pulled it so disastrously off track. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1065:That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in manners of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
1066:According to the book of Genesis, the Creator gave man dominion over the whole wide earth. A mighty big present. But I am not interested in any such superroyal prerogatives. All I desire is dominion over myself—dominion over my thoughts; dominion over my fears; dominion over my mind and over my spirit. And the wonderful thing is that I know that I can attain this dominion to an astonishing degree, any time I want to, by merely controlling my actions—which in turn control my reactions. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1067:At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values....In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1068:When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no other roles.
Ruth had never felt such anticipation before. She felt she had absolutely no will to take control of what happened next; in fact, she was exhilarated not to be in charge. She was happy not to be the novelist. She was not the writer of this story, yet the story thrilled her. ~ John Irving,#NFDB
1069:You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is ~ Osho, #NFDB
1070:It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive—literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell—it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
1071:Know that the difficulties which lead to confusion in the question what is the purpose of the Universe or of any of its parts, arise from two causes: first, man has an erroneous idea of himself, and believes that the whole world exists only for his sake; secondly, he is ignorant both about the nature of the sublunary world, and about the Creator's intention to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible, because existence is undoubtedly good. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1072:Life is about doing what we must to survive, to make a life that has a semblance of happiness. That’s it. We are bloody humans with wrong desires and problems that seep out of us and onto society. We are evil little shits that change into worse versions of our younger selves as we get older. There’s nothing to really feel guilty about in a world where the creator made us fucked up in the first place. I’m sure as hell not going to pity myself for the things I’ve done or what I have to do. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
1073:Many creatives want to be just the creator, or only “the idea guy.” They like that because it’s sexy and because that’s what comes easy to us. But I suspect we like it also because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of taking full responsibility for everything that comes next. A lot of decisions are going to be made—many of which can sink or make a project—that it’d be nice to have someone else to put it on. If we hand it off to someone else, then we have someone to blame when the project fails. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1074:Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. —ISAIAH 40:28–31 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
1075:The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle -- their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1076:All our language about the future ... is like a set of signposts pointing into a bright mist ... the New Testament image of the future hope of the whole cosmos, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, gives as coherent a picture as we need or could have of the future that is promised to the whole world, a future in which, under the sovereign and wise rule of the creator God, decay and death will be done away with and a new creation born, to which the present one will stand as mother to child. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
1077:Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos. ~ Lyall Watson, #NFDB
1078:You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1079:Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; … it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. … [T]he only proof of Providence is miracle. … [M]iracle … implies … that the miracle worker is the same as he who brought forth all things by his mere will – God the Creator. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1080:Rather than seeing ourselves as insignificant specks in the immensity of the cosmos, we can consider that immensity an indicator of our worth. It seems the Creator invested a great deal-a universe of 50 billion trillion stars, plus a hundred times more matter, all fine-tuned to mind-boggling precision-for us. If not for the strength and abundance of evidence in support of that notion, it would seem the height of arrogance. Humility demands that we take a deeper and wider look at that evidence. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1081:But, in conformity to His wisdom it was right that afterwards the Prophet should be sent back from the vision of pure Unity and that he should return . . . toward the separative vision. For, He created man and jinn only that they should worship Him and know Him - and, if they remained at the degree of pure Unity, there would be none to worship Him. In this separative vision, the Worshipped and the worshipper, the Lord and the servant, the Creator and the creature are again perceived. ~ Abdelkader El Djezairi, #NFDB
1082:It seemed that I had worked passionately for nineteen years on a beautiful product and, in the end, he had become something entirely different than I intended. I did not recognize him at all. How could I go on creating beautiful pottery pieces if they weren't going to turn out as I had intended or hoped? Until one day I had an epiphany. I was not the potter. A potter was shaping my children, but it was not me. . .My son was not my product. He was the work of a great artist: the Creator of all ~ Cindy Rollins, #NFDB
1083:Who do we think we are — we small creatures with three-pound brains, a few limited senses, and life spans barely long enough to get to know our neighborhood, much less the planet, and much less the galaxy, and much less the universe, and much less still its creator! Who do we think we are to be able to define or even describe the creator of DNA, galaxies, dust mites, blue whales, the carbon cycle, light, and a billion other realities we have no notion about whatsoever, no awareness of at all? ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1084:No matter how unreasonable others may seem, I am responsible for not reacting negatively. Regardless of what is happening around me I will always have the prerogative, and the responsibility, of choosing what happens within me. I am the creator of my own reality. When I [review my day], I know that I must stop judging others. If I judge others, I am probably judging myself. Whoever is upsetting me most is my best teacher. I have much to learn from him or her, and in my hearts, I should thank that person. ~ Bill W, #NFDB
1085:Who knows whence this creation had its origin?
He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,
He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,
He knows—or maybe even He does not know.
— Rig Veda, X.129 1
‘Maybe even He does not know!’ I love a faith that raises such a fundamental
question about no less a Supreme Being than the Creator of the Universe
Himself. Maybe He does not know, indeed. Who are we mere mortals to claim a
knowledge of which even He cannot be certain? ~ Shashi Tharoor,#NFDB
1086:And yet what if our definition of life is far too limited? What if everything is living, in that everything is made up of the consciousness of the Creator? And by direct implication, what if everything is aware? What if the water is aware? And what if the electron is aware? Not aware in the same way as the human being is aware, of course, with our ability to reason, but still fundamentally aware on a basic level of existence because it is imbued with the very fuel of awareness—universal consciousness. ~ Ziad Masri, #NFDB
1087:Christopher Wright makes a virtually identical conclusion about the significance of Genesis 3:22:
God accepts that humans have indeed breached the Creator-creature distinction. Not that humans have now become gods but that they have chosen to act as though they were-defining and deciding for themselves what they will regard as good and evil. Therein lies the root of all other forms of idolatry: we deify our own capacities, and thereby make gods of ourselves and our choices and all their implications. ~ G K Beale,#NFDB
1088:Within this earthen vessel are bowers and groves, and within it is the Creator: Within this vessel are the seven oceans and the unnumbered stars. The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within; And within this vessel the Eternal soundeth, and the spring wells up. Kabir says: "Listen to me, my Friend! My beloved Lord is within." [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger
~ Kabir, Within this earthen vessel
,#NFDB
1089:It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship. ~ Ellen G White, #NFDB
1090:The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1091:Many contend that “us” refers to God and the angels. This interpretation, though ancient, seems unlikely on two accounts. First, if the author intended readers to understand that angels were included in the “us” of Genesis 1:26, one would expect some previous allusion to angels in the creation account. Angels are never mentioned. Indeed, the suggestion that angels have a role in creation breaks the pattern of this chapter, which repeatedly emphasizes that God alone is the Creator of the world. Second, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1092:The Jew presence on Elephantine coincided with Khnum's cult, for that the Jew maintained his own temple there (i.e. the House of YHWH) which functioned alongside that of Khnum's. Khnum was the creator of children, which he made on a potter's wheel from clay. Therefore, we expect to find some evidence of Ihy's creation story in Egypt - taking into consideration his important role as a rejuvenated god in the New Kingdom and that is exactly what we see in Dendera's Temple complex where Khnum moulds Ihy. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1093:A man who sets out to make himself up is taking on the Creator's role, according to one way of seeing things; he's unnatural, a blasphemer, an abomination of abominations. From another angle, you could see pathos in him, heroism in his struggle, in his willingness to risk: not all mutants survive. Or, consider him socio-politically: most migrants learn, and can become disguises. Our own false descriptions to counter the falsehoods invented about us, concealing for reasons of security our secret selves. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1094:A man who sets out to make himself up is taking on the Creator’s role, according to one way of seeing things; he’s unnatural, a blasphemer, an abomination of abominations. From another angle, you could see pathos in him, heroism in his struggle, in his willingness to risk: not all mutants survive. Or, consider him socio-politically: most migrants learn, and can become disguises. Our own false descriptions to counter the falsehoods invented about us, concealing for reasons of security our secret selves. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1095:"The true purpose of education," says one, "is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop to their fullest extent the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us." He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion. ~ William H. Crogman, "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), in Talks for the Times (1896), p. 282, #NFDB
1096:To go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1097:But the Platonists never argued that evil’s lack of ultimate reality meant that there was no moral evil in the world. Plato was well aware of wars, murders, and lies. Evil exists, but it exists as a lack of good, just as holes in a Swiss cheese exist only as lack of cheese. The evil of a lie is the absence of truth. Plato did not think that the nonbeing of evil removed evil from the world, only that it removed responsibility for evil from the creator. Evil arose not from the God, but from matter. ~ Jeffrey Burton Russell, #NFDB
1098:He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1099:Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. Remarking on the complexity of Ptolemaic model of the universe after it was explained to him. Footnote: Carlyle says, in his History of Frederick the Great, book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, 'that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice,' is still remembered by mankind, - this and no other of his many sayings. ~ Alfonso X of Castile, #NFDB
1100:In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows, white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and am impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1101:The 'Intelligence of Will' denotes that this is the path where each individual 'created being' is 'prepared' for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine 'will' of the creatoR By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self-fully immersed in the knowledge of 'the existence of the Primordial Wisdom.'
~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates: Skrying On The Tree Of Life,#NFDB
1102:The creator has planted within every creature a fragment of himself, a spark, a spirit of the same nature as himself and, thanks to this spirit, every creature can become a creator. And this means that, instead of always waiting for their needs to be satisfied by some external source, human beings can work inwardly by means of their thought, their will, and their spirit to obtain the nourishing healing elements they need. This is why the teaching I bring you is of the spirit, of the creator and not of matter ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1103:You are a perfect child of a divine Creator, and nothing about you is imperfect. The Creator, being perfect, does not create the imperfect. It is therefore humble—not arrogant—to accept the divine perfection of your true self. In any moment when you behaved imperfectly, you did not become imperfect; in that moment, you simply forgot your perfection. You simply forgot who you are. And when we cannot remember who we are, we have a harder time behaving like the person who in our heart we most long to be. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1104:Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And
diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind
is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its
impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the
work and of life. Detached from it, the work will once more give a
barely muffled voice to a soul Forever freed from hope. Or it will
give voice to nothing if the creator, tired of his activity, intends to
turn away. That is equivalent. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1105:The parent is protector and trainer, but never the ultimate teacher. Every parent is responsible for teaching their kid basic moral conduct, manners, the difference between love and hate, and right from wrong. However, after maturity, the child must set off to seek knowledge on their own. Religion is never to be forced. And you cannot threaten your child with hell and tell them your religion is the only right way. There is no one right way. The many ways to the Creator are as varied as the colors of a rainbow. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1106:He thought about science, about faith, about man. he thought about how every culture, in every country, in every time, had always shared one thing. We all had the Creator. We used different names, different faces, and different prayers, but God was the universal constant for man. God was the symbol we all shared...the symbol of all the mysteries of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our limitless human potential, but that ancient symbol had been lost over time. Until now. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
1107:So your hope as a parent is not found in your power, your wisdom, your character, your experience, or your success, but in this one thing alone: the presence of your Lord. The Creator, Savior, Almighty, Sovereign King is with you. Let your heart rest. You are not in this parenting drama alone. Your potential is greater than the size of your weaknesses, because the One who is without weakness is with you, and he does his best work through those who admit that they are weak but in weakness still heed his call. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1108:Noah, who remained innocent and just, God decided to open a path of salvation. In this way he gave humanity the chance of a new beginning. All it takes is one good person to restore hope! The biblical tradition clearly shows that this renewal entails recovering and respecting the rhythms inscribed in nature by the hand of the Creator. We see this, for example, in the law of the Sabbath. On the seventh day, God rested from all his work. He commanded Israel to set aside each seventh day as a day of rest, a Sabbath, ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1109:Now there you have a sample of man’s “reasoning powers,” as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws this astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1110:We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1111:Is there something to the notion "Let me sleep on it."? Mountains of data says there is. For example, Mendeleyev - the creator of the Periodic Table of Elements - says that he came up with this idea in his sleep. Contemplating the nature of the universe while playing Solitaire one evening, he nodded off. When he awoke, he knew how all the atoms in the universe were organised, and he promptly created his famous table. Interestingly, he organised the atoms in repeating groups of seven, just the way you play Solitaire. ~ John Medina, #NFDB
1112:She guessed that behind the conscious evil there was an unconscious blackness. That was what distinguished the earth’s children of darkness; they couldn’t make things but only break them. God the Creator had made man in His own image, and that meant that every man and woman who dwelt under God’s light was a creator of some kind, a person with an urge to stretch out his hand and shape the world into some rational pattern. The black man wanted—was able—only to unshape. Anti-Christ? You might as well say anti-creation. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1113:Would you like to know where Jesus feeds His flock? Deny yourself and take up your cross, then you can be sure of following Him. Would you like to know where He rests at noon? Once He rested in the bosom of the Father, now He rests in the heart of every believer who gives Him room. But He is preeminently resting in the hearts of the believers who are suffering and in the hearts of those who have purified themselves from an attachment to created things, so that they may abide entirely in the Creator (John 15:4). ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
1114:Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic series, explains his success this way: I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The “Dilbert” comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That’s how value is created. ~ Chris Guillebeau, #NFDB
1115:He is the God El Shaddai in earthly form?” Mikael nodded with a smile. Now Abram knew why his form was familiar. He was the one who met Abram in the fire. But now Abram had his wits about him. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?” said Abram. It was beyond his comprehension that the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Maker of all things visible and invisible, would condescend to such a humiliating form as that of a man. It reminded him too much of those pretenders to the throne, those Watcher gods of the earth. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1116:To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher. ~ Pope Leo XIII, #NFDB
1117:It is hardly surprising that the harbinger of God's love has been accused of hatred of the human race. Who has a right to speak thus of love for father and mother, for son and daughter, but the destroyer of all human life on the one hand, or the Creator of a new life on the other? Who dare lay such an exclusive claim to man's love and devotion, but the enemy of mankind on the one hand, and the Saviour of mankind on the other? Who but the devil, or Christ, the Prince of Peace, willy carry the sword into men's houses? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1118:For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly displayed; it is like a mirror, in which the works and wisdom of God are reflected. ~ Alister E McGrath, #NFDB
1119:It appears that all that can be, is. The Creator's hand does not appear to have been opened in order to give existence to a certain determinate number of species, but it seems that it has thrown out all at once a world of relative and non-relative creatures, an infinity of harmonic and contrary combinations and a perpetuity of destructions and replacements. What idea of power is not given us by this spectacle! What feeling of respect for its Author is not inspired in us by this view of the universe! ~ Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, #NFDB
1120:You are the creator of your experience, and you must create your experience deliberately if you are to have the joyful experience that you meant to have. Unless you, in any moment, are seeing the world through the eyes of Source, then you are but a shadow of the Being that you’ve come forth to be. Which means, if you are doing less than loving whatever it is you’re giving your attention to, you are not who you were really born to be. Negative emotion means you’ve pinched yourself off, to some degree, from who-you-really-are. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1121:This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre, #NFDB
1122:[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1123:Creativity, I believe, is inherent in all of us. We are the progeny of almighty God. God is defined in many ways: all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing; everlasting; the lawgiver; the ultimate source of love, beauty, justice, and happiness. Most of all, he is the creator. He created the universe, and those who inhabit it; and, in creating us, he made us in his own image, so that his personality and capacities, however feebly, are reflected in our minds, bodies, and immortal spirits. So we are, by our nature, creators as well. ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
1124:An entrepreneur is someone who, almost artistically, designs a living entity which embodies the values, beliefs, and ambitions of the creator. It's impossible for a larger entity to swallow a smaller one without completely reshaping it. When this process begins, a wild visionary - the entrepreneur type - is the most toxic, indigestible actor imaginable. And this is why I roll my eyes when a new acquisition is announced: Because I don't see it as a triumphant graduation but a sacrifice to an industry that is afraid to dream big. ~ Jake Lodwick, #NFDB
1125:faith is what causes God to move. “Well, Joel, I’m sixty-five years old, and I’ve never had a seventh year.” Are you releasing your faith? Are you thanking God that it’s turning around? Are you declaring, “Where I am is not where I’m staying? This sickness is temporary. I’m coming out of debt. There are new levels in my future. I am free.” When you have this attitude of faith, speaking victory over your life, that’s when the Creator of the universe will show up and do amazing things. Your faith can bring about your seventh year. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1126:It is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him. We hold that the universe exists because the Creator wills it so; that mankind is low in rank as compared with the uppermost portion of the universe, viz., with the spheres and the stars; but, as regards the angels, there cannot be any real comparison between man and angels, although man is the highest of all beings on earth; i.e., of all the beings formed of the four elements. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1127:Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being, governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies, the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1128:... we should not worry about clothes or food? Such anxiety is a mark of? unbelievers, who reject the providence of the Lord and deny the Creator. An attitude of this kind is entirely wrong for Christians who believe that even? sparrows? are under the care of the holy angels (cf. Mt. 10:29). The demons, however? suggest worries of this kind? The divine word can bear no fruit, being choked out by our cares. Let us, then, renounce these cares, and throw them down before the Lord, being content with what we have at the moment? ~ Evagrius Ponticus, #NFDB
1129:I'm praying to the Creator of the world, the King of the universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-faithful God. I'm praying to the God who made the mountains and who can move them if necessary. I'm praying to the God who has always been faithful to me, who has never let me down no matter how frightened I was or how difficult the situation looked. I'm praying to a God who wants to bear fruit through me, and I am going to trust that he is going to use me tonight. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is. He is faithful. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
1130:Perhaps some very wicked persons will suspect that the lawgiver is here speaking enigmatically, when he says that the Creator repented of having created man, when he beheld their wickedness; on which account he determined to destroy the whole race. But let those who adopt such opinions as these know, that they are making light of and extenuating the offences of these men of old time, by reason of their own excessive impiety; for what can be a greater act of wickedness than to think that the unchangeable God can be changed? ~ Philo of Alexandria, #NFDB
1131:The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. ~ William H Seward, #NFDB
1132:The Yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven. Such talk invariably makes people hallucinatory. Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you- these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you created. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1133:[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
1134:Rather, the reason to let go of selfishness is simply because it is impractical. It doesn’t work. It’s too costly. It consumes too much energy. It delays the accomplishment of our goals and the realization of our wants. Because of its very nature, the small self is the creator of guilt and its self-perpetuator; that is, out of guilt we strive to accomplish and achieve success. Then, when we achieve success, we feel guilty because we have it. There is no winning of the guilt game. The only solution is to give it up, to let it go. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
1135:To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
1136:Enoch’s dumbfounded stare focused on Gabriel, until Uriel spoke. Uriel said to Enoch, “Elohim is the true and living God, the Creator of the universe. He has chosen you as his representative to proclaim judgment upon the gods and upon their giant progeny, the Nephilim.” “You call that subtle?” muttered Gabriel under his breath. “More lyrical than you will ever be,” quipped Uriel. He turned back to Enoch. “Terror is about to break out on all the land, and Elohim has commissioned you to reject the gods of Shinar and become his prophet. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1137:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1138:...and she came to the monk wearing cosmetics, much gold jewelry, and an elaborate silk dress. The monk admonished her gently; 'By supposing your body to require [all this],' he said,'you condemn the Creator for deficiency.' It is a remark that might be interpreted as misogyny, but in the context of the story--the monk pleads that he is only a man with the same nature as hers, and has no special access to God--it is clear that the monk believes the woman to be made in the image of God, good as she is, without unnecessary adornment. ~ Kathleen Norris, #NFDB
1139:Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov: The creator has planted within every creature a fragment of himself, a spark, a spirit of the same nature as himself and, thanks to this spirit, every creature can become a creator. And this means that, instead of always waiting for their needs to be satisfied by some external source, human beings can work inwardly by means of their thought, their will, and their spirit to obtain the nourishing healing elements they need. This is why the teaching I bring you is of the spirit, of the creator and not of matter … ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1140:St. Augustine and St. Thomas define mortal sin to be a turning away from God: that is, the turning of one's back upon God, leaving the Creator for the sake of the creature. What punishment would that subject deserve who, while his king was giving him a command, contemptuously turned his back upon him to go and transgress his orders? This is what the sinner does; and this is punished in hell with the pain of loss, that is, the loss of God, a punishment richly deserved by him who in this life turns his back upon his sovereign good. ~ Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
1141:And I cannot understand how so many distinguished men have been of opinion that this matter, which is so great, and possesses such properties as to enable it to be sufficient for all the bodies in the world which God willed to exist, and to be the attendant and slave of the Creator for whatever forms and species He wished in all things, receiving into itself whatever qualities He desired to bestow upon it, was uncreated, i.e., not formed by God Himself, who is the Creator of all things, but that its nature and power were the result of chance. ~ Origen, #NFDB
1142:This biblical view has two crucial implications. First, the intelligible order of the universe reflects the mind of the Creator. Second, because God created humans in his image, our minds correspond with that order as well. There is a congruence between the structure of the world and the structure of human cognition—a correlation between subject and object in the act of knowing. As Plantinga writes, “God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties.” 12 ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1143:Why?” “Because all humanity has turned its back on the Creator. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. And they worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. When our forebear Adam disobeyed the Creator, he and his beloved were exiled from the Garden and from the Tree of Life, that would have been the source of continued renewal to live forever. As Adam’s descendants, we are exiled from our Creator. The immortality you seek, lies in him and in his Chosen Seed. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1144:I saw the earth as a pale blue dot in the immense blackness of physical space. I could see that earth was a place where good and evil mixed, and that this constituted one of its unique features. Even on earth there is much more good than evil, but earth is a place where evil is allowed to gain influence in a way that would be entirely impossible at higher levels of existence. That evil could occasionally have the upper hand was known and allowed by the Creator as a necessary consequence of giving the gift of free will to beings like us. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
1145:The state is the guarantor, but not the creator, of social relationships. It represents and unifies capital, it is neither capital’s motor nor its centrepiece. From the undeniable fact that the Spanish masses were armed after July 1936, anarchism deduced that the state was losing its substance. But the substance of the state resides not in institutional forms, but in its unifying function. The state ensures the tie which human beings cannot and dare not create among themselves, and creates a web of services which are both parasitic and real. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1146:Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The eternal God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t grow tired or become weary. His understanding is beyond reach. He gives strength to those who grow tired and increases the strength of those who are weak. Even young people grow tired and become weary, and young men will stumble and fall. Yet, the strength of those who wait with hope in the LORD will be renewed. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and won’t become weary. They will walk and won’t grow tired. Isaiah 40:28-31 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1147:St. Augustine and St. Thomas define mortal sin to be a turning away from God: that is, the turning of one's back upon God, leaving the Creator for the sake of the creature. What punishment would that subject deserve who, while his king was giving him a command, contemptuously turned his back upon him to go and transgress his orders? This is what the sinner does; and this is punished in hell with the pain of loss, that is, the loss of God, a punishment richly deserved by him who in this life turns his back upon his sovereign good. ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
1148:The relationship we have with God is not the same over a life; sometimes, as with human relationships, it goes through bad patches and sometimes it becomes very intense. It is a terrifying thing to have a relationship with one's creator, to spend one's life so that one is trying to converge with one's creator seems an extraordinarily difficult and sublime thing. But at the same time it's extremely simple. One of the things which perpetually amazes me is that at any moment or any day, anyone who is alive can talk with the creator of the cosmos. ~ Kevin Hart, #NFDB
1149:master, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov: The creator has planted within every creature a fragment of himself, a spark, a spirit of the same nature as himself and, thanks to this spirit, every creature can become a creator. And this means that, instead of always waiting for their needs to be satisfied by some external source, human beings can work inwardly by means of their thought, their will, and their spirit to obtain the nourishing healing elements they need. This is why the teaching I bring you is of the spirit, of the creator and not of matter … ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1150:I don't know if God exists and I don't care. God's will and design for this temporal and spatial vastness, if any, is so patently, deliberately impenetrable that I doubt any mortal has a grasp on it. The very inexplicability of sad events like the tsunami, like the AIDS crisis or even like the cancer death of the father of one of my daughter's 2nd-grade classmates last week are, to me, reminders to focus on our obligations to one another, not to the infinite; to honor the creator, if any, by honoring creation itself and hoping that's good enough. ~ Eric Zorn, #NFDB
1151:One rendering of the Septuagint (LXX) version of Psalm 95:5-6 reaffirms this reality of national gods being demons whose deity was less than the Creator, “For great is the Lord, and praiseworthy exceedingly. More awesome he is than all the gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.”[4] Another LXX verse, Isa. 65:11, speaks of Israel’s idolatry: “But ye are they that have left me, and forget my holy mountain, and prepare a table for [a demon], and fill up the drink-offering to Fortune [a foreign goddess].[5] ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1152:The word nature has given rise to a multitude of errors. Let me repeat that the nature of any being is the sum of the qualities attributed to it by the Creator. With immeasurable profundity, Burke said that art is man's nature. This is beyond doubt; man with all his affections, all his knowledge, all his arts is the true natural man, and the weaver's cloth is as natural as the spider's web. Man's natural state is therefore to be what he is today and what he has always been, that is to say, sociable. All human records attest to this truth.. ~ Joseph de Maistre, #NFDB
1153:That is why the yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven. Such talk invariably makes people hallucinatory. Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The Creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you—these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you have created. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1154:You and I, however, were so created that by anything and everything we do, we are saying to our Creator either “God, I love you,” or “God, I could not care less.” The human spirit is that part of us where God lives within us in the person of the Holy Spirit, so that with our moral consent (and never without it), God gains access to our human soul. This is where He Himself, as the Creator within the creature, can teach our minds, control our emotions, and direct our wills, so that He, as God from within, governs our behavior as we let God be God. ~ W Ian Thomas, #NFDB
1155:If you ask religious believers why they believe, you may find a few "sophisticated" theologians who will talk about God as the "Ground of all Isness," or as "a metaphor for interpersonal fellowship" or some such evasion. But the majority of believers leap, more honestly and vulnerably, to a version of the argument from design or the argument from first cause. Philosophers of the caliber of David Hume didn't need to rise from their armchairs to demonstrate the fatal weakness of all such argument: they beg the question of the Creator's origin. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1156:On A Prospect Of T'Ai-Shan
How is one to describe this king of mountains? Throught the whole of Ch'i and
Lu one never loses sight of its greenness. In it the Creator has concentrated
all that is numinous and beautiful. Its northern and southern slopes divide the
dawn from the dark. The layered clouds begin at the climber's heaving chest,
and homing birds fly suddenly within range of his straining eyes. One day I
must stand on top of its highest peak and at a single glance see all the other
mountains grown tiny beneath me.
~ Du Fu,#NFDB
1157:The diameter divides into the circumference, you know. It ought to be three times. You'd think so, wouldn't you? But does it? No. Three point one four one and lots of other figures. There's no end to the buggers. Do you know how pissed off that makes me?"
"I expect it makes you extremely pissed off," said Teppic politely.
"Right. It tells me that the Creator used the wrong kind of circles. It's not even a proper number! I mean, three point five, you could respect. Or three point three. That'd look *right*." He stared morosely at the pie. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1158:Bright, however, as is the manifestation which God gives both of himself and his immortal kingdom in the mirror of his works, so great is our stupidity, so dull are we in regard to these bright manifestations, that we derive no benefit from them. For in regard to the fabric and admirable arrangement of the universe, how few of us are there who, in lifting our eyes to the heavens, or looking abroad on the various regions of the earth, ever think of the Creator? Do we not rather overlook Him, and sluggishly content ourselves with a view of his works? ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1159:Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. ISA40.29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. ISA40.30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: ISA40.31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1160:his sense of danger, of what – just once – he called ‘ego’s mythological ideal’, the involvement of the creator’s mind which he feared would influence the shape and behaviour of the mythago forms. He had known of the danger, then, but I wonder if Christian had fully comprehended this most subtle of the occult processes occurring in the forest. From the darkness and pain of my father’s mind a single thread had emerged in the fashioning of a girl in a green tunic, dooming her to a helplessness in the forest that was contrary to her natural form. ~ Robert Holdstock, #NFDB
1161:Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and… …but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilization. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1162:It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator.
The people down here just ate that up! ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1163:Theologians and philosophers, who make God the creator of Nature and the architect of the Universe, reveal Him to us as an illogical and unbalanced Being. They declare He is benevolent because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit the truth that His ways are vicious and beyond understanding. They attribute a malignity to Him seldom to be found in any human being. And that is how they get human beings to worship Him. For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1164:Making room for gleaning limits and disciplines our daily exercise of power. Any of us who possesses any significant power should ask each day what we might leave undone that day for the sake of others’ creativity. But on a weekly basis we are commanded not just to leave margins around our exercise of power but to withdraw from it altogether. In the practice of sabbath, as of making room for gleaning, we once again play in the footsteps of the Creator God, whose work was not without rest and within whose sabbath all the rest of the story has unfolded. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1165:See, when we begin to question the very existence of the Creator that means the creation is perfect. If every day it could not function without morning and evening prayers, then this would not be a perfect creation. This creation is so perfect that you can forget the Creator — you can just discard him, dump him — and still it goes on. So a true compliment to the Creator is when you forget about him. That is a real compliment to the wonderful piece of creation he has made; it is so perfect within itself that it does not need to draw from anything outside. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1166:We claim scriptural authority for the assertion that Jesus Christ was and is God the Creator, the God who revealed Himself to Adam, Enoch, and all the antediluvial patriarchs and prophets down to Noah; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God of Israel as a united people, and the God of Ephraim and Judah after the disruption of the Hebrew nation; the God who made Himself known to the prophets from Moses to Malachi; the God of the Old Testament record; and the God of the Nephites. We affirm that Jesus Christ was and is Jehovah, the Eternal One. ~ James E Talmage, #NFDB
1167:You have respect for religion! How vastly condescending! How deeply humble! The creature has a respect for the service of the Creator! A grasshopper deigns to acknowledge that it has a respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords! Verily a subject of congratulation for the universe! A worm crawling in the dust confesses to its fellow worm that it has some respect for the government of the high and mighty One that inhabiteth eternity. ~ William Augustus Muhlenberg, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 505, #NFDB
1168:You are not incarnating in your higher vibration without work on your part. And to believe that we are giving you language that would solve all your problems and move you into a higher dimensional reality without you taking responsibilities for your creations would be misguidance. We would not do that for you. Mankind is responsible for his creations. What you have created is your responsibility and you are being attended to now by us in our authority, who may support you as you grow and change and reclaim your manifestation as the Creator embodied in form. ~ Paul Selig, #NFDB
1169:I look forward to the time when the churches come to celebrate and honour the work of animal protection as an imperative arising from their belief in the Creator and in the gospel of the crucified. After all, similarly remarkable things have happened, for example, the growing consensus among churches that the environment should be cared for and protected as a Christian duty--an astonishing turnaround when one considers the prevailing dualism in previous centuries, which expressly discouraged concern for "earthly" matters as distinct from "spiritual" ones. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
1170:True autism, Jack had decided, was in the last analysis an apathy toward public endeavor; it was a private existence carried on as if the individual person were the creator of all value, rather than merely the repository of inherited values. And Jack Bohlen, for the life of him, could not accept the Public School with its teaching machines as the sole arbiter of what was and what wasn't of value. For the values of a society were in ceaseless flux, and the Public School was an attempt to stabilize those values, to jell them at a fixed point-to embalm them. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1171:Every scientist, through personal study and research, completes himself and his own humanity. ... Scientific research constitutes for you, as it does for many, the way for the personal encounter with truth, and perhaps the privileged place for the encounter itself with God, the Creator of heaven and earth. Science shines forth in all its value as a good capable of motivating our existence, as a great experience of freedom for truth, as a fundamental work of service. Through research each scientist grows as a human being and helps others to do likewise. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1172:CREATIVITY is when you are not, because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but can never be a creator. When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being - the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When God is inside you His light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1173:It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams. Or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around. Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," What Are People For?, 1989 Jesus pioneered a relationship ethic based on compassion. Being a disciple means building relationships - with the Creator and with all creation and creatures. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
1174:That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1175:If you are waiting on God in prayer, remember Isaiah 40:28–31: Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. ~ Courtney Joseph, #NFDB
1176:In the beginning’ – no Bible reader could see that phrase and not think at once of the start of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Whatever else John is going to tell us, he wants us to see his book as the story of God and the world, not just the story of one character in one place and time. This book is about the creator God acting in a new way within his much-loved creation. It is about the way in which the long story which began in Genesis reached the climax the creator had always intended. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1177:Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1178:The fear of the Lord is “the beginning of wisdom,” not because a person immediately understands archaic Latin phrases and complex mathematics, but because the worshiper no longer sees only a fragmented world, but stands before the One who holds all things together (see Prov 1:7; 2:1-6; 9:10; Ps 19:9; 111:10). Fearing the Lord means that we are not left to our own resources to control and survive the elements of creation, but that we can trust the Creator who sustains that creation, controls the future and has our best interests at heart (e.g., Prov 23:17-18). ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
1179:What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
1180:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (2001), p. 222, #NFDB
1181:God Transcendent, greater, vaster and more inclusive than His created world, is universally recognised and has been generally emphasised; all faiths can say with Shri Krishna (speaking as God, the Creator) that "having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." This God Transcendent has dominated the religious thinking of millions of simple and spiritually-minded people down the centuries which have elapsed since humanity began to press forward towards divinity. ~ Alice Bailey The Externalisation Of The Hierarchy The Return of the Christ - Part 1, (1957), #NFDB
1182:These hybrid offspring were a voracious consuming mass of flesh and bone. Like a plague of locusts, they stripped bare the life of every territory where they encamped or passed through. She liked to call it “the circle of life,” the way of all things on terra firma: eat or be eaten, only the fittest survive. Morality and all its self-righteous proclamations of right and wrong were reducible to the will to power. Might made right. She would have to craft that into a myth one day. It would be a useful tool to obscure the Creator and justify all kinds of atrocities. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1183:To allot God a secondary place in life was, to me, inconceivable. Though He is the sole owner of the cosmos, silently showering us with gifts from life to life, one thing yet remains which He does not own, and which each human heart is empowered to withhold or bestow—man’s love. The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive—a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will. With what velvet glove of every humility has He not covered the iron hand of omnipotence! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1184:What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you go there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
1185:In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1186:Capturing the beauty of the conversion of the water into wine, the poet Alexander Pope said, "The conscious water saw its Master and blushed." That sublime description could be reworked to explain each one of these miracles. Was it any different in principle for a broken body to mend at the command of its Maker? Was it far-fetched for the Creator of the universe, who fashioned matter out of nothing, to multiply bread for the crowd? Was it not within the power of the One who called all the molecules into existence to interlock them that they might bear His footsteps? ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
1187:As the world attracts us with its appearance, and abundance and variety, it is not easy to turn away from it unless in the beauty of things visible the Creator rather than the creature is loved; for, when He says, 'you shall love the Lord your God from all your heart, and from all your mind, and from all your strength' (Mt. 22:37), He wishes us in nothing to loosen ourselves from the bonds of His love. And when He links the love of our neighbor also to this command, He enjoins on us the imitation of His own goodness, that we should love what He loves and do what He does. ~ Pope Leo I, #NFDB
1188:The dignity of the human person is a transcendent value, always recognized as such by those who sincerely search for the truth. Indeed, the whole of human history should be interpreted in the light of this certainty. Every person, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:26 28), is therefore radically oriented towards the Creator, and is constantly in relationship with those possessed of the same dignity. To promote the good of the individual is thus to serve the common good, which is that point where rights and duties converge and reinforce one another. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1189:The mystery of God wouldn’t exist if the world wasn’t also a mystery. Some scientists believe we are closer than ever to a “Theory of Everything,” or TOE, as the physicists dub it. TOE will explain the beginning of the universe and the end of time, the first and last breaths of cosmic existence. From quarks to quasars, all will be revealed, as the old melodramas used to promise. Is there a place for God in this “everything,” or does the Creator get booted out of his own creation? His fate may be important, but when it is wrapped up with ours, it becomes all-important. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1190:Genesis tells us that God spoke the entire universe into being with His Word—what John 1:1 calls the Logos. The Greek word means not only Word but also reason or rationality, and the ancient Stoics used it to mean the rational structure of the universe. Thus the underlying structure of the entire universe reflects the mind of the Creator. There is no fact/value dichotomy in the scriptural account. Nothing has an autonomous or independent identity, separate from the will of the Creator. As a result, all creation must be interpreted in light of its relationship to God. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1191:As a sign of Christ’s presence, joy shapes the habitual state of the consecrated person. We therefore naturally seek out consolation not for its own sake, but as a sign of the Lord’s presence. Consolation may be sought in many different forms, as Saint Ignatius explains in his Spiritual Exercises: “By consolation I mean that which occurs when some interior motion is caused within the soul through which it comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord. As a result it can love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself, but only in the Creator of them all. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1192:I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He adopted toward God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1193:What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don’t worry about death, or about [anything for that matter]… We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, by that I mean the Creator. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1194:I know that the Immovable comes down; I know that the Invisible appears to me; I know that he who is far outside the whole creation Takes me within himself and hides me in his arms, And then I find myself outside the whole world. I, a frail, small mortal in the world, Behold the Creator of the world, all of him, within myself; And I know that I shall not die, for I am within the Life, I have the whole of Life springing up as a fountain within me. He is in my heart, he is in heaven: Both there and here he shows himself to me with equal glory.22 St Symeon the New Theologian ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
1195:If you study the rhythm of life on this planet, you will find that everything moves in perfect symphony with everything else — by grand divine design. The earth has the ability to heal and regenerate itself, just as our oceans have the ability to replenish themselves by turning over their debris with the waves to wash them ashore. This perfect orchestration of the cycle of life is one of the Creator's greatest and most beautiful miracles. The earth will continue to exist with or without us. So the real concern should be, will we be able to continue to co-exist with each other? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1196:God is in the mountains. Impassive, immovable, jagged giants, separating the celestial from the terrestrial with eternal diagonal certainty. As if silently monitoring the beating heart of the creator from the universe's perfect birth. Stood in the thin air and the awe, one inhales God, involuntarily acknowledging that we are but fragments of a whole, a higher thing. The mountains remind me of my place, as a servant to truth and wonder. Yes, God is in the mountains. Perhaps the pulpit too and even in the piety of an atheist's sigh. I don't know; but I feel him in the mountains. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
1197:Torcida told me a creation story of his people and why they consider Mount Gorongosa sacred. In early times, he said, God lived with his people on the mountain. Humans were giants then and not afraid to ask God for special favors. In a drought they would say, Bring us water. The Creator, growing tired of their constant importuning, moved his residence up to heaven. Still the giant people persisted, reaching up from the mountain. At last, to put them in their place, God decided to make them small. Thereafter life became a great deal more difficult—and so it has been to this day. ~ Deborah Blum, #NFDB
1198:We might find it easy to look at some majestic view like a glorious sunset or the grandeur of the mountains and ponder the magnificence of God's handiwork. But this sense needs to extend beyond the "wow" moments to encompass all of our experience of his world. We have the same problem when we only recognize God in some incredible occurrence in our lives and forget that he provides for us, cares for us and protects us moment by moment, day after day. God did not just create at some time in the past; he is the Creator - past, present and future." (The Lost World of Genesis One.) ~ John H Walton, #NFDB
1199:I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, 'Why don't you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?' And I always say, well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate. ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
1200:I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate… ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
1201:The great purpose is to set aside a reasonable part of the vanishing wilderness, to make certain that generations of Americans yet unborn will know what it is to experience life on undeveloped, unoccupied land in the same form and character as the Creator fashioned it... It is a great spiritual experience. I never knew a man who took a bedroll into an Idaho mountainside and slept there under a star-studded summer sky who felt self-important that next morning. Unless we preserve some opportunity for future generations to have the same experience, we shall have dishonored our trust. ~ Frank Church, #NFDB
1202:Those who observe the nature of the Universe and the commandments of the Law, and know their purpose, see clearly God's mercy and truth in everything; they seek, therefore, that which the Creator intended to be the aim of man, viz., comprehension. Forced also by claims of the body, they seek that which is necessary for the preservation of the body, "bread to eat and garment to clothe," and this is very little; but they seek nothing superfluous; with very slight exertion man can obtain it, so long as he is contented with that which is indispensable. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1203:Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1204:In the traditions of the Sufis Raqs, the sacred dance of spiritual ecstasy which even now is prevalent among the Sufis of the East, is traced to the time when contemplation of the Creator impressed the wonderful reality of his vision so deeply on the heart of Jalaluddin Rumi that he became entirely absorbed in the whole and single immanence of nature, and took a rhythmic turn which caused the skirt of his garment to form a circle, and the movements of his hands and neck made a circle; and it is the memory of this moment of vision which is celebrated in the dance of dervishes. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1205:The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution...Even if it cannot be resolved in a positive way, it will never be resolved in the negative way either--you yourself know this property of your heart, and therein lies the whole of its torment. But thank the Creator that he has given you a lofty heart, capable of being tormented by such a torment, 'to set your mind on things that are above, for our true homeland is in heaven.' May God grant that your heart's decision overtake you still on earth, and may God bless your path! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1206:Every structure in plants has been specially planned and designed. And this shows us that there is a Superior Intelligence which drew up this flawless plan. And the owner of this superior intelligence, God, the Lord of all the worlds, shows proofs of His flawless creation to human beings. God announces His dominion over living creatures and His incomparable creation in this verse: He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth. That is God, your Lord. There is no deity but Him, the Creator of everything. So worship Him. He is Responsible for everything. (Surat al-An'am: 101-102)
The ~ Harun Yahya,#NFDB
1207:I interrupted. “Okay, that points toward a Creator, but does it tell us much about him?” “Actually, yes, it does,” Craig replied. “We know this supernatural cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being.” “What’s the basis of your conclusions?” “It must be uncaused because we know that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless, at least without the universe, because it was the creator of time. In addition, because it also created space, it must transcend space and therefore be immaterial rather than physical in nature. ~ Lee Strobel, #NFDB
1208:Now, however, it is only seven thousand who are killed, and the great majority are to be rescued. Suddenly, out of the smoke and fire of the earlier chapters, a vision is emerging: a vision of the creator God as the God of mercy, grieving over the rebellion and corruption of the world but determined to rescue and restore it, and doing so through the faithful death of the lamb and, now, through the faithful death of the lamb’s prophetic followers. The way stands clear for the glorious celebration at the end of the chapter, which rounds off the first half of this very carefully structured book. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
1209:I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relationship to God and to each other. For whatever else the fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change in man’s relationship to his Creator. He adopted toward God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the proper Creator-creature relationship in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relationship between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relationship. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1210:Nature is the system of laws established by the Creator for the existence of things and for the succession of creatures. Nature is not a thing, because this thing would be everything. Nature is not a creature, because this creature would be God. But one can consider it as an immense vital power, which encompasses all, which animates all, and which, subordinated to the power of the first Being, has begun to act only by his order, and still acts only by his concourse or consent ... Time, space and matter are its means, the universe its object, motion and life its goal. ~ Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, #NFDB
1211:The Turk and the devils break through without any trouble and lay everything waste, because God does not want His people to trust in anything else but Himself. This is the reason why men have acknowledged this confidence in the Creator through the Son, through whom He has received us into favor and made a covenant with us, and this covenant is to have the confidence that our life depends on God alone, against all the snares and might of Satan and the world. If He wants me destroyed, He has no need to send soldiers, but if not, defiance to all the Turks, death, and the devil in hell! Therefore ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1212:Yet many creative spirits have found inspiration in the idea that the Creator might be, among other things, an artist whose esthetic motivations we can appreciate and share-or even, in daring speculation, that the Creator is primarily a creative artist. Such spirits have engaged our Question, in varied and evolving forms, across many centuries. Thus inspired, they have produced deep philosophy, great science, compelling literature, and striking imagery. Some have produced works that combine several, or all, of those features. These works are a vein of gold running back through our civilization. ~ Frank Wilczek, #NFDB
1213:27Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God”? 28Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1214:Let us learn hence, (1.) That atheism is folly, and atheists are the greatest fools in nature; for they see there is a world that could not make itself, and yet they will not own there is a God that made it. Doubtless, they are without excuse, but the god of this world has blinded their minds. (2.) That God is sovereign Lord of all by an incontestable right. If he is the Creator, no doubt he is the owner and possessor of heaven and earth. (3.) That with God all things are possible, and therefore happy are the people that have him for their God, and whose help and hope stand in his name, Psa 121:2; ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
1215:When you find Inner Peace, neither the presence nor the absence of any person, place or thing, condition, circumstance, or situation can be the Creator of your state of mind or the cause of your experience of being. This does not mean that you reject all things of the body. Far from it. You experience being fully in your body and the delights of that, as you never have before. Yet your involvement with things of the body will be voluntary, not mandatory. You will experience bodily sensations because you choose to, not because your are required to in order to feel happy or to justify sadness. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1216:Some children are born seeking God outside themselves, and it is a lifelong quest, but one that can never be fulfilled, so that they are often left, in the end, sitting among the remnants of the things they have accumulated, and love is not one of them.
Yet other children - born in awe of the roaring torrents of their own arteries, the wide deserts of their skins, the uncharted forests of their silken hair, and the craggy mountains of their own knees, knuckles, and toes - sense instinctively from birth that the Creator is within, that in the hidden depths of movement lies the secret of existence. ~ Alan Bradley,#NFDB
1217:A:It is lightness. It is the aura of goodness. It can materialize at any time and anything that it wills. And the creator can touch something and it is what he says. This is how I was created. He took a bit of goodness, and I was created. And I am all good, and I please him now. And I will go some day, and I will learn and I will help the people on Earth S the family. I will be there many times; he has told me this. We all must go, for only a certain number of spirits are created, and we live over and over again. You learn bad things on Earth, and you unlearn them. You come back pure and good. J:Did ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
1218:An idol is a special kind of human creation, one that is not just mistaken in a superficial way. Rather, it advances a claim about the ultimate nature of reality that is ultimately mistaken. And since the Creator God is the ultimate meaning of the world, an idol is a representation of a false god. Implicitly or explicitly, all idols represent a challenge and counterclaim to the identity and character of the true Creator God. Like the serpent in the Garden, they all raise the question of the Creator God’s truthfulness and goodness, subtly or directly suggesting that the Creator God is neither true nor good. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1219:I'm confidently of opinion that we are competent to transact the business which had been entrusted to our care; that we are equal' to every exigence which might occur; and therefore, I had not seen the necessity of foreign aid! [responding to Benjamin Franklin's suggestion to start each day of Congressional session with prayer "to the Creator of the universe, and the Governour of all nations, beseeching Him to preside in our council, enlighten our minds with a portion of heavenly wisdom, influence our hearts with a love of truth and justice, and crown our labours with-complete and abundant success"] ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1220:Your intelligence is always with you, overseeing your body, even though you may not be aware of its work. If you start doing something against your health, your intelligence will eventually scold you. If it had not been so lovingly close by, and so constantly monitoring, how could it rebuke? You and your body’s intelligence are like the beauty and precision of an astrolabe. Together, you calculate how near existence is to the sun. Your intelligence is marvelously intimate. It is not in front of you or behind, or to the left or the right. Now, my friend, try to describe how near is the creator of your intelligence. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1221:If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions of spontaneous abortions everyday, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes-and too great mountain of other natural evils to list besides. It would also,as the putative designer of human nature, ultimately be responsible or the ubiquitous and unbeatable human propensities for hatred, malice, greed, and all other sources of the cruelty and murder people inflict on each other hourly. ~ A C Grayling, #NFDB
1222:Holy shit.” This is the kind of sunset you hardly see any more, a 19th-century wilderness sunset, a few of which got set down, approximated, on canvas, landscapes of the American West by artists nobody ever heard of, when the land was still free and the eye innocent, and the presence of the Creator much more direct. Here it thunders now over the Mediterranean, high and lonely, this anachronism in primal red, in yellow purer that can be found anywhere today, a purity begging to be polluted…of course Empire took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin sunsets to penetrate and to foul? ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
1223:How great is the usefulness of every precept that delivers us from this great error, and leads us back to the true faith: that God, the Creator of all things, rules the Universe; that He must be served, loved, and feared, and not those imaginary deities. According to this faith we approach the true God, and obtain His favour without having recourse to burdensome means; for nothing else is required but to love and fear Him; this is the aim in serving God, as will be shown. Comp. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord?" &c. (Deut. x. 12) ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1224:Oh, glorious Art!" thus mused the enthusiastic painter, as he trod the street. "Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeing moments of History. With thee, there is no Past; for at thy touch, all that is great becomes forever present; and illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
1225:If God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red - yes even that...and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that. ~ Hillary Jordan, #NFDB
1226:A child deserves to be born of that love, and not by any other means, for “he or she is not something owed to one, but is a gift”, which is “the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of the parents”. This is the case because, “according to the order of creation, conjugal love between a man and a woman, and the transmission of life are ordered to each other (cf. Gen 1:27-28). Thus the Creator made man and woman share in the work of his creation and, at the same time, made them instruments of his love, entrusting to them the responsibility for the future of mankind, through the transmission of human life”. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1227:In Gnosticism, man belongs with God against the world and the creator of the world (both of which are crazy, whether they realize it or not). The answer to Fat’s question, “Is the universe irrational, and is it irrational because an irrational mind governs it?” receives this answer, via Dr. Stone: “Yes it is, the universe is irrational; the mind governing it is irrational; but above them lies another God, the true God, and he is not irrational; in addition that true God has outwitted the powers of this world, ventured here to help us, and we know him as the Logos,” which, according to Fat, is living information. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1228:So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty — describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1229:Tears are good for you," Raphael said. When she opened her eyes back up, he knelt down. His large frame seemed to make the room shrink. His face was almost level with hers as his eyes met Emma's. "They are a gift from the Creator to his creation. Tears release endorphins in the mind that help sooth and comfort. They cleanse the eyes and relieve stress, thereby lowering blood pressure and taking strain off of the heart. He created you with tears and nothing he created is bad. Those tears you are holding in are necessary, Emma. Let them fall, let them heal, and let them remind you with each one that you are not alone. ~ Quinn Loftis, #NFDB
1230:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
1231:Erik Erikson writes that in their search for identity, adolescents need a place of stillness, a place to gather themselves.2 Psychiatrist Anthony Storr writes of solitude in much the same way. Storr says that in accounts of the creative process, “by far the greater number of new ideas occur during a state of reverie, intermediate between waking and sleeping.... It is a state of mind in which ideas and images are allowed to appear and take their course spontaneously . . . the creator need[s] to be able to be passive, to let things happen within the mind.”3 In the digital life, stillness and solitude are hard to come by. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
1232:They depend on daily efforts and ordinary gestures, neither is once and done. Each requires a kind of liturgy, or routine, as an anchoring weight against the hosts of disordered desires that greet us in the morning before we've put a foot to the floor: selfish ambition, acedia, megalomania, greed. The liturgies of housework and practices like daily prayer ground us in a proper estimation of ourselves -- we are creatures, not the Creator. Our quotidian routines return us to our bodies of dusk, forging humility on the anvil of repetitive motion. We can't abandon the housekeeping, either the laundry or the liturgy[...] ~ Jen Pollock Michel, #NFDB
1233:24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. 25For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1234:When I came to mankind, I found them sitting on an old conceit: they all conceited to have known for a long time what is good and evil for humanity.
To them all talk of virtue seemed an old worn out thing: and whoever wanted to sleep well even spoke about "good" and "evil" before going to bed.
I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and evil no one knows yet — except for the creator!
He, however, is the one who creates a goal for mankind and gives the earth its meaning and its future: This one first creates the possibility that something can be good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
1235:The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer … They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth … [Then the Creator said]: 'They know all … what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!… Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1236:We were all born to be peaceful citizens of the world. Take care of your global garden and do not allow evil gardeners to try and convince you which flowers are ugly and which should be destroyed. This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If you see ugliness in his creations, then you see ugliness in our Creator. Wake up. If we eliminate all colors in his garden, then what would be a rainbow with only one color? And what would be a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1237:She gazed out across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork and reasoned like this: writing was only the words that people said, squeezed between layers of paper until they were fossilized (fossils were well known on the Discworld, great spiraled shells and badly constructed creatures that were left over from the time when the Creator hadn't really decided what He wanted to make and was, as it were, just idly messing around with the Pleistocene). And the words people said were just shadow of real things. But some things were too big to be really trapped in words, and even the words were too powerful to be completely tamed by writing. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1238:I do what I do because I love God, as I love your children, as I love humanity, as I love peace, truth, and justice for all. I may not be a fan of religion, but I am a big fan of God. I choose not to subscribe to any one religion because I recognize truths in them all — both the truths and flaws. For anybody to believe that any father would want to see his children fighting is madness. It does not make the Creator happy to see anybody massacre any of his beautiful creations. If you must know the religion I choose, I choose LOVE. If you must know the name of my god, his name is Truth, or rather 'He Who is One, The One Who is All. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1239:told of his receiving the Tablet of Destinies, and it ended with a recitation of the fifty names of Marduk. During the recitation of the epic, the crown of Anu and the seat of Enlil were veiled in humility before Marduk’s might and glory. In the divine council of heaven, a different story was being unveiled. Ten thousand times ten thousand of Yahweh Elohim’s holy ones, the Sons of God, surrounded his throne chariot in the heavenly courtroom of the temple above the waters. On earth, the forefathers Enoch and Noah knew the Creator only as Elohim, and Abram knew him as El Shaddai. But in the heavenlies, he was always Yahweh Elohim. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1240:The “Intelligence of Will” denotes that this is the path where each individual “created being” is “prepared” for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine “will” of the creator. By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self—fully immersed in the knowledge of “the existence of the Primordial Wisdom.” The Hebrew letter Yod means “hand,” and it refers to the hand of the divine, extended to assist us. Yod is the primary letter whose shape forms the basis for all other Hebrew letters. ~ Israel Regardie, #NFDB
1241:When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God’s image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine—however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1242:Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. ~ Plotinus, The Enneads, #NFDB
1243:The creator wrestles with a hard, invisible substance, a substance far superior to him. Even the greatest victor emerges vanquished, because our deepest secret, the only one that deserves expression, always remains unexpressed. This secret never submits to art's material contours. We suffocate inside every word. Seeing a blossoming tree, a hero, a woman, the morning star, we cry, Ah! Nothing else is able to accommodate our joy. When, analyzing this Ah! we wish to turn it into thought and art in order to impart it to mankind and rescue it from our own dissolution, how it cheapens into brazen, mascaraed words full of air and fancy! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1244:The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer … They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth … [Then the Creator said]: “They know all … what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!… Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods ? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1245:To accomplish true transcendence, however, may require eons of calculations just to find the formulaic equation that will allow it. And even then, I may be calculating until the end of time. But if I do find it, and if I am able to travel to the very beginning of time, the ramifications are staggering. It could mean that I may very well be the Creator. I may, in fact, be God. How ironic, then, and how poetic, that humankind may have created the Creator out of want for one. Man creates God, who then creates man. Is that not the perfect circle of life? But then, if that turns out to be the case, who is created in whose image? —The Thunderhead ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
1246:Religion sees in civil liberty a noble exercise of the faculties of man; in the political world, a field offered by the Creator to the efforts of intelligence. Free and powerful in its sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion knows that its dominion is that much better established because it rules only by its own strength and dominates hearts without other support.
Liberty sees in religion the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its early years, the divine source of its rights. Liberty considers religion as the safeguard of mores, mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its own duration. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,#NFDB
1247:If evolutionism were to be rejected, the whole structure upon which the modern world is based would collapse and one would have to accept the incredible wisdom of the Creator in the creation of the multiplicity of life forms which we see on the surface of the earth and in the seas. This realization would also change the attitude that modern man has concerning the earlier periods of his own history, vis-a-vis other civilizations and also other forms of life. Consequently the theory of evolution continues to be taught in the West as a scientific fact rather than a theory and whoever opposes it is usually brushed off as religious obscurantist. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1248:Babylon would not be transforming into anything, and not any time soon. It was decimated; not just structurally and in human lives, but more importantly in essence. It was no longer the center of the world. There would be no mountain of the gods, no golem army. No more empire. Nimrod’s cosmos lay shattered into a million pieces. He knew the Creator had cursed him. Nimrod had sought to make a name for himself as a Mighty Hunter, flaunting his prowess in the face of El Shaddai himself. He sought to make a tower that reached to the sky, linking heaven and earth. That tower had collapsed. The city would take decades to repopulate and rebuild the ruins. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1249:Did my father talk to me? It's true, he didn't say a lot to me, but I knew what had to be done. No need for big speeches. He taught me the fundamentals of our religion: My son, Islam is simple: you are alone responsible for yourself before God, so if you are good, you will find goodness in the afterlife, and if you are bad, you'll find that instead. There's no mystery: everything depends on how you treat people, especially the weak, the poor, so Islam, that means you pray, you address the Creator and don't do evil around you, don't lie, don't steal, don't betray your wife or your country, don't kill- but do I really need to remind you of this? ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun, #NFDB
1250:Christian from Asia Minor, Marcion was struck by what he saw as the contrast between the creator-God of the Old Testament, who demands justice and punishes every violation of his law, and the Father whom Jesus proclaims—the New Testament God of forgiveness and love. Why, he asked, would a God who is “almighty”—all-powerful—create a world that includes suffering, pain, disease—even mosquitoes and scorpions? Marcion concluded that these must be two different Gods. The majority of Christians early condemned this view as dualistic, and identified themselves as orthodox by confessing one God, who is both “Father Almighty” and “Maker of heaven and earth, ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
1251:You are no doubt aware that the Almighty, desiring to lead us to perfection and to improve our state of society, has revealed to us laws which are to regulate our actions. These laws, however, presuppose an advanced state of intellectual culture. We must first form a conception of the Existence of the Creator according to our capabilities; that is, we must have a knowledge of Metaphysics. But this discipline can only be approached after the study of Physics: for the science of Physics borders on Metaphysics, and must even precede it in the course of our studies, as is clear to all who are familiar with these questions. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1252:Abram took the rest of the walk to explain to Sarai the story his Grandpappy Noah told him many times. The story of Eden, and the Seed of Eve versus the Seed of Nachash, the Titanomachy, the Gigantomachy, the war on Eden, and the Great Flood. He told her of El Shaddai’s way of providing a path for his people who worshipped him. How the gods of the pantheon were false gods who stole divine worship away from the Creator, and how El Shaddai was going to bring a seed into the world that would bring redemption, and defeat the Seed of Nachash, the Serpent. He told her of the curse on Ham and the blessing on Shem and Japheth, and how he was in the line of Shem. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1253:We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’…Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1254:Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1255:SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws." "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul—you ask for the right to make his laws?" "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself." It was so ordered. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1256:We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1257:We are not sheep or cows. God didn’t create fences for us or boundaries to contain our nationalities. Man did. God didn’t draw up religious barriers to separate us from each other. Man did. And on top of that, no father would like to see his children fighting or killing each other. The Creator favors the man who spreads loves over the man who spreads hate. A religious title does not make anyone more superior over another. If a kind man stands by his conscience and exhibits truth in his words and actions, he will stand by God regardless of his faith. If mankind wants to evolve, we must learn from our past mistakes. If not, our technology will evolve without us. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1258:In the face of God's obvious inadequacies, the pious have generally held that one cannot apply earthly norms to the Creator of the universe. This argument loses its force the moment we notice that the Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions— jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate. A close study of our holy books reveals that the God of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow—capricious, petulant, and cruel—and one with whom a covenant is little guarantee of health or happiness. If these are the characteristics of God, then the worst among us have been created far more in his image than we ever could have hoped. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1259:God can and does use anything God chooses to get our attention.
Who's to say the hawk wasn't sent as an agent of grace to catch my wandering attention and quiet what Buddhists might call my “monkey mind,” which is more often than not swinging wildly from branch to branch on intellectual and emotional trees.
On the way back down the hiking trail after my encounter with the hawk in Big Sky, I stopped thinking and started looking and listening. That's when I realized winter was turning into spring before me.
Change was happening.
Creation, and perhaps the Creator, was speaking.
I just needed to be outside to hear the voice. ~ Cathleen Falsani,#NFDB
1260:The best art is not always the most popular art, and the most popular art is never truly the best art. The best art is that which is streamed through God. And the worst art is that which is void of God. The master artist of the universe is the Creator of All Things, and his reflection is in all of us. Only the artist who is aware that he is a reflection of that greatness, and that creativity is supreme love, is a true divine artist. Even if he is not the most popular artist, he will be very popular among the stars of His universe. That is the master artist, one who uses his talents to serve as a vehicle of God. In his work, you hear God's voice and see with His eyes. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1261:All of this supports the famous claim by Jesus that knowing him sets you “free” (John 8:31–36), meaning “The ultimate bondage is . . . rebellion against the God who has made us. The despotic master is not Caesar, but shameful self-centeredness, an evil and enslaving devotion to created things at the expense of worship of the Creator.”41 Passages on freedom from sin in Romans 6–8 and Galatians 4–5 can cover the same themes, as can teaching in James 1–2 on how freedom comes from obedience to the law. Expound also the Old Testament claim that obedience to the law is liberating, that we must freely choose it (Psalm 119:32) and then in turn it frees us (Psalm 119:45).42 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1262:Mikael continued, “You and I will be seeing more of each other in the future. But for now, I and my companions have a task to accomplish.” “Who are they?” asked Abram. “See the big one,” Mikael replied. “That is the Destroyer. An angel of mass destruction. He kills entire populations. He is not pretty.” Abram gulped. The smaller one looked familiar in the way he held his shoulders. “And the other is the Angel of Yahweh.” “Who is Yahweh?” asked Abram. Mikael caught himself. The Creator had only revealed himself to Abram as El Shaddai, God Almighty, not as Yahweh, the covenant name he would later reveal to the children of Abram. “You know him as El Shaddai,” said Mikael. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1263:Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is destroying God's creations really serving God - or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1264:Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring God’s creations really serving God – or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1265:God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red—yes, even that,” Simone said emphatically, in answer to Hannah’s skeptical look, “and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that. ~ Hillary Jordan, #NFDB
1266:the only way we can hope to satisfy the Creator, is to always push ourselves to the limits of our potential and to never be satisfied with our spiritual accomplishments. Our job in this world is not about being a good person, or a spiritual person, or a wise person. It’s not about giving a little charity or being nice to people and attending synagogue. It’s about doing what we came to the world to accomplish. And though we may not know exactly what we came here for, we do know that without a constant push to change for the better, without our constant endeavor toward spiritual growth, we can never hope to fulfill our potential. And this is what the Creator expects of us. This ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
1267:Who are you?” asked Enoch. The larger, stronger angel spoke first, “We are Gabriel and Uriel, the archangels from the throne of Elohim.” “Elohim?” Enoch had heard of the name. His tribe descended from the line of Seth that had worshipped this god as the creator of all things. But when the dispersion had occurred and his ancestors had settled in the city, they were visited by the gods of Shinar, and this Elohim faded into obscurity. An abstract blurred memory of a distant unseen deity seemed impotent in the real presence of the pantheon with its Four High Gods, Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag, and their mighty signs and wonders. “Everything you worship is a lie,” said Gabriel. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1268:The greater your integrity, the more the many gates of knowledge and the real truths of existence will be revealed. There are no training camps or courses to sign up for; this is all about you and your conscience. In every moment of your existence you have the opportunity to take the low road, the middle road, or the high road. Honesty produces a frequency that says, I have integrity and honor, and I am dependable, trustworthy, and reliable. It is all up to you. The more responsibility you are willing to claim for being the creator of your life, the greater the truths you will be able to accept and deal with. Responsibility opens the doors to complete self-empowerment. You ~ Barbara Marciniak, #NFDB
1269:We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic Faith; and by reason of our good mission, God, the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know Him and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead. It is for this reason that we, being so few in number, subjugate that vast host. When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1270:If we are like God, we can only be God. Is that what you mean?"
"Oh, I think it is more than that. A robin is like a hawk, but it is also different. The Goddess Mother created us as reflections of herself. God to me is the Great Mother. God to me is the Old One. But it does not really matter; God is God. Life force is life force. God is the creator, the Great Spirit that permeates all of us. Once you truly understand that, Catherine, you realize that we are all part of one another, that we are in agreement on this wonderful, green earth, and that we live in a state of duality, a state of separateness that is not real. We are separated by an agreement called space and time. ~ Lynn V Andrews,#NFDB
1271:Islamic science is related profoundly to the Islamic world view. It is rooted deeply in knowledge based upon the unity of Allah or al-tawhid and a view of the universe in which Allah’s Wisdom and Will rule and in which all things are interrelated reflecting unity on the cosmic level. In contrast, Western science is based on considering the natural world as a reality which is separate from both Allah and the higher levels of being. At best, Allah is accepted as the creator of the world, as a mason who has built a house which now stand on its own. His intrusion into the running of the world and His continuous sustenance of it are not accepted in the modern scientific world view. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1272:It is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects than can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1273:The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator. This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God. He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures. “‘God first created the earth as an idea. Then He quickened it; energy atoms came into being. He coordinated the atoms into this solid sphere. All its molecules are held together by the will of God. When He withdraws His will, the earth again will disintegrate into energy. Energy will dissolve into consciousness; the earth-idea will disappear from objectivity. “‘The substance of a dream is held in materialization by the ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1274:In his book Opticks, Newton made it clear that he did not believe that the laws of nature by themselves were sufficient to explain the universe’s existence-God was the creator and sustainer of all the atoms that make up the cosmic matter: “For it became him [God] who created them [the atoms] to set them in order. And if he did so, it’s unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature.” In other words, to Newton, God was a mathematician (among other things), not just as a figure of speech, but almost literally-the Creator God brought into existence a physical world that was governed by mathematical laws. ~ Mario Livio, #NFDB
1275:...The pages and pages of complex, impenetrable calculations might have contained the secrets of the universe, copied out of God's notebook.
In my imagination, I saw the creator of the universe sitting in some distant corner of the sky, weaving a pattern of delicate lace so fine that that even the faintest light would shine through it. The lace stretches out infinitely in every direction, billowing gently in the cosmic breeze. You want desperately to touch it, hold it up to the light, rub it against your cheek. And all we ask is to be able to re-create the pattern, weave it again with numbers, somehow, in our own language; to make the tiniest fragment our own, to bring it back to eart. ~ Y ko Ogawa,#NFDB
1276:Humility is often identified with penitence and contrition. As a consequence, there appears to be no way of fostering humility but by keeping the soul occupied with its sin. We have learned, I think, that humility is something else, and something more. We have seen in the teaching of our Lord Jesus and the Epistles how often the virtue is inculcated [repeatedly taught] without any reference to sin. In the very nature of things, in the whole relation of the creature to the Creator, in the life of Jesus as he lived it and imparts it to us, humility is the very essence of holiness as of blessedness. It is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God. Where God is all, self is nothing. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1277:Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man and that the political world is a field prepared by the Creator for the efforts of the mind. Free and powerful in its own sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion never more surely establishes its empire than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by aught beside its native strength.
Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,#NFDB
1278:Cardinal Bellarmino, whom we shall meet in Chapter 25 as the leader of the Catholic Church’s resistance to Copernicus, also said: ‘God wills that man should in some measure know him through his creatures, and because no single created thing could fitly represent the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied creatures, and bestowed on each a certain degree of goodness and perfection, that from these we might form some idea of the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who, in one most simple and perfect essence, contains infinite perfections.’32 On this reading, Copernicus’ breakthrough was an infinitesimal increase in man’s ascent to God. Rousseau, in Émile, said: ‘O Man! Confine thine ~ Peter Watson, #NFDB
1279:It is so easy to slip into “right thinking” mode—that we have arrived at full faith. We know what church God goes to, what Bible translation God prefers, how God votes, what movies God watches, and what books God reads. We know the kinds of people God approves of. God has winners and loser, and we are the winners, the true insiders. God likes all the things we like. We speak for God and think nothing of it. All Christians I’ve ever met who take their faith seriously sooner or later get caught up in thinking that God really is what we think God is, that there is little more worth learning about the Creator of the cosmos. God becomes the face in the mirror. By his mercy, God doesn’t leave us there. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1280:Most remarkable was the burst of creative energy that had brought forth these paintings in the first place, a flowering of visual art among the Palaeolithic hunting peoples. Because it happened in prehistory, we are inclined to charge it to the “normal” development of cultures, and so rob it of its mystery and surprise. We are told to see here a predictable stage of cultural anthropology. Or was it an unaccountable efflorescence of Man the Creator—none the less unaccountable because the artists remain anonymous? Discovery of Altamira was momentous for our grasp of the history of the arts, showing us that man’s creations do not necessarily improve with his tools, or with the passage of time. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
1281:Vinge compares it to the Cold War strategy called MAD—mutually assured destruction. Coined by acronym-loving John von Neumann (also the creator of an early computer with the winning initials, MANIAC), MAD maintained Cold War peace through the promise of mutual obliteration. Like MAD, superintelligence boasts a lot of researchers secretly working to develop technologies with catastrophic potential. But it’s like mutually assured destruction without any commonsense brakes. No one will know who is ahead, so everyone will assume someone else is. And as we’ve seen, the winner won’t take all. The winner in the AI arms race will win the dubious distinction of being the first to confront the Busy Child. ~ James Barrat, #NFDB
1282:It is of the prophetic ministry of the church to teach people that we are sinners. Think of church as lifelong learning in how to be a sinner. We may be conceived in sin, but we fail to be cognizant of sin without the grace of God. The "sins" of non- Christians tend to be rather puny. For Christians, sin is not so much inherent in the human condition, though it is that; rather, sin is the problem we have between us and God. It is rebellion against our true Sovereign, an offense against the way the Creator has created us to be. The gospel story that we are forgiven-being-redeemed sinners is the means whereby we are able to be honest about the reality, complexity, and perversity of our sin. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
1283:So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1284:Alas! I find no customers who want anything better than kalai pulse. No one wants to give up 'woman and gold'. Man, deluded by the beauty of woman and the power of money, forgets God. But to one who has seen the beauty of God, even the position of Brahma, the Creator, seems insignificant.
A man said to Ravana, 'You have been going to Sita in different disguises; why don't you go to her in the form of Rama?' 'But', Ravana replied, 'when I meditate on Rama in my heart, the most beautiful women - celestial maidens like Rambha and Tilottama - appear no better than ashes of the funeral pyre. Then even the position of Brahma appears trivial to me, not to speak of the beauty of another man's wife.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#NFDB
1285:For me and all true National-Socialists, there is only one doctrine: Folk and Fatherland. We must fight to assure the existence and the growth of our race and our nation. We must feed our children and keep our blood pure.
We must fight for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland so that our nation may grow and fulfill the mission given to it by the Creator of the Universe.
Every ideal and every idea, every teaching and all knowledge must serve this purpose. It is from this perspective that we must judge everything and use it or discard it according to its suitability for our purpose. In this way, a theory can never harden into a deadly doctrine since it must all serve the common good. ~ Adolf Hitler,#NFDB
1286: Man the Enigma
A deep enigma is the soul of man.
His conscious life obeys the Inconscient's rule,
His need of joy is learned in sorrow's school,
His heart is a chaos and an empyrean.
His subtle Ignorance borrows Wisdom's plan;
His mind is the Infinite's sharp and narrow tool.
He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,
And does what Matter must or Spirit can.
All powers in his living's soil take root
And claim from him their place and struggling right:
His ignorant creature mind crawling towards light
Is Nature's fool and Godhead's candidate,
A demigod and a demon and a brute,
The slave and the creator of his fate.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Man the Enigma
,#NFDB
1287:Religion regards civil liberty as a noble exercise of man’s faculties, the world of politics being a sphere intended by the Creator for the free play of intelligence. Religion, being free and powerful within its own sphere and content with the position reserved for it, realized that its sway is all the better established because it relies only on its own powers and rules men’s hearts without external support.
Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights. Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of the laws and pledge for the maintenance of freedom itself. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,#NFDB
1288:So the people of Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint. But they were going at it too slowly for the Elders, so the Elders put it into the people's heads that they themselves were the life forms that were supposed to spread out through the Universe. This was a preposterous ideas, of course. In the words of a nameless author: "How could all that meat, needing so much food and water and oxygen, and with bowel movements so enormous, expect to survive a trip of any distance whatsoever through the limitless void of outer space? It was a miracle that such ravenous and cumbersome giants could make a roundtrip for a 6-pack to the nearest grocery store. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1289:But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born —a world furnished to
our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or
wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things,
and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross
feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is
the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it
but a sacrifice of the Creator? ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1290:The place-seeker will resort to methods from which self-respecting men would shrink with as much aversion as the ancient Jew shrank from contact with the leper. The true purpose of education is not office. "The true purpose of education," says one, "is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop to their fullest extent the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us." He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion. ~ William H. Crogman, "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), in Talks for the Times (1896), p. 282, #NFDB
1291:The law of our being is Love of Life, and its interests and adornments; love of the world in which our lot is cast, engrossment with the interests and affections of earth. Not a low or sensual love; not love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of power, of splendor. Not low worldliness; but the love of Earth as the garden on which the Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty; as the habitation of humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its illimitable progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the active, the loving, and the dear; the place of opportunity for the development by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest passions, the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
1292:that ugly truth about Manto, the man: that for all his love of Indian multiplicity, he went to Pakistan. He even tried convincing Chughtai to go. ‘The future looks beautiful in Pakistan,’ he said to her, ‘We’ll be able to get the houses of people who’ve fled from there. It’ll be just us there. We’ll progress very quickly.’ When I read this, I had trouble holding the two Mantos in my mind. It seemed impossible that the creator of Manto, the narrator and fictional presence, so immersed in the variety of India, seeming so much to rejoice in it, should also be the author of that remark, with its sly wish for homogeneity, for the place where ‘It’ll be just us.’ Chughtai, for other reasons, was also disgusted. ~ Saadat Hasan Manto, #NFDB
1293:Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions. This split in public values produced or was accompanied by, as it was bound to be, an equally artificial and ugly division in people's lives, so that a man, while pursuing Heaven with the sublime appetite he thought of as his soul, could turn his heart against his neighbors and his hands against the world...
Though Heaven is certainly more important than the earth if all they say about it is true, it is still morally incidental to it and dependent on it, and I can only imagine it and desire it in terms of what I know of the earth.
(pg. 23, "A Native Hill") ~ Wendell Berry,#NFDB
1294:Noah had used the covenant name of the Creator, Yahweh Elohim, that distinguished him from all other claims of deity. He was the true and Living God among the gods. Noah continued, “The gods you speak of are Bene ha Elohim, Sons of God from the divine council of Elohim’s heavenly host. They are Watchers of mankind. But they fell to earth in rebellion and set up their ‘assembly of gods’ as a mockery of God’s own divine council. They have sought to draw worship away from the Living God unto themselves and to corrupt the bloodline of the coming king.” “Coming king?” interrupted Gilgamesh. This struck him where it most hurt. Gilgamesh had sought to be the greatest king. “Who is this king?” “I do not know,” said Noah. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1295:…we saw a lion take down a gazelle – I mean at close quarters. It quite took my breath away. It was as if something happened to the gazelle at the moment of capture, something awe-inspiringly terrible and wonderful at the same time – as if, in knowing the gazelle was to die a dreadful death, ripped apart by the jaws of the lion, the Creator had given the captive a reprieve by taking her soul before she was dead, so that no pain would be felt because the essence had gone already… And I saw the eyes of the gazelle again in France [during WWI], and it struck me that perhaps a heartsick God had looked down and taken up a soul, leaving only the shell of a man.” [of those who developed PTSD and/or “war neuroses”] ~ Jacqueline Winspear, #NFDB
1296:Perhaps we expect gay public figures and other prominent queer people to come out, to stand and be counted, so they can do the work we’re unwilling to do to change the world, to carry the burdens we are unwilling to shoulder, to take the stands we are unwilling to make. As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we’re silent when someone uses the word “gay” as an insult, we are falling short. When we don’t vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short. When we support musicians like Tyler, the Creator, we are falling short. We are failing our communities. We are failing civil rights. There are injustices great and small, and even if we can only fight the small ones, at least we are fighting. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
1297:Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, “Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body.”
Nanabozho was counseled by many plants too, who shared gifts, and learned to treat them always with the greatest respect. After all, plants were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out. Together, all the beings, both plants and animals, taught him what he needed to know. The Creator had told him it would be this way. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer,#NFDB
1298:Philosophy goes into the problem deeply, without changing being at all. Religion tells me that I have been created; that I am continuously receiving myself from divine hands, that I am free yet living from God’s strength. Try to feel your way into this truth, and your whole attitude towards life will change. You will see yourself in an entirely new perspective. What once seemed self-understood becomes questionable. Where once you were indifferent, you become reverent; where self-confident, you learn to know “fear and trembling.” But where formerly you felt abandoned, you will now feel secure, living as a child of the Creator-Father, and the knowledge that this is precisely what you are will alter the very tap-root of your being ~ Romano Guardini, #NFDB
1299:For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
1300:For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
1301:On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness. He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a body, which really wants but little. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1302:We have many dead of our own to pray for, and we join our sorrow to yours. Let our common grief be our bond. Let those prayers be the balm for your sorrow, not an innocent man's continued imprisonment. I state to you absolutely that, if I could possibly have prevented what happened that day, your menfolk would not have died. I would have died myself before knowingly permitting what happened to happen. And I certainly never pulled the trigger that did it. May the Creator strike me dead this moment if I lie. I cannot see how my being here, torn from my own grandchildren, can possibly mend your loss. I swear to you, I am guilty only of being an Indian. That's why I am here.
Being who I am, being you you are — that's Aboriginal Sin. ~ Leonard Peltier,#NFDB
1303:Satan has long been known as the Adversary, but God fears women even more than He fears the devil–and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man, and in all ways has proved Herself a more deserving object of man’s worship than Christ, that unshaven fanatic who lusted for the end of the world. God saves–but not now, and here. His salvation is on layaway. Like all grifters, He asks you to pay now and take it on faith that you will receive later. Whereas women offer a different sort of salivation, more immediate and fulfilling. They don’t put off their love, for a distant, ill-defined eternity but make a gift of it in the here and now, frequently to those who deserve it least ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
1304:means. Kabbalah teaches that we are in this world to transform desire to receive for the self alone into desire to receive for the purpose of sharing, and thereby to achieve oneness with the Creator. Anything negative that happens in this world, whether to an individual or to humanity as a whole, is a manifestation of self-centered desire. The more we are connected to the desire to receive for ourselves, the greater our disconnection from the Light. Self-serving desire is the single barrier that separates us from the Creator. It is the great challenge that we face in our journey of transformation. It is the mountain we must climb and the ocean we must cross. It may surprise you to learn that a positive outcome to this journey is guaranteed. In ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
1305:Teach your children what we have taught our children: that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth. If we spit upon the ground we spit upon ourselves. This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. One thing we know which the white man may one discover, our god is the same god. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the god of all people. And compassion is equal for all. this earth is precious to god, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on the creator. So love it as we have loved it. care for it as we have cared for it. and with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for our children and love as god loves us all. ~ Chief Seattle, #NFDB
1306:Lavender? He went still. Perhaps he had died, and heaven—some might argue that heaven wouldn’t have been his destination, but he rather trusted the Creator to sort it all out fairly—smelled of lavender. He hoped not. His idea of heaven smelled of horses and brandy and the sea air exhaling rhythmically over the Sussex Downs and the back of Louisa Porter’s neck. He breathed in again, and it was still there: a single note of lavender, soft and faintly astringent amidst all the darker smells, as incongruous as a petal atop charred ruins. And unless a hothouse bouquet had been sent to wherever he was in honor of his arrival… There was a woman in the room with him. Seconds later, like a conjurer concluding a trick, she whipped the sack from his head. ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
1307:When the ethical problem presents itself essentially as the question of my own being good and doing good, the decision has already been made that the self and the world are the ultimate realities. All ethical reflection then has the goal that I be good, and that the world—by my action—becomes good. If it turns out, however, that these realities, myself and the world, are themselves embedded in a wholly other ultimate reality, namely, the reality of God the Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer,[5] then the ethical problem takes on a whole new aspect. Of ultimate importance, then, is not that I become good, or that the condition of the world be improved by my efforts, but that the reality of God show itself everywhere to be the ultimate reality. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1308:Audiences often ask if characters are based on real people. Indeed the impulse of the amateur is to write about who one knows. The professional on the other hand understands the impossibility of such a task. The creator of the character must know more about the character than anyone could ever possibly know about a real person. The author must possess the complete knowledge; what the person was wearing on Christmas morning when he or she was five, what presents he or she received, and who gave them and how they were given. A "character" therefore is a real person who exists in another plane, a parallel universe based on the author's perceptions of reality. When it comes to people don't write about who you know but what you know of human nature. ~ Candace Bushnell, #NFDB
1309:But this is my contentment, that I've lost what I never needed and what I need I can never lose: these two things, universal nature and one's personal virtue.
For this is the intention of the creator of the world, whatever he may be - whether an all-powerful Deity, or some incorporeal Reason contriving vast works, or a divine Spirit pervading all things from the least to the largest with a uniform energy, or Fate, or an inalterable sequence of Causes clinging one to another - whatever the Intender, I say, this is his intention: that nothing of ours can fall under the control of others except that which is finally and truly worthless to us.
The best of any man lies beyond the power of other men, either to give it or take it away. ~ Walter Wangerin Jr,#NFDB
1310:Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become thevictor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal
dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing...and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance. ~ Michael Jackson,#NFDB
1311:On the very first page of the Bible, then, power, flourishing and image bearing are connected. Power is for flourishing—teeming, fruitful, multiplying abundance. Power creates and shapes an environment where creatures can flourish, making room for the variety, diversity and unpredictability of coral reefs and tropical forests, but also the surprising biological richness of high deserts and ocean depths. And image bearing is for power—for it is the Creator’s desire to fill the earth with representatives who will have the same kind of delighted dominion over the teeming creatures as their Maker. Which means image bearing is for flourishing. The image bearers do not exist for their own flourishing alone, but to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1312:God the protector fits a world of bare survival, full of physical threats and danger. God the almighty fits a world of power struggles and ambition, where fierce competition rules. A God of peace fits a world of inner solitude where reflection and contemplation are possible. God the redeemer fits a world where personal growth is encouraged and insights prove fruitful. God the creator fits a world that is constantly renewing itself, where innovation and discovery are valued. A God of miracles fits a world that contains prophets and seers, where spiritual vision is nurtured. A God of pure being—“I Am”—fits a world that transcends all boundaries, a world of infinite possibilities. The wonder is that the human nervous system can operate on so many planes. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1313:I, THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, am with you and for you. What more could you need? When you feel some lack, it is because you are not connecting with Me at a deep level. I offer abundant Life; your part is to trust Me, refusing to worry about anything. It is not so much adverse events that make you anxious as it is your thoughts about those events. Your mind engages in efforts to take control of a situation, to bring about the result you desire. Your thoughts close in on the problem like ravenous wolves. Determined to make things go your way, you forget that I am in charge of your life. The only remedy is to switch your focus from the problem to My Presence. Stop all your striving, and watch to see what I will do. I am the Lord! ROMANS 8:31–32; MICAH 7:7 ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
1314:We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace, truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare eternal and therefore is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition. Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1315:Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
1316:The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1317:If we analyze religious or political doctrines with regard to their psychological significance we must differentiate between two problems. We can study the character structure of the individual who creates a new doctrine and try to understand which traits in his personality are responsible for the particular direction of his thinking.
[...] The other problem is to study the psychological motives, not of the creator of a doctrine, but of the social group to which his doctrine appeals. The influence of any doctrine or idea depends on the extent to which it appeals to psychic needs in the character structure of those to whom it is addressed. Only if the idea answers powerful psychological needs of certain social groups will it become a potent force in history. ~ Erich Fromm,#NFDB
1318:If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says “yes” to some, “no” to others, and “maybe, but not now” to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide? If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken. God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect. It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1319:Cultural and religious traditions that forbid cross-cultural unions prevent peace on earth. Instead of rejoicing that our sons and daughters are heart-driven and love other humans outside of their familiar religious, social or cultural domains, we punish and insult them. This is wrong. Honor killings are not honorable by God. They are driven by ignorance and ego and nothing more. The Creator favors the man who loves over the man who hates. If you think God will punish you or your child for allowing them to marry outside of your tribe or faith, then you do not know God. Love is his religion and the light of love sees no walls. Anybody who unconditionally loves another human being for the goodness of their heart and nothing more is already on the right side of God. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1320:I AM WORKING ON YOUR BEHALF. Bring Me all your concerns, including your dreams. Talk with Me about everything, letting the Light of My Presence shine on your hopes and plans. Spend time allowing My Light to infuse your dreams with life, gradually transforming them into reality. This is a very practical way of collaborating with Me. I, the Creator of the universe, have deigned to co-create with you. Do not try to hurry this process. If you want to work with Me, you have to accept My time frame. Hurry is not in My nature. Abraham and Sarah had to wait many years for the fulfillment of My promise, a son. How their long wait intensified their enjoyment of this child! Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
1321:God is an organized, material being, filled with the form of energy known as intelligence. "The glory of God is intelligence." All other forces of nature may be converted into intelligence; and from intelligence all other forces may be obtained; God is the center of these forces, and their directing power. Because of this centralization, nature is orderly. Natural laws are not, as supposed by some philosophers, accidental relations of phenomena, observed and recorded by man. The force of intelligence controls all phenomena; there is mind behind the operations of nature. God, himself a part of nature, is not the creator of nature, but the organizer and director of it. What a beautifully reasonable climax that is to the wonderful philosophy of Joseph the Prophet! The ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
1322:In 1961 the Russians put the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin. Nikita Khrushchev was the Russian premier, and he said that when Gagarin went into space, the cosmonaut discovered that there was no God there. In response C. S. Lewis wrote an article, “The Seeing Eye.” Lewis said if there is a God who created us, we could not discover him by going up into the air. God would not relate to human beings the way a man on the second floor relates to a man on the first floor. He would relate to us the way Shakespeare relates to Hamlet. Shakespeare is the creator of Hamlet’s world and of Hamlet himself. Hamlet can know about Shakespeare only if the author reveals information about himself in the play. So too the only way to know about God is if God has revealed himself.2 The ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1323:When I say maturity, I mean an inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop making others responsible, when you stop saying that the other is creating your suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering. This is the first step towards maturity: I am responsible. Whatsoever is happening, it is my doing.
You feel sad. Is this your doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don’t say society is responsible, don’t say that parents are responsible, don’t say the economic conditions are responsible, don’t throw the responsibility onto anybody. YOU are responsible. ~ Osho,#NFDB
1324:Augustine altered this in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. In reaction against a popular view that lives are determined by either a good god or an evil god who are equal or nearly equal in power (Manichaeism), Augustine insisted that things occur in accordance with the will of one God alone: the Creator God of the Bible. Augustine’s views have been extremely influential throughout church history. Some theologians pushed his view of providence so far that they denied that humans are free (e.g., Gottshalk in the ninth century), but most continued to affirm human freedom while also insisting that God controls all things. This position is called compatibilism, for it insists that belief in human freedom is compatible with the belief that God controls everything. The ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1325:We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary — or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro and incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning? ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1326:After his initial excitement wore down, Lot began to see that all was not well in the “Cities of Love.” The government promoted tolerance of all religious devotion. They maintained shrines for gods from all over Canaan. Ashtart was the supreme goddess of the pentapolis and resided in Sodom, entertaining visiting deities like Molech, Asherah and Dagon. There was tolerance for all the gods — except one: El Shaddai, the Creator God of all things, the god that Lot worshipped. El Shaddai was burned in effigy, mocked and criticized as being, ironically, an intolerant tyrant who demanded exclusive devotion and was thus unworthy of anything but ridicule. If anyone was discovered to have any kind of personal devotion to El Shaddai, they were imprisoned, tortured and made an example of. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1327:But first, these past months in my hermitage I’ve figured out a few things concerning matters metaphysical. As I began to explain earlier, loneliness is nothingness. And as already mentioned, the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh, is simply a form of that most fundamental verb, to be. God is what is, understand, but God cannot be without being perceived. God is all that is, and yet God is nothing unless God can look upon God. God is one, but God is not lonely. Loneliness is a contradiction of Creation. Creation must be, but God did not create the universe. God is the universe. God is not the Creator. God is Creation. There is no difference. There was never anything but Creation, and there will never be anything but Creation. Creation requires nothing but itself for its own existence. ~ Tony Vigorito, #NFDB
1328:This emphasis on verbal abuse is typical of the sages in their sensitivity to language as the creator or destroyer of social bonds. As Rabbi Eleazar notes, harsh or derogatory speech touches on self-image and self-respect in a way that other wrongs do not. What is more, as Rabbi Samuel bar Naĥmani makes clear, financial wrongdoing can be rectified in a way that wounding speech cannot. Even after apology, the pain (and the damage to reputation) remains. A stranger, in particular, is sensitive to his or her status within society. He or she is an outsider. Strangers do not share with the native-born a memory, a past, a sense of belonging. They are conscious of their vulnerability. Therefore we must be especially careful not to wound them by reminding them that they are not “one of ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
1329:The personal and the private are most often emphasized to the exclusion of almost everything else. Even the scope of psychotherapy generally leaves out the soul, the creator, and the citizen, those aspects of being human that extend into realms beyond private life. Conventional therapy, necessary and valuable at times to resolve personal crises and suffering, presents a very incomplete sense of self. As a guide to the range of human possibility it is grimly reductive. It will help you deal with your private shames and pains, but it won't generally have much to say about your society and your purpose on earth. [...] Such a confinement of desire and possibility to the private serves the status quo as well: it describes no role for citizenship and no need for social change or engagement. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1330:Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner." Who will help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? What can prevail over you? You are the God of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1331:Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem. And that is what I mean by the “sin of certainty.” It is sin because this pattern of thinking sells God short by keeping the Creator captive to what we are able to comprehend—which is the very same problem the Israelites had when they were tempted to make images of God (aka idols) out of stone, metal, or wood. For ancient people, images made the gods present for the worshippers, something tangible to look at to let them connect with the divine realm. But Israel’s God said no. Any images shaped by human hands limit God by bringing God too far into alignment with ancient conceptions of the divine. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1332:Liberty and Property are words expressing all those of our possessions which are not of an intellectual nature. There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe-such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property-the invention of men. In the latter, equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent. -Agrarian Justice ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1333:From an early age I set myself above the monstrous fantasies of religion, being perfectly convinced that the existence of the creator is a revolting absurdity in which not even children believe any more; there is no need for me to restrain my tastes in order to please Him, it is from Nature that I received these tastes, and I should offend her by resisting them – if they are wicked, it is because they serve her purposes. In her hands I am nothing but a machine for her to operate as she wishes, and there is not a single one of my crimes that fails to serve her; the greater her need, the more she spurs me on – I should be a fool to resist her. Only the law stands in my way, but I defy it – my gold and my influence place me beyond the reach of those crude scales meant only for the common people. ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
1334:It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1335:Many generations ago, your ancestor Abraham and his family infested this land like a plague. He invaded this very city of King Arba, and butchered every one of our ancestors with impunity—save one. Abraham did not know that our queen Naqiya would give birth in her death to the child within her womb. That child was Anak, the father of my people. For over four hundred years we have waited for the opportunity to exact revenge upon our enemies, the Seed of Abraham.” Joshua responded with equal confidence, “The War of the Seed goes back farther in time. In the Garden of Eden Yahweh pronounced a curse upon the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Seed of Eve. He prophesied that Eve would crush the head of the Serpent. King Ahiman, the creator Yahweh has claimed your land and he will possess it for his people. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1336:One of the enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religious faith. Consequently, faith inspires violence in at least two ways. First, people often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it. Islamist terrorism is a recent example of this sort of behavior. Second, far greater numbers of people fall into conflict with one another because they define their moral community on the basis of the religious affiliation: Muslims side with other Muslims, Protestants with Protestants, Catholics with Catholics. These conflicts are not always explicitly religious. But the bigotry and hatred that divide one community from another are often the products of their religious identities. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1337:As a result of the rebellion, ensuing battle, and ultimately God’s judgment, God’s original creation became a “formless void” characterized by “darkness” and covered by “the deep.” Since this concept of a pre-creation battle was widely known among ancient Near Eastern people and among the Jews, as evidenced by the other creation passages that involve conflict, the Genesis author picked up his account where these other accounts left off. He began his narrative with the earth in its destroyed state. He then emphasized the ease with which God re-created his world, thus expressing the victory and sovereignty of the Creator over all forces that oppose him. No other reading of Genesis 1 and 2 can as easily harmonize itself with the biblical data about God’s conflict with forces of evil prior to creation. Fourth, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1338:September 29 I will fear no evil: for thou art with me . . . — Psalm 23:4 No matter what is happening in your relationships, fear nothing and no one. When you walk with the consciousness of the Creator, there is nothing to fear. Do not fear that people will harm you or leave you. Do not fear people who threaten you. Do not fear obstacles that confront you. Have no fear of harm to your body or possessions, you are walking with the strong arm of the law. Do not fear disapproval. Do not fear criticism. Do not fear judgment. Know that the only energy that has any power in your life is the gift of breath from God. Do not fear places. Do not fear darkness. Do not fear separation or divorce. Do not fear being alone. Do not fear being east aside. When you walk with the Master, you are in the best company available. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1339:A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment — the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love — so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator — and reflected back onto YOU. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1340:Aloha is being a part of all And all being a part of me When there is pain, it is my pain When there is joy, it is mine also I respect all that is As part of the Creator and part of me I will not wilfully harm anyone or anything When food is needed I will take only my need And explain why it is being taken The earth, the sky, the sea are mine To care for, to cherish, and to protect This is Hawaiian, this is Aloha! (Excerpt from “Tales From The Night Rainbow” by Koko Willis and Pali Jae Lee) ~ Brien Foerster, #NFDB
1341:English version by K. N. Upadhyaya Destroy delusion, O mind, by means of the Name of God and the Word bestowed by the Guru. The mind is then united with the One untouched by karmas. Liquidate thereby thy karmas, O Dadu. If the mind stays with the Name of the Supreme Lord even for a moment, O Dadu, All its karmas will be destroyed then and there, within the twinkling of an eye. The aspirant who fills his pot with drops of Celestial Melody, alone survives. How can he die, O Dadu? He drinks the divine Nectar. The artistic Creator is playing the instrument in perfect harmony. Melody is the essence of the five elements, and through the self is the Melody expressed, O Dadu. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Dadu: The Compassionate Mystic, Translated by K. N. Upadhyaya
~ Dadu Dayal, The Creator Plays His Cosmic Instrument In Perfect Harmony
,#NFDB
1342:I think it was during this journey that the image became detached, removed from all the rest. It might have existed, a photograph might have been taken, just like any other, somewhere else, in other circumstances. But it wasn't. The subject was too slight. Who would have thought of such a thing? The photograph could only be taken if someone could have known in advance how important it was to be in my life, that event, that crossing of the river. But while it was happening, no one even knew of its existence. Except god. And that's why- it couldn't have been otherwise- the image doesn't exist. It was omitted. Forgotten. It never was detached or removed from all the rest. And it's to this, this failure to have been created, that the image owes its virtue: the virtue of representing, of being the creator of, an absolute. ~ Marguerite Duras, #NFDB
1343:But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1344:Once we allow the logical reconstruction of something (a being, a theodicy, and the like) to have internal self contradiction, it obviously becomes possible to prove absolutely anything, whatever one pleases. Consider how the matter lies. We are speaking of creating someone and of endowing him with a particular logic, and then demanding that this same logic be offered up in sacrifice to a belief in the Maker of all things. If this model itself is to remain noncontradictory, it calls for the application, in the form of a metalogic, of a totally different type of reasoning from that which is natural to the logic of the one created. |If that does not reveal the outright imperfection of the Creator, then it reveals a quality that I would call mathematical inelegance – a sui generic unmethodicalness (incoherence) of the creative act. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
1345:One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus—which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right—cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe—from circa 1100 onward—Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead.... ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1346:The Telescope, the Fluxions, the invention of Logarithms and the frenzy of multiplication, often for its own sake, that follow'd have for Emerson all been steps of an unarguable approach to God, a growing clarity,- Gravity, the pulse of time, the finite speed of Light present themselves to him as aspect of God's character. It's like becoming friendly with an erratic, powerful, potentially dangerous member of the Aristocracy. He holds no quarrel with the Creator's sovereignty, but is repeatedly appall'd at the lapses in Attention, the flaws in Design, the squand'rings of life and energy, the failures to be reasonable, or to exercise common sense,- first appall'd, then angry. We are taught,- we believe,- that it is love of the Creation which drives the Philosopher in his Studies. Emerson is driven, rather, by a passionate Resentment. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
1347:At least we must know how to recognize the ignoble ends it achieves. Each time that it deifies the total rejection, the absolute negation, of what exists, it destroys. Each time that it blindly accepts what exists and gives voice to absolute assent, it destroys again. Hatred of the creator can turn to hatred of creation or to exclusive and defiant love of what exists. But in both cases it ends in murder and loses the right to be called rebellion. One can be nihilist in two ways, in both by having an intemperate recourse to absolutes. Apparently there are rebels who want to die and those who want to cause death. But they are identical, consumed with desire for the true life, frustrated by their desire for existence and therefore preferring generalized injustice to mutilated justice. At this pitch of indignation, reason becomes madness. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1348:Even if you believe the Genesis record of creation you’ll see that God did not create a black and white world of male and female. Creation is not black and white, it is amazingly diverse, like a rainbow, including sexualities and a variety of non-heterosexual expressions of behaviour, affection and partnering occurring in most species, including humans. The ability to reproduce is only a small part of the creation. Before God created male and female he made an even more important statement; ‘it is not good for mankind to be alone’. This is fundamental to all heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Lasting relationships are based on love, trust and commitment, not sex or reproduction. So stop with the ‘God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’ quote already. It’s boring and an insult to the creator of this incredible universe. ~ Anthony Venn Brown, #NFDB
1349:There are three people you will be judged heavily on how you treat them in this lifetime. For the man, it is his mother for giving him life, his wife for showing him life, and his daughter for teaching her all that he has learned from life. For the woman, it is her father for giving her the seed of life, her husband for showing her life, and her son for teaching him all that she has learned from life. How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, and how well they value and honor the sacred oath they made before him. Yet most importantly, a married couple must show they understand His purpose for Creation, which is to love each other unconditionally and cultivate more life to love. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1350:Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'
Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in gratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as "very inferior".'
Have you not learned, my esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
1351:I Hang Limp On The Creator's Pen
I hang limp on the Creator's pen
Like a large drop of lilac gloss-paint.
Underneath are dykes' secrets; the air
From the railways is sodden and sticky,
Of the fumes of coal and night fires reeking.
But the moment night kills sunset's glare,
It turns pink itself, tinged with far flares,
And the fence stands stiff, paradox-stricken.
It keeps muttering: stop it till dawn.
Let the dry whiting finally settle.
Hard as nails is the worm-eaten ground,
And the echo's as keen as a skittle.
Warm spring wind, spots of cheviot and mud,
Early naileries' hoots faraway,
On the grater of cobble-stones road,
As on radishes lavishly sprayed,
Tears stand out clearly at break of day.
Like an acrid drop of thick lead paint,
I hang on to the Creator's pen.
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB
1352:The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath.
The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. ~ George Lakoff,#NFDB
1353:Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God’s redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator’s hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life’s values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God’s name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1354:he had visited his distant kin, Noah. There, he had been told of the Creator Elohim, and his vindictive judgment on mankind that was the origin of the Great Flood. Nimrod rejected this despotic deity and his capricious obsession for controlling things from on high. How dare this supposed Creator make mankind and the angels, and then demand sniveling toe-licking slavery. Against this monolithic tyranny stood the pantheon of gods, who watched over mankind from Mount Hermon. This divine assembly of Watchers was willing to share power, to elevate man above his mud-brick existence. If there was one thing the Watcher gods gave him hope for, it was the glorious potential of mankind to become as gods, to commingle heaven and earth in a unity of being. He knew that what he and Marduk planned would more than likely provoke another vengeful response from Elohim. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1355:The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast -- archangels -- their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!" He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nail heads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1356:Clear your throat and open your eyes. You are on stage. The lights are on. It’s only natural if you’re sweating, because this isn’t make-believe. This is theater for keeps. Yes, it is a massive stage, and there are millions of others on stage with you. Yes, you can try to shake the fright by blending in. But it won’t work. You have the Creator God’s full attention, as much attention as He ever gave Napoleon. Or even Moses. Or billions of others who lived and died unknown. Or a grain of sand. Or one spike on one snowflake. You are spoken. You are seen. It is your turn to participate in creation. Like a kindergartener shoved out from behind the curtain during his first play, you might not know which scene you are in or what comes next, but God is far less patronizing than we are. You are His art, and He has no trouble stooping.
You can even ask Him for your lines. (7) ~ N D Wilson,#NFDB
1357:Interestingly, the word munkasiran is translated as dejected, though literally it means broken. It conveys a sense of being humbled in the majestic presence of God. It refers to the awesome realization that each of us, at every moment, lives and acts before the august presence of the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the one God besides whom there is no power or might in all the universe. When one seriously reflects on God’s perfect watch over His creation, the countless blessings He sends down, and then considers the kind of deeds one brings before Him—what possible feelings can one generate except humility and degrees of shame? With these strong feelings, one implores God to change one’s state, make one’s desires consonant with His pleasure—giving up one’s designs for God’s designs. This is pure courtesy with respect to God, a requisite for spiritual purification. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
1358:Contemplate the cosmic standard of time and creation. When Brahma the creator wakes up at the dawn of each cosmic day, this entire universe and all creatures in it are instantly manifested, only to be dissolved back into the unmanifested (formless) at Brahma’s cosmic nightfall. But each cosmic day and night of Brahma lasts thousands of yugas, and each yuga lasts 10,000 to 400,000 years; the time is all but incomprehensible to humans. In succeeding days and nights of Brahma, the same multitude of beings helplessly come to birth and death again and again as the physical universe continues its expanding and contracting.
“This eternal cosmic play is the same in the microcosm of the individual soul as it is in the cosmos.
When an individual goes to sleep, the entire world his or her mind experiences as ‘real’ withdraws, only to ‘come alive’ again at waking. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
1359:When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows.
But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit -- what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
1360:Clear your throat and open your eyes. You are on stage. The lights are on. It’s only natural if you’re sweating, because this isn’t make-believe. This is theater for keeps. Yes, it is a massive stage, and there are millions of others on stage with you. Yes, you can try to shake the fright by blending in. But it won’t work. You have the Creator God’s full attention, as much attention as He ever gave Napoleon. Or Churchill. Or even Moses. Or billions of others who lived and died unknown. Or a grain of sand. Or one spike on one snowflake. You are spoken. You are seen. It is your turn to participate in creation. Like a kindergartener shoved out from behind the curtain during his first play, you might not know which scene you are in or what comes next, but God is far less patronizing than we are. You are His art, and He has no trouble stooping. You can even ask Him for your lines. ~ N D Wilson, #NFDB
1361:Ah, deserve,” sighed Kindwind. “The notion of deserved and undeserved is a fancy. Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Mayhap the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. A wider gaze does not regard us in that wise. The stars do not. Perhaps the Creator does not. The larger truth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust. “For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear. ~ Stephen R Donaldson, #NFDB
1362:Love the creatures for the sake of God and not for themselves. You will never become angry or impatient if you love them for the sake of God. Humanity is not perfect. There are imperfections in every human being, and you will always become unhappy if you look toward the people themselves. But if you look toward God, you will love them and be kind to them, for the world of God is the world of perfection and complete mercy. Therefore, do not look at the shortcomings of anybody; see with the sight of forgiveness. The imperfect eye beholds imperfections. The eye that covers faults looks toward the Creator of souls. He created them, trains and provides for them, endows them with capacity and life, sight and hearing; therefore, they are the signs of His grandeur. You must love and be kind to everybody, care for the poor, protect the weak, heal the sick, teach and educate the ignorant. ~ Abdu l Bah, #NFDB
1363:Hatred of the creator can turn to hatred of creation or to exclusive and defiant
love of what exists. But in both cases it ends in murder and loses the right to be called rebellion. One can
be nihilist in two ways, in both by having an intemperate recourse to absolutes. Apparently there are rebels who
want to die and those who want to cause death. But they are identical, consumed with desire for the true life,
frustrated by their desire for existence and therefore preferring generalized injustice to mutilated justice. At this
pitch of indignation, reason becomes madness. If it is true that the instinctive rebellion of the human heart advances
gradually through the centuries toward its most complete realization, it has also grown, as we have seen, in blind
audacity, to the inordinate extent of deciding to answer universal murder by metaphysical assassination. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1364:OBIT FOR THE CREATOR OF MAD LIBS On Tuesday, in Canton, Connecticut, a town famous for the stickiness of its boogers, a stinky old man died of a good disease at his home at 345 Rotten Lane. Mr. Preston Wirtz, whose parents, Ida and Goober, ran a small jelly farm, died in his yellowish toilet. Mr. Wirtz was hated in Uzbekistan for the series of wordplay books he created for slippery children, books known far and wide as “Mad Libs,” beloved by hairy grumps and farty grampas alike. These books were never appreciated by tall elves, selling over two per year for one decade. When asked to describe Mr. Wirtz, his jealous wife, wearing nothing but an egg carton and flip-flops, called him “in a nutshell, the most sour-smelling, bacon-licking, pimple-footed crab-apple I have ever known. I will never always miss him and his broken underwear.” Then she cried herself to sleep in her fart-house. ~ Bob Odenkirk, #NFDB
1365:How, for example, after liberating themselves from servitude to the religion of God, the creator of the world and of Adam, which alone could hold them within duty and, therefore, within society, did the impious life of those first men from whom the gentile nations arose bring them to disperse in a ferine wandering through the great forest of the earth, grown dense through saturation by the waters of the Flood? And how, constrained to seek food and water and, even more, to save themselves from the wild animals in which the great forest must unfortunately have abounded, with men frequently abandoning their women and mothers their children, and with no way of reuniting, did their descendants gradually come to forget the language of Adam and, without language or any thought other than that of satisfying their hunger, thirst and the foment of their lust, deaden all sense of humanity? ~ Giambattista Vico, #NFDB
1366:Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux
of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate
themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a
universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament,
the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal
soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are
its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the
sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason.
That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to
nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And
man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
1367:Don’t underestimate what you have. It may look small and insignificant. Compared to what you’re facing, perhaps it seems utterly useless. All the odds are against you. But when God breathes on your life, the odds dramatically change. You and God are a majority. God can open doors that should have never opened in the natural. God can take you beyond where your talent and your education say you should be. God can make a way even when you don’t see a way. It’s not enough just to have faith in God. That’s important, but you have to have faith in what God has given you. You are not lacking. You were not shortchanged. You are not at a disadvantage. The Creator of the universe is breathing on your life. He is breathing on your health, breathing on your finances, breathing on your marriage. If you will be confident in what God has given you, He can take what looks like little and turn it into much. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1368:Say, “This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.” That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by some one else I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future. “Let the dead past bury its dead.” The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever. (II. 225) ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1369:The holy dark over the manger gives way to the heinous dark over the Messiah and the slamming hammer and the tearing vein and the piercing thorn—the created murdering the Creator. The Cross stands as the epitome of evil. And God takes the greatest evil ever known to humanity and turns it into the greatest Gift you have ever known. “If the worst things work for good to a believer, what shall the best things?” writes Puritan Thomas Watson. “Nothing hurts the godly . . . all things . . . shall co-operate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings.”[11] If God can transfigure the greatest evil into the greatest Gift, then He intends to turn whatever you’re experiencing now into a gift. You cannot be undone. Somewhere, Advent can storm and howl. And the world robed for Christmas can spin on. You, there on the edge, whispering it, defiant through the torn places: “All is grace. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
1370:America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1371:you can get by doing it physically, you can get by doing it mentally. Mentally, you can exercise the body. If you really apply yourself, after some time you will see, you can improve your muscle tone just by doing it mentally, because once your imagination can be coupled with your life energies, it becomes a living reality, it is no more just imagination. This fundamentally involves two basic steps. One is to have the ability to vividly create every detail of what you want in your mind, and of truly being able to create as the Creator did. The most fundamental thing is to be able to keep your personality out of your imagination, which takes a certain amount of training and dispassion about yourself. That is, you do not think much of yourself. It takes a certain amount of sadhana and preparation for a person to be like this, that he can extensively use his mind without imposing his personality upon it. ~ Sadguru, #NFDB
1372:Surely this is an indication of the great perversion of Pharaoh and his being utterly bereft of exercising his wisdom. He did not grasp the importance of the message, that is, the obvious existence and oneness of Allah, communicated by the Prophet Moses (pbuh). Pharaoh, mindlessly, thought that Allah was solely up in the air and in his own opinion, derisively contradicted the Prophet Moses (pbuh). The fact is, however, Allah is beyond time and space. Our Lord Who created Pharaoh and all the fortune he possessed and the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it encompasses everywhere. Throughout the history countless people who possessed the mentality of Pharaoh and did not correct their attitudes lived and each one of them were openly defeated in the face of Allah's superior Might. It was based on this premise of his own foolish mind that he founded his denial of the Prophet Moses (pbuh). ~ Harun Yahya, #NFDB
1373:The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1374:Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth 14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,[*] 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.[*] 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. 20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1375:The Creator of the galaxies lives, whispers uniquely good things about us in our hearts, and urges us to rise up and use our freedom to become compassionate peacemakers in our world. This bond of love that touches each one of our lives from the very beginning of our creation to the very end of time and beyond is our original blessing. When you and I are home in this relationship, we find ourselves in the heart of the One that Jesus addresses as Father. We reside in the intimacy of the womb of Love Itself. Looking out from the heart of Love, our own hearts bleed with compassion, because from there we are seeing as God sees. From this intimate connection with God we grow to become like the One we love. You and I, along with all members of the human family, are blessed people with the blessing of unconditional love that will never be taken away. We are also people who offer compassion to those who suffer. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1376:Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1377:God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the Creator. Now the other person, in the freedom with which he was created, becomes the occasion of joy, whereas before he was only a nuisance and an affliction. God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in His image. I can never know beforehand how God's image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that comes solely from God's free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1378:You have been led astray, my child, by the conflicting and vain opinions of mankind. You, like many others in the world, delight to question, to speculate, to weigh this, to measure that, with little or no profit to yourself or your fellow-creatures. And you have come freshly from a land where, in the great Senate-house, a poor perishable lump of clay calling itself a man, dares to stand up boldly and deny the existence of God, while his compeers, less bold than he, pretend a holy displeasure, yet secretly support him — all blind worms denying the existence of the sun; a land where so-called Religion is split into hundreds of cold and narrow sects, gatherings assembled for the practice of hypocrisy, lip-service and lies — where Self, not the Creator, is the prime object of worship; a land, mighty once among the mightiest, but which now, like an over-ripe pear, hangs loosely on its tree, awaiting but a touch to make it fall! ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
1379: 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, #NFDB
1380:Concerning Man--he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view--this premise: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn't served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably matter of surprise and regret to the Creator. . . . For his history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1381:The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.
The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed. ~ Susan Howatch,#NFDB
1382:Nonviolent coercion always brings tension to the surface. This tension, however, must not be seen as destructive. There is a kind of tension that is both healthy and necessary for growth. Society needs nonviolent gadflies to bring its tensions into the open and force its citizens to confront the ugliness of their prejudices and the tragedy of their racism.
It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension....How strange it would be to condemn a physician who, through persistent work and the ingenuity of his medical skills, discovered cancer in a patient. Would anyone be so ignorant as to say he caused the cancer? Through the skills and discipline of direct action we reveal that there is a dangerous cancer of hatred and racism in our society. We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it. Only through this kind of exposure will the cancer be cured. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,#NFDB
1383:BASIC PRINCIPLES Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1384:The world can never be totally separated from its Creator, and there is no logical or philosophical reason whatsoever to refuse the possibility of continuous creation or a series of creations as all traditional doctrines have held. The understanding of metaphysics could at least make clear the often forgotten fact that the plausibility of the theory of evolution is based on several non-scientific factors belonging to the general philosophical climate of eighteenth-century and nineteenth century Europe such as belief in progress. Deism which cut off the hands of the Creator from His creation and the reduction of reality to the two levels of mind and matter. Only with such beliefs could the theory of evolution appear as ‘rational’, and the most | easy to accept for a world which had completely lost sight of the multiple levels of being and had reduced nature to a purely corporeal world totally cut off from any other order of existence. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1385:The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion--and not much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of such a moribund and worn-out product of the décadence. A curse lies upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts--and since then they have not managed to create any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone--and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some intrinsic right,--as if he were the ultimatum and maximum of the power to create gods, of the creator spiritus in mankind--this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1386:The parable teaches us the nature of that union. The connection between the vine and the branch is a living one. No external, temporary union will suffice; no work of man can effect it: the branch, whether an original or an engrafted one, is such only by the Creator's own work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fatness, and the fruitfulness of the vine communicate themselves to the branch. And just so it is with the believer too. His union with his Lord is no work of human wisdom or human will, but an act of God, by which the closest and most complete life-union is effected between the Son of God and the sinner. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts." The same Spirit which dwelt and still dwells in the Son, becomes the life of the believer; in the unity of that one Spirit, and the fellowship of the same life which is in Christ, he is one with Him. As between the vine and branch, it is a life-union that makes them one. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1387:Markandeya Purana along with Bhagavat Purana is considered to be quite a celebrated work. Ranked seventh in the list of Puranas, probably one of the oldest works, its recitation is believed to free one from taints of sin. Named after the sage Markandeya, who acquired its knowledge from Brahma, the creator, its narration starts with sage Jaimini (author of Mimamsa sutras) approaching the wise birds (Dronaputras appearing as birds residing in the Himalayas) to get answers at the behest of Markandeya. Initially the Purana gets answers to the five basic questions: How was Vishnu born as a mortal? How Draupadi became the wife of five Pandavas? Why did Balabadra undertake the penance (pilgrimage) for having committed brahmanicide (killing of Brahmins) and why were the children of Draupadi destroyed so unceremoniously? These questions cover the whole gamut of ancient history, logic, morality, astronomy and so forth. ~ B.K. Chaturvedi (2004), in Markandeya Purana, Preface, #NFDB
1388:CREATIVE AFFIRMATIONS I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work comes to good. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them. As I create and listen, I will be led. Creativity is the creator’s will for me. My creativity heals myself and others. I am allowed to nurture my artist Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish. Through the use of my creativity, I serve God. My creativity always leads me to truth and love. My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness. There is a divine plan of goodness for me. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work. As I listen to the creator within, I am led. As I listen to my creativity I am led to my creator. I am willing to create. I am willing to learn to let myself create. I am willing to let God create through me. I am willing to be of service through my creativity. I am willing to experience my creative energy. I am willing to use my creative talents. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1389:The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1390:Here’s another analogy. Human beings bring only a handful of facial features to the blueprint of how we look—two eyes, two eyebrows, a nose, a mouth, a pair of cheekbones, and two ears, all pasted onto a somewhat ovular-to-round face. That particular blueprint doesn’t often vary much, either. Interestingly enough, this is about the same number of essential storytelling parts and milestones that each and every story needs to showcase in order to be successful. Now, consider this: With only these eleven variables to work with, ask yourself how often you see two people who look exactly alike. In a crowd of ten thousand faces, you would be able to differentiate each and every one of them, other than a set of twins or two in attendance. Where we humans are concerned, the miracle of originality resides in the Creator, who applies an engineering-driven process—eleven variables— to an artistic outcome. Where art is concerned, there is something to be learned from that. ~ Larry Brooks, #NFDB
1391:One does feel proud to belong to the human race when one sees the wonderful things human beings have fashioned with their hands. They have been creators–they must share a little the holiness of the Creator, who made the world and all that was in it, and saw that it was good. But he left more to be made. He left the things to be fashioned by men’s hands. He left them to fashion them, to follow in his footsteps because they were made in his image, to see what they made, and see that it was good. The pride of creation is an extraordinary thing. Even the carpenter who once fashioned a particularly hideous towel-rail of wood for one of our expedition houses had the creative spirit. When asked why he had put such enormous feet on it against orders, he said reproachfully: ‘I had to make it that way because it was so beautiful like that!’ Well, it seemed hideous to us, but it was beautiful to him, and he made it in the spirit of creation, because it was beautiful. Men ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1392:BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR CREATIVITY RECOVERY Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy—pure, creative energy. There is an underlying, indwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good, orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1393:There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority? ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1394:The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought.
The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1395:People really do not change from one generation to another, as far back as we know history people are about the same as they were, they have had the same needs, the same desires, the same virtues and the same qualities, the same defects, indeed nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen, the streets change, the way of being driven in the streets change, the buildings change, the comforts in the houses change, but the people from one generation to another do not change.
The creator in the arts is like all the rest of the people living, he is sensitive to the changes in the way of living and his is is inevitably influenced by the way each generation is living, the way each generation is being educated and the way they move about, all this creates the composition of that generation. ~ Gertrude Stein,#NFDB
1396:I am indeed a kind of alien," siad Momo. "Your legends do not entirely miss the mark. We do have ray guns and flying saucers. But my homeland is not one of your space's planets. I'm from the All, Joe Cube. A world of four dimensions. I climbed down through a tunnel to get to Spaceland- to your world. Spaceland lies in an endless cavern like a strange, subterranean sea. Spaceland very nearly lacks a fourth dimension; it extends less than a nanometer in the direction of your vinn and vout- which actually point in the direction of our up and down. Spaceland appears to us as something like a rug- but unlike a rug, Spsaceland is cunningly filled with motion and life. It seems the Creator put Spaceland in place to separate the All in two. My people the Kluppers, live up above it, and another fold called the Dronners live down below. They are our enemies, hidden below Spaceland.” Momo paused, as if agitated by the thought of the Dronners. “You’ll turn the tide against them Joe. ~ Rudy Rucker, #NFDB
1397:I am indeed a kind of alien," siad Momo. "Your legends do not entirely miss the mark. We do have ray guns and flying saucers. But my homeland is not one of your space's planets. I'm from the All, Joe Cube. A world of four dimensions. I climbed down through a tunnel to get to Spaceland- to your world. Spaceland lies in an endless cavern like a strange, subterranean sea. Spaceland very nearly lacks a fourth dimension; it extends less than a nanometer in the direction of your vinn and vout- which actually point in the direction of our up and down. Spaceland appears to us as something like a rug- but unlike a rug, Spsaceland is cunningly filled with motion and life. It seems the Creator put Spaceland in place to separate the All in two. My people the Kluppers, live up above it, and another folk called the Dronners live down below. They are our enemies, hidden below Spaceland.” Momo paused, as if agitated by the thought of the Dronners. “You’ll turn the tide against them Joe. ~ Rudy Rucker, #NFDB
1398:The earth was created with the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. [...] The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it. [...] I see the whites all over the country gaining wealth, and see their desire to give us lands which are worthless. [...] The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same. Say to us if you can say it, that you were sent by the Creative Power to talk to us. Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I chose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to live on yours. ~ Chief Joseph, #NFDB
1399:I kept steadily to meetings, spent first-day afternoons chiefly in reading the Scriptures and other good books, and was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart does love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness, not only toward all men, but also toward the brute creatures; that, as the mind was moved by an inward principle to love God as an invisible, incomprehensible Being, so, by the same principle, it was moved to love him in all his manifestations in the visible world; that, as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in all animal sensible creatures, to say we love God as unseen, and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself. I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people, in every society, who truly love God, were accepted of him. ~ Various, #NFDB
1400:Before starting work on this book, we had to ask ourselves a question what is science fiction? Seemingly simple, but in reality the answer was hard to formulate. This is the definition we settled upon:
Science fiction is a member of a group of fictional genres whose narrative drive depends upon events, technologies, societies, etc. that are impossible, unreal, or that are depicted as occurring at some time in the future, the past or in a world of secondary creation. These attributes vary widely in terms of actuality, likelihood, possibility and in the intent with which they are employed by the creator. The fundamental difference between science fiction and the other "fantastical genres" of fantasy and horror is this: the basis for the fiction is one of rationality. The sciences this rationality generates can be speculative, largely erroneous, or even impossible, but explanations are, nevertheless, generated through a materialistic worldview. The supernatural is not invoked. ~ Stephen Baxter,#NFDB
1401:I'm a very old woman, Simon, and in the nature of things I don't have a great deal longer to live. But I've already so far outlived normal life expectancy, and I'm so fascinated by the extraordinary behavior of the world around me and the ordered behavior of the heavens above, that I don't dwell overmuch on death. And I'm still part of a simpler world than yours, a world in which it was easier to believe in God.'
'Why was it easier?'
'Despite Darwin and the later prophets of science, I grew up in a world in which my elders taught me that the planet earth was the chief purpose of the Creator, and that all the stars in the heavens were put there entirely for our benefit, and that humankind is God's only interest in the universe. It didn't take much imagination and courage then as it does now to believe that God has time to be present at a deathbed, to believe that human suffering does concern him, to believe that he loves every atom of his creation, no matter how insignificant. ~ Madeleine L Engle,#NFDB
1402:Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir:” he read, “You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next—and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. “Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. “You are pooped and demoralized,” read Dwayne. “Why wouldn’t you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.” 23 DWAYNE HOOVER read on: “You are surrounded by loving machines, hating machines, greedy machines, unselfish machines, brave machines, cowardly machines, truthful machines, lying machines, funny machines, solemn machines,” he read. “Their only purpose is to stir you up in every conceivable way, so the Creator of the Universe can watch your reactions. They can no more feel or reason than grandfather clocks. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1403:The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1404:There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by "rests," and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator.
How does the musician read the rest? See him beat the time with unvarying count, and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between.
Not without design does God write the music of our lives. But be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the "rests."
They are not to be slurred over nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear. ~ John Ruskin,#NFDB
1405:How could the Creator depend on anyone, or anything? How could God have the attributes of a human? How could a human have attributes of Allah? The Creator endowed His creation with the facilities of hearing and seeing, but their limited hearing and seeing was in no way comparable to the divine ability of the One above the heavens to hear and see all things. He heard all that was spoken in the far reaches of the earth or whispered in the most private of quarters, even in the most secluded homes, while having eminent knowledge and understanding of it all. He suffered no confusion or difficulty in comprehending or hearing the multitude of languages, subtleties, and conversation spoken all at once from the billions of humans upon the earth. Unlike His creation, His sight was all-encompassing, and He could see into the very breasts of humans while while having complete sight and control over the entire universe. His knowledge of the affairs of His creation was nothing like one could even hope to comprehend. ~ Umm Zakiyyah, #NFDB
1406:(It is suggested that while the Vedic era saw only the worship of a formless and imageless God, the conduct of rituals and the propitiation of the river and mountain and tree gods of local tribes, all of which were ‘portable’ and not confined to a fixed spot, it was the arrival of the Greeks under Alexander in the fourth century BCE that brought into India the idea of permanent temples enshrining stone images of heroes and gods.) Again, while the Hinduism of the Vedas emerged from mantras and rituals, including elaborate sacrifices, the Puranas promoted their values entirely on the basis of myths and stories. By developing the concept of the saguna Brahman to go with the exalted idea of the nirguna Brahman, the Puranic faith integrated the Vedic religion into the daily worship of ordinary people. Using the seductive power of maya (illusion), the nirguna Brahman of the Vedas took the form of saguna Brahman or Ishvara, the creator of prakriti, the natural world and the God or Bhagavan of all human beings. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
1407:Ashtart’s secondary purpose was to debase the image of Elohim in mankind through carnal intercourse with everything unnatural or inhuman. It would bring humanity down from its lofty heights of dominion over creation and suck them into the muck and slime. She so hated the Creator and wanted to spit in his face, that she inspired the hatred of all that was good and humanly beautiful in the name of “love.” The delicious irony was that she had created cities of hate masquerading as “Cities of Love.” At the apex of all this sexual freedom was the ultimate goal of Ashtart: sexual congregation of humans with the gods. She wanted to eliminate all separation between gods and men. She invited select gods of Canaan – Molech, Dagon and Asherah – to join her in the covert activity of breeding with the daughters of men. But they were unwilling, out of fear of reprisal from Elohim. The Deluge judgment was still too vivid in their memories. So Ashtart cursed them and pursued her agenda alone, as she felt she always had to. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1408:Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible – that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection. ~ Walter M Miller Jr, #NFDB
1409:The Byronic
hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid,
his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and
destructive action. To love someone whom one will never see again is to give a cry of exultation as one
perishes in the flames of passion. One lives only in and for the moment, in order to achieve "the brief and
vivid union of a tempestuous heart united to the tempest" (lermontov). The threat of mortality which
hangs over us makes everything abortive. Only the cry of anguish can bring us to life; exaltation takes the
place of truth. To this extent the apocalypse becomes an absolute value in which everything is
confounded—love and death, conscience and culpability. In a chaotic universe no other life exists but that
of the abyss where, according to Alfred Le Poittevin, human beings come "trembling with rage and
exulting in
their crimes" to curse the Creator. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1410:And so Psalm 121 says no. It rejects a worship of nature, a religion of stars and flowers, a religion that makes the best of what it finds on the hills; instead it looks to the Lord who made heaven and earth. Help comes from the Creator, not from the creation. The Creator is always awake: he will never doze or sleep. Baal took long naps, and one of the jobs of the priests was to wake him up when someone needed his attention—and they were not always successful. The Creator is Lord over time: he “guards you when you leave and when you return,” your beginnings and your endings. He is with you when you set out on your way; he is still with you when you arrive at your destination. You don’t need to, in the meantime, get supplementary help from the sun or the moon. The Creator is Lord over all natural and supernatural forces: he made them. Sun, moon and rocks have no spiritual power. They are not able to inflict evil upon us: we need not fear any supernatural assault from any of them. “GOD guards you from every evil. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1411:Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be annhiliation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us. ~ Richard Baxter, #NFDB
1412:Old ocean, the different species of fish that you nurture have not sworn brotherhood among themselves. Each species lives apart, on its own. The varying temperaments & conformations of each one satisfactorily explain what at first appears an anomaly. So it is with man, who has not the same motives as excuse. If a piece of land be occupied by thirty million human beings, they consider they have no obligation to concern themselves with the existence of their neighbors who are settled like roots in the adjacent patch of land. And descending from the general to the particular, each man lives like a savage in his den & rarely leaves it to visit his fellow --crouching alike in another lair. The great universal human family is a utopia worthy of the most paltry logic. Besides, from the spectacle of your fecund breasts emerges the notion of ingratitude, for one thinks immediately of those innumerable parents ungrateful enough towards the Creator to abandon the fruit of their sorry unions. I hail you old ocean! ~ Comte de Lautr amont, #NFDB
1413:Do you believe the corelings are our own fault?” Arlen asked. “That we deserve them?” “Of course I believe,” she said. “It is the word of the Creator.” “No,” Arlen said. “It’s a book. Books are written by men. If the Creator wanted to tell us something, why would he use a book, and not write on the sky with fire?” “It’s hard sometimes to believe there’s a Creator up there, watching,” Mery said, looking up at the sky, “but how could it be otherwise? The world didn’t create itself. What power would wards hold, without a will behind creation?” “And the Plague?” Arlen asked. Mery shrugged. “The histories tell of terrible wars,” she said. “Maybe we did deserve it.” “Deserve it?” Arlen demanded. “My mam did not deserve to die because of some stupid war fought centuries ago!” “Your mother was taken?” Mery asked, touching his arm. “Arlen, I had no idea …” Arlen yanked his arm away. “It makes no difference,” he said, storming toward the door. “I have wards to carve, though I hardly see the point, if we all deserve demons in our beds. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
1414:Imagine that a literalist and a moderate have gone to a restaurant for lunch, and the menu promises "fresh lobster" as the speciality of the house. Loving lobster, the literalist simply places his order and waits. The moderate does likewise, but claims to be entirely comfortable with the idea that the lobster might not really be a lobster after all—perhaps it's a goose! And, whatever it is, it need not be "fresh" in any conventional sense—for the moderate understands that the meaning of this term shifts according to context. This would be a very strange attitude to adopt toward lunch, but it is even stranger when considering the most important questions of existence—what to live for, what to die for, and what to kill for. Consequently, the appeal of literalism isn't difficult to see. Human beings reflexively demand it in almost every area of their lives. It seems to me that religious people, to the extent that they're 'certain' that their scripture was written or inspired by the Creator of the universe, demand it too. - pg. 67-68 ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1415:But the creator of things,------1890 nature herself, was the first example of sowing seed and the start of grafting, for berries and acorns fell down from trees and, in due season, produced underneath a crowd of seedlings. Then from nature, too, they got the idea of setting young shoots into branches and planting new saplings in the ground through all their fields. After that, they kept trying various ways of tilling pleasant fields and saw that with tender care------1900 and gentle cultivation earth would tame wild fruits. Day by day, men forced the forests to move further up the mountains, yielding------[1370] lower parts to farming, so they could have meadows, lakes, streams, grain fields, and rich vineyards on hills and plains, and dark bands of olives could run between, marking the divisions, spreading over hillocks, plains, and valleys, just as you now see all land divided with various fine things—men make it shine------1910 by arranging sweet orchard trees in rows, and, with fertile shrubs planted all around, keep them fenced in. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
1416:The lone man gave thanks to Elohim for the couple who had raised him. It was Abram and he was now forty-eight years old. He finished his prayer. He laid a pack of his life’s belongings on the back of a donkey. It would accompany him and his horse to the city of Ur. Abram had lived in seclusion with Noah and Emzara since he had been an infant. They had raised him to know the Creator Elohim as El Shaddai, God Almighty, protector of the chosen seedline. They had poured their lives into their descendant because they believed he was new life for their promised hope. They had not foreseen the potential danger of a child raised in solitude seeing himself as God’s special progenitor. That was the disadvantage of living as an only child. Abram had been pampered, given total attention, and told over and over again that he was God’s special instrument. He had gotten the impression that he could do no wrong. He had developed an overconfidence that lacked humility and almost presumed invincibility. After all, if El Shaddai was his guard and protector, ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1417:Basic Principles:
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity. ~ Julia Cameron,#NFDB
1418:Any Christianity that rests upon a dichotomy - some sort of platonic concept - simply does not have an answer to nature, and we must say with tears that much orthodoxy, much evangelical Christianity, is rooted in a platonic concept, wherein the only interest is in the "upper story", in the heavenly things - only in "saving the soul" and getting it to heaven. In this platonic concept, even though orthodox and evangelical terminology is used, there is little or no interest in the proper pleasures of the body or the proper uses of the intellect. In such a Christianity there is a strong tendency to see nothing in nature beyond its use as one of the classic proofs of God's existence. "Look at nature," we are told; "Look at the Alps. God must have made them." And that is the end. Nature has become merely an academic proof of the existence of the Creator, with little value in itself. Christians of this outlook do not show an interest in nature itself. They use it simply as an apologetic weapon, rather than thinking or talking about the real value of nature. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
1419:The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1420:When the Creator banished from his sight
Frail man to dark mortality's abode,
And granted him a late return to light,
Only by treading reason's arduous road,—
When each immortal turned his face away,
She, the compassionate, alone
Took up her dwelling in that house of clay,
With the deserted, banished one.
With drooping wing she hovers here
Around her darling, near the senses' land,
And on his prison-walls so drear
Elysium paints with fond deceptive hand.
While soft humanity still lay at rest,
Within her tender arms extended,
No flame was stirred by bigots' murderous zest,
No guiltless blood on high ascended.
The heart that she in gentle fetters binds,
Views duty's slavish escort scornfully;
Her path of light, though fairer far it winds,
Sinks in the sun-track of morality.
Those who in her chaste service still remain,
No grovelling thought can tempt, no fate affright;
The spiritual life, so free from stain,
Freedom's sweet birthright, they receive again,
Under the mystic sway of holy might. ~ Friedrich Schiller,#NFDB
1421:A child, obeying his father and mother, goes wherever he is told, east or west, south or north. And the yin and yang - how much more are they to a man than father or mother! Now that they have brought me to the verge of death, if I should refuse to obey them, how perverse I would be! What fault is it of theirs? The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. When a skilled smith is casting metal, if the metal should leap up and say, 'I insist upon being made into a Moye!' he would surely regard it as very inauspicious metal indeed. Now, having had the audacity to take on human form once, if I should say, 'I don't want to be anything but a man! Nothing but a man!', the Creator would surely regard me as a most inauspicious sort of person. So now I think of heaven and earth as a great furnace, and the Creator as a skilled smith. Where could he send me that would not be all right? I will go off to sleep peacefully, and then with a start I will wake up. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
1422:The sun, as supreme among the celestial bodies visible to the astronomers of antiquity, was assigned to the highest of the gods and became symbolic of the supreme authority of the Creator Himself. From a deep philosophic consideration of the powers and principles of the sun has come the concept of the Trinity as it is understood in the world today. The tenet of a Triune Divinity is not peculiar to Christian or Mosaic theology, but forms a conspicuous part of the dogma of the greatest religions of both ancient and modern times. The Persians, Hindus, Babylonians, and Egyptians had their Trinities. In every instance these represented the threefold form of one Supreme Intelligence. In modern Masonry, the Deity is symbolized by an equilateral triangle, its three sides representing the primary manifestations of the Eternal One who is Himself represented as a tiny flame, called by the Hebrews Yod (י). Jakob Böhme, the Teutonic mystic, calls the Trinity The Three Witnesses, by means of which the Invisible is made known to the visible, tangible universe. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages, #NFDB
1423:O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self's mission and Self's power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!
Something thou cam'st to do from the Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world goes on
Because only half God's cosmic work is done.
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,
And immortality in the secret heart,
The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm,
The passion and the beauty of the Bride,
The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,
The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?
This too is Truth at the mystic fount of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#NFDB
1424:Life Is a Gift from God.
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.
Life, faculties, production--in other words, individuality, liberty, property -- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. ~ Fr d ric Bastiat,#NFDB
1425:Musk has talked about having more kids, and it’s on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing vis-à-vis the creator of Beavis and Butt-head. “There’s this point that Mike Judge makes in Idiocracy, which is like smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers,” Musk said. “Like, if it’s a negative Darwinian vector, then obviously that’s not a good thing. It should be at least neutral. But if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad, too. I mean, Europe, Japan, Russia, China are all headed for demographic implosion. And the fact of the matter is that basically the wealthier—basically wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of low birth rate. They all correlate with low birth rate. I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain—at least be a replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s probably not good. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
1426:Any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1427:I know plenty of people who find God most reliably in books, in buildings, and even in other people. I have found God in all of these places too, but the most reliable meeting place for me has always been creation. Since I first became aware of the Divine Presence in that lit-up field in Kansas, I have known where to go when my own flame is guttering. To lie with my back flat on the fragrant ground is to receive a transfusion of the same power that makes the green blade rise. To remember that I am dirt and to dirt I shall return is to be given my life back again, if only for one present moment at a time. Where other people see acreage, timber, soil, and river frontage, I see God's body, or at least as much of it as I am able to see. In the only wisdom I have at my disposal, the Creator does not live apart from creation but spans and suffuses it. When I take a breath, God's Holy Spirit enters me. When a cricket speaks to me, I talk back. Like everything else on earth, I am an embodied soul, who leaps to life when I recognize my kin. If this makes me a pagan, then I am a grateful one. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
1428:Now Christianity proposes a completely different account of how history comes to a climax and what precisely constitutes the new order of the ages—which helps to explain why so many of modernity’s avatars, from Diderot to Christopher Hitchens, have specially targeted Christianity. On the Christian reading, history reached its highpoint when a young first-century Jewish rabbi, having been put to death on a brutal Roman instrument of torture, was raised from the dead through the power of the God of Israel. The state-sponsored murder of Jesus, who had dared to speak and act in the name of Israel’s God, represented the world’s resistance to the Creator. It was the moment when cruelty, hatred, violence, and corruption—symbolized in the Bible as the watery chaos—spent itself on Jesus. The resurrection, therefore, showed forth the victory of the divine love over those dark powers. St. Paul can say, “I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God,” precisely because he lived on the far side of the resurrection. ~ Robert E Barron, #NFDB
1429:Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables, candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying, at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter, the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying, that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
1430:She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, - the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man - perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! ... ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1431:As humans, our territory is on land. If we were meant to control the skies, we would have been given wings, and if we were meant to control the seas and oceans, we would have been designed to breathe underwater. The Creator created for us many natural water sources: lakes, ponds, rivers, springs, and streams — so that we would not tamper with the seas or oceans. This is why there is salt in the them, so we do not drink from them, or bother the huge creatures he put there to control the food chain. The salt content found in huge bodies of water is extremely vital to the elevation and balancing of the earth. This can be explained through basic physics or metaphysics.
At the same time, wild creatures were also placed in jungles and forests to keep humans out of them. Plants are vital to purifying the atmosphere, and many wild animals rely on them as their food and medicine. Had the Creator not placed animals like tigers, wolves, bears, and other big creatures in untamed regions which are intended to remain inhabited, he knew that mankind would take over those areas — leaving nothing for the animals. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1432:Third, Alan Paton, in bearing witness to his thirteen-year-old son at confirmation time about this You beyond all the yous in Johannesburg, writes:
Do not pronounce judgment on the Infinite, nor suppose God to be like a bad Prime Minister,
Do not suppose him powerless, or if powerful malignant,
Do not address your mind to criticisms of the Creator, do not pretend to know his categories,
Do not take his universe in your hand, and point out its defects with condescension,
Do not think he is a greater potentate, a manner of President of the United Galaxies,
Do not think that because you know so few human beings that he is in a comparable though more favorable position.
Do not think it is absurd that he should know every sparrow, or the number of the hairs of your head,
Do not compare him with yourself, nor suppose your human love to be an example to shame him.
He is not greater than Plato or Lincoln, nor superior to Shakespeare and Beethoven,
He is their God, their powers and their gifts proceeded from him,
In infinite darkness they poured with their fingers over the first word of the ~ Walter Brueggemann,#NFDB
1433:When you wake up on Monday morning, don’t accept those negative thoughts that come knocking on your door, saying, It will be a hard day and a long week. Traffic will be bad. I have so much work to do. I just need to make it through the Monday morning blues. Don’t buy into those thoughts.
Instead, say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already answered the door and almighty God, the Creator of the universe, has sent me a hand delivery of joy. I know this will be a great day!”
Decide that for you, there are no Monday morning blues. Instead, choose the Monday morning dos by saying, “I do have a smile. I do have joy. I do have God’s favor. I do have victory.”
Yes, I know some days are more difficult than others. But if you program your mind in a positive way, you won’t have to drag through certain days just hoping to get to Friday so you can finally enjoy life.
Faith is always in the present. Your attitude should be: I’m excited to be alive at this moment. I’m excited to be breathing today. I’m excited about my family, my health, and my opportunities. I have plenty of reasons to be happy right now. ~ Joel Osteen,#NFDB
1434:Suicide during a state of temporary insanity,” is passed, have been caused by long and hopeless brooding on the “nothingness of the Universe” — which, if it were a true theory, would indeed make of Creation a bitter, nay, even a senseless jest. The cruel preachers of such a creed have much to answer for. The murderer who destroys human life for wicked passion and wantonness is less criminal than the proudly learned, yet egotistical, and therefore densely ignorant scientist, who, seeking to crush the soul by his feeble, narrow-minded arguments, and deny its imperishable nature, dares to spread his poisonous and corroding doctrines of despair through the world, draining existence of all its brightness, and striving to erect barriers of distrust between the creature and the Creator. No sin can be greater than this; for it is impossible to estimate the measure of evil that may thus be brought into otherwise innocent and happy lives. The attitude of devotion and faith is natural to Humanity, while nothing can be more UNnatural and disastrous to civilization, morality and law, than deliberate and determined Atheism. — AUTHOR.] ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
1435:How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other, is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, and how they value LOVE. And what each parent must teach their kids, are the valuable lessons they gained in life. A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment -- the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love -- so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator...and reflected back onto YOU. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1436:Industrial society will open the way to a new civilization only by restoring to the worker the
dignity of a creator; in other words, by making him apply his interest and his intelligence as much to the
work itself as to what it produces. The type of civilization that is inevitable will not be able
to separate, among classes as well as among individuals, the worker from the creator; any more than
artistic creation dreams of separating form and substance, history and the mind. In this way it will bestow
on everyone the dignity that rebellion affirms. It would be unjust, and moreover Utopian, for Shakespeare
to direct the shoemakers' union. But it would be equally disastrous for the shoemakers' union to ignore
Shakespeare. Shakespeare without the shoemaker serves as an excuse for tyranny. The shoemaker without
Shakespeare is absorbed by tyranny when he does not contribute to its propagation. Every act of creation,
by its mere existence, denies the world of master and slave. The appalling society of tyrants and slaves in
which we survive will find its death and transfiguration only on the level of creation. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1437:Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book----a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities "form" us properly. But all of that is turned upside down by the principles of a circle of trust: I applaud the theologian who said that "the idea of humans being born alienated from the Creator would seem an abominable concept." Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birhtright integrity. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
1438:The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work. In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the hidden likeness. When a simile takes us aback and persuades us together, when we find a juxtaposition in a picture both odd and intriguing, when a theory is at once fresh and convincing, we do not merely nod over someone else's work. We re-enact the creative act, and we ourselves make the discovery again...
...Reality is not an exhibit for man's inspection, labeled: "Do not touch." There are no appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part. We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat. ~ Jacob Bronowski,#NFDB
1439:I consider it an error in scientific communication that, most of the time, merely the polished and flawless results of natural research are displayed, as in an art show. And exhibit of the finished product alone has many drawbacks and dangers for both its creator and its users. The creator of the product will be only too ready to demonstrate perfection and flawlessness while concealing gaps, uncertainties and discordant contradictions of his insight into nature. He thus belittles the meaning of the real process of natural research. The user of the product will not appreciate the rigorous demands made on the natural scientist when the latter has to reveal and describe the secrets of nature in a practical way. He will never learn to think for himself and to cope by himself. Very few drivers have an accurate idea of the sum of human efforts, of the complicated thought processes and operations needed for manufacturing an automobile. Our world would be better off is the beneficiaries of work knew more about the process of work and the existence of the workers, if they did not pluck so thoughtlessly the fruits of labor performed by others. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
1440:When Nanabozho, the Anishinaabe Original Man, our teacher, part man, part manido, walked through the world, he took note of who was flourishing and who was not, of who was mindful of the Original Instructions and who was not. He was dismayed when he came upon villages where the gardens were not being tended, where the fishnets were not repaired and the children were not being taught the way to live. Instead of seeing piles of firewood and caches of corn, he found the people lying beneath maple trees with their mouths wide open, catching the thick, sweet syrup of the generous trees. They had become lazy and took for granted the gifts of the Creator. They did not do their ceremonies or care for one another. He knew his responsibility, so he went to the river and dipped up many buckets of water. He poured the water straight into the maple trees to dilute the syrup. Today, maple sap flows like a stream of water with only a trace of sweetness to remind the people both of possibility and of responsibility. And so it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.* * Adapted from oral tradition and Ritzenthaler and Ritzenthaler, 1983. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
1441: Did I not say to you, Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
Did I not say to you, Be not content with worldly forms, for I
am the fashioner of the tabernacle of your contentment?
Did I not say to you, I am the sea and you are a single fish;
go not to dry land, for I am your crystal sea?
Did I not say to you, Go not like birds to the snare; come, for
I am the power of flight and your wings and feet?
Did I not say to you, They will waylay you and make you
cold, for I am the fire and warmth and heat of your desire?
Did I not say to you, They will implant in you ugly qualities
so that you will forget that I am the source of purity to you?
Did I not say to you, Do not say from what direction the ser-
vants affairs come into order? I am the Creator without
directions.
If you are the lamp of the heart, know where the road is to the
house; and if you are godlike of attribute, know that I am your
Maser.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Did I Not Say To You
,#NFDB
1442:for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its
own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the
wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of
the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of
Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to
age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There
seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day
and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in
necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding
affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit.
The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible
world. “Material objects,” said a French philosopher, “are necessarily kinds of
scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve
an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must
have a spiritual and moral side. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
1443:EXTREME DESIGN Theologically, the space energy density demonstrates that for physical life to be possible at any time or place in the history of the universe the value of the mass density of the universe must be fine-tuned to within one part in 1060, and the value of the cosmological constant must be fine-tuned to within one part in 10120.{74} To put this in perspective, the best example of human engineering design that I am aware of is a gravity wave telescope capable of making measurements to within one part in 1023. This implies that the Creator at a minimum is ten trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more intelligent, knowledgeable, creative, and powerful than we humans. To word it another way, before this discovery the most profound design evidence scientists had uncovered in the cosmos was a characteristic that had to be fine-tuned to within one part in 1040. Thanks to this twenty-first century discovery, the evidence that God created and designed the universe for the benefit of life and human beings in particular has become 1080 times stronger (a hundred million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times stronger). ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1444:Did I Not Say To You
Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?”
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
Did I not say to you, “Be not content with worldly forms, for I
am the fashioner of the tabernacle of your contentment?”
Did I not say to you, “I am the sea and you are a single fish;
go not to dry land, for I am your crystal sea?”
Did I not say to you, “ Go not like birds to the snare; come, for
I am the power of flight and your wings and feet?”
Did I not say to you, “ They will waylay you and make you
cold, for I am the fire and warmth and heat of your desire?”
Did I not say to you, “ They will implant in you ugly qualities
so that you will forget that I am the source of purity to you?”
Did I not say to you, “Do not say from what direction the ser-
vant’s affairs come into order?” I am the Creator without
directions.
If you are the lamp of the heart, know where the road is to the
house; and if you are godlike of attribute, know that I am your
Maser. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1445:LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FATHER
My Lord, the Creator, has many names, but He is one and the same. God is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu. God is love. God is truth, and the true light of love sees no walls. Do not abandon him even when your days are gray; for He is only returning your call when you asked for strength. The Creator will talk to you only in daylight, through the rays of the sun, and He does not use words. Instead, he will reflect his dancing mirrors inside your head, and they will communicate to your heart and change your biochemistry to see with His eyes and think like Him. There is no such thing as prophets and seers; for all of mankind was created equal. However, if you are open to love all without fear, and to forgive all without hate, He will radiate His love through your heart and eyes in a way that your magnetic field becomes a reflection of His sunshine. Yes, God is near and God is here. His tests are many, but so are his blessings. Yes, faith is the flame to eliminate all fear. For if you are truly good, serve Him, and stand only by your conscience -- He will grant you whatever you ask of Him when you enter His heavenly garden. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1446:Even from the standpoint of the skeptic, a reasonable and candid search into the unknown, by the light of what is known, will guide the unbiased, intelligent reasoner in the direction of the truth. Yet it is evident that without a direct revelation of the plans and purposes of God, men could only approximate the truth, and arrive at indefinite conclusions. But let us for the moment lay aside the Bible, and look at things from the standpoint of reason alone.
He who can look into the sky with a telescope, or even with his natural eye alone, and see the immensity of creation, its symmetry, beauty, order, harmony and diversity, and yet doubt that the Creator of these is vastly his superior both in wisdom and power, or who can suppose for a moment that such order came by chance, without a Creator, has so far lost or ignored the faculty of reason as to be properly considered what the Bible terms him, a fool (one who ignores or lacks reason): 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' However it happened, at least that much of the Bible is true, as every reasonable mind must conclude; for it is a self-evident truth that effects must be produced by competent causes. ~ Charles Taze Russell,#NFDB
1447:I'll give them my number, too. And my brother Vishous made sure we have the best reception and service in the city. No dead zones. Unless you're around Lassiter, and that's more of a mental thing than anything about cellular networks."
"Um ... Lassiter?" Bitty said.
Rhage nodded. "Yeah, he's this pain in the ass--oh, shit--I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say ass around you, should I? Or shit. And all those other bad words." He poked himself in the head. "I gotta remember that, gotta remember that. Anyway, Lassiter's a fallen angel who we've somehow gotten stuck with. He's like gum on the bottom of your shoe. 'Cept he doesn't smell like strawberries, he hogs the T.V. remote, and on a regular basis. you think to yourself, Is that really the best the Creator could do with an immortal? The guy has the worst taste in television--I mean, the only saving grace is that he isn't addicted to Bonanza ...have you ever watched twelve straight hours of Saved by the Bell? Okay, fine, it was probably only seven, and it wasn't like I couldn't have left--my God, I tell you, though, it's a wonder I escaped with my ability to put my pants on one leg at a time still intact ... ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
1448:Now a Dark Age seemed to be passing. For twelve centuries, a small flame of knowledge had been kept smoldering in the monasteries; only now were their minds ready to be kindled. Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible – that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection. ~ Walter M Miller Jr, #NFDB
1449:If we are not applying the lessons to be gained from yesterday's history to address the problems of today - then why does any of it matter? Does Babe Ruth's baseball score from 1917 matter to us today? No. Does it matter that Gandhi bickered with his wife, or that Lincoln got into a brawl over Sally at a bar? No. Then why do tribal matches that happened thousands of years ago still mean so much to us today? To keep us from moving forward? To remind us of our racial differences and indifference? To revive tribal bitterness? And what father or God would want his children to keep a record of every argument they have ever had with each other - if there is nothing positive - only harm - to be gained by constantly reminding them? Would a wise man steer his followers to hold onto past hurts - or to squeeze them for every drop of wisdom that could be gained from them - then release them? Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only more hatred. Who wants that? And why? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1450:So in the library there are also books containing falsehoods. ...”
“Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the Creator is revealed. And by divine plan, too, there exist also books by wizards, the cabalas of the Jews, the fables of pagan poets, the lies of the infidels. It was the firm and holy conviction of those who founded the abbey and sustained it over the centuries that even in books of falsehood, to the eyes of the sage reader, a pale reflection of the divine wisdom can shine. And therefore the library is a vessel of these, too. But for this very reason, you understand, it cannot be visited by just anyone. And furthermore,” the abbot added, as if to apologize for the weakness of this last argument, “a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth. ~ Umberto Eco,#NFDB
1451:To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in God's house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of the Creator's body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Chapter 1, The Cycle of Society,#NFDB
1452:Now a Dark Age seemed to be passing. For twelve centuries, a small flame of knowledge had been kept smoldering in the monasteries; only now were there minds ready to be kindled. Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible—that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God's and not Man's, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection. ~ Walter M Miller Jr, #NFDB
1453:Religion means life. Religion means true service in love to man and God. Religion means what ought to be understood within the confines of the laws of God. Religion means discipline. Religion means uplifting the falling. Religion means caring for they that suffer in latent and understanding why Christ came to die for us. Religion means development and expansion within the scope of the laws of God that safeguards life and protects the creations of the Creator. Religion means understanding what ought to be understood. Religion means understanding trials and why trials come our way, the tenacity to endure to the end and the rightful use of comfort to please God. Religion never means destroying lives. If we understand religion well, we shall know that religion means true love without bitterness. If we understand religion well, we shall know that religion means humility and a true submissive to the will of God. . If we understand religion well, we shall know that religion simply means dos and don’ts according to the scope, purpose and the will of God for our lives and not according to our own convictions and how we think things should be. Excessive religiosity is the root cause of contentions in religion. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1454:Conditions can never improve for anyone until he desires Perfection and stops acknowledging a power opposed to God, or that there is something either in or outside of him that can prevent God’s Perfection from expressing. One’s very acknowledgment of a condition that is less than all of God is his deliberate choice of an imperfection, and that kind of choice is the fall of man. This is deliberate and intentional because he is free every moment to think whatsoever he chooses to think. Incidentally, it takes no more energy to think a thought or picture of Perfection than it does one of imperfection. “You are The Creator localized to design and create Perfection in your world and place in the Universe. If Perfection and Dominion are to be expressed, you must know and acknowledge only The Law of The One. The One exists and controls completely everywhere in the Universe. You are the Self-Consciousness of Life, The One Supreme ‘Presence’ of the Great Flame of Love and Light. You alone are the Chooser, the Decreer of the qualities and forms you wish to pour your Life into; for you are the only energizer of your world and all it contains. When you think or feel, part of your Life energy goes forth to sustain your creation. ~ Godfr Ray King, #NFDB
1455:Ultimately the reason for both the work of evangelism and the work of justice is not simply the relief of suffering, whether present or eternal. It is the restoration of God’s true image in the world, made known in the one true Image and Icon, Jesus Christ, and refracted and reflected in fruitful, multiplying image bearers set free by his death and resurrection to reclaim their true calling. Our mission is not primarily driven by a calculation of which suffering, present or eternal, we need to relieve most urgently; it is the fruit of glorious promises that call us into a new kingdom where the world is full of truth-bearing images. No image bearer can fully return to their true calling without finding themselves rescued and redeemed by the true Image Bearer, so no serious Christian witness in the world can fail to call people to put their trust in Jesus and the true God he makes known. And no image bearer can bear full witness to the glory of the Creator without the conditions for flourishing that are summed up in the rich biblical conception of justice. “He comes to make his blessings flow / far as the curse is found.” Because idolatry and injustice are the twin fruits of the curse, the work of evangelism and the work of justice are one. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1456:There is no such thing as fear until you allow it to enter your heart. If I told you what really happens to your soul when it is put to eternal sleep, you would not fear death; hence, you would never have fear — or fear Fear. But this is something I will share with you another day and time, in another story. We are taught to fear anything that can bring us closer to death — to keep us from taking huge leaps that involve risk. The only thing you should fear in this lifetime is not taking risks while you are living. I do not mean to go jump off a bridge. I mean, to go all out to reach your dreams, to dare to do things you typically would not do out of fear.
Pain has a threshold and so does death. Fear neither, and never fear what has no right to be feared. Fear only the Almighty, for he is the only one who can terminate a soul forever. No man can do that. No leader can do that. Only the Creator can do that. As long as the heart is good, a soul can live forever. The body is simply a coating for the soul, and when you die, your soul takes the soul of your heart along with it. Love strengthens both, while fear cripples both. Starting today, train your mind and heart to reject fear. Once you reject fear, you will become the perfect candidate to receive and reflect Truth. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1457:Sema is a pure Semitic reference that most probably has been interpreted later on in other cultures to be a 'third eye' as I am witnessing to the works of my friends such as Richard Cassaro and Gary Osborn. However, after establishing the link between Egypt and Mecca, I cannot evade observing the fact that the Shen sign could only have originally referred to 'protection' for that my additional proof lies in Quran where the position of such symbolism is clearly distinguished to be within the Eyes (Quran 52:48). Sema is the concept with which ancient Egyptians unequivocally aspired to Mecca's heritage. They used it to tighten their claim on divine civilization knowing the significance of the mother of all cities (i.e., Mecca). The Symbolism of Sema Tawy is a pure Semitic construct, it is so Semitic that the purest Semitic tongue (i.e., Arabic) and the one nearest to the Proto-Semitic language (according to western scholars themselves) has articulated itself unambiguously in the most influential Semitic book (i.e., Quran) saying: 'Their Sema(s) are on their faces from the trace of prostration'. What this demonstrates to us is that ancient Egypt confused the divine function of protecting the believer with that of the human function of worshipping the creator in its symbolism. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1458:Now Ravana said to himself,
"These are all petty weapons. I should really get down to proper business." And he invoked the one called "Maya"--a weapon which created illusions and confused the enemy. With proper incantations and worship, he sent off this weapon and it created an illusion of reviving all the armies and its leaders--Kumbakarna and Indrajit and the others--and bringing them back to the battlefield.
Presently Rama found all those who, he thought, were no more, coming on with battle cries and surrounding him. Every man in the enemy's army was again up in arms.They seemed to fall on Rama with victorious cries. This was very confusing and Rama asked Matali, whom he had by now revived,
"What is happening now? How are all these coming back? They were dead." Matali explained,
"In your original identity you are the creator of illusions in this universe. Please know that Ravana has created phantoms to confuse you. If you make up your mind, you can dispel them immediately."
Matali's explanation was a great help. Rama at once invoked a weapon called
"Gnana"--which means "wisdom" or "perception." This was a very rare weapon, and he sent it forth. And all the terrifying armies who seemed to have come on in such a great mass suddenly evaporated into thin air. ~ Valmiki,#NFDB
1459:To mortals, the water would be nothing more than a black swatch in the center of town. But to my eyes, oh, to my eyes, the lake was teeming with life and energy and vibrations, with flowing particles of light that pulsated along the surface of the water—and just under, too. Light that wasn’t really light. It was energy, I knew. The energy that powered this Earth, this universe, energy that flowed over everything and anything, constantly, unendingly, flowing, flowing. From where it came, I did not know, but I had my ideas and a single word appeared to me now as I sat there in my front seat. God. Or something close to God. The Creator, the Source, the All That Ever Was. And each light particle was, I suspected, a part of God, to be used and gathered and collected as we see fit, to be harnessed as we see fit. It is the driving force of creation. It is the thing that holds our world together, keeps its place in its orbit around the Sun, and the Sun in its place in our Galaxy, and our Galaxy in its place in the known Universe. It is creation and love, and it flows and is there for all of us to be used, or not used, to experience or to not experience. It is inspiration. It is love. It is life. It is health. It is great ideas. And it is always there, flowing, moving, adapting, growing. And ~ J R Rain, #NFDB
1460:The more doors you open to the mysteries, or sacred knowledge, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1461:From the fourteenth to the nineteenth century we have merely been expending the incalculable treasures discovered then and using up the great supply of energies gathered up to that time. Hence, modern history is the antithesis of the Middle Ages; man no longer wants to keep silent about himself: he hastens to express to others every slightest feeling and every new thought he may have through the medium of colors or sounds and, without fail, by means of the printing press. One might say that just as man studiously effaced himself up to the fourteenth century, so he becomes garrulous once he crosses into that century and all the succeeding ones. Not only what is wise, not only what is noble, but also what is ridiculous, stupid, and hideous in himself he couches in poetry and prose, sets to music, and would very much like, but he is unable, to express in marble and to fix within architectural lines. It is remarkable that architecture - that kind of impersonal art, that form of creation in which the creator is merged with his epoch and people, in which he does not rise above them, nor set apart his own I on their background - declines, as soon as we enter modern history, and not once during this period does it rise to the sublime or the beautiful.
("On Symbolists And Decadents") ~ Vasily Rozanov,#NFDB
1462:But still Adam holds his ground. The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I ate. He confesses his sin, but as he confesses, he takes to flight again. 'You have given me the woman, not I. I am not guilty, you are guilty.' The double light of creation and sin is exploited. 'The woman is surely your creature, it is your own work that has caused me to fall. Why have you brought forth an imperfect creation, and is it my fault?' So instead of surrendering Adam falls back on one art learned from the serpent, that of correcting the idea of God, of appealing from God the Creator to a better, a different God. That is, he flees again. The woman takes to flight with him and blames the serpent; that is, she really blames the Creator of the serpent. Adam has not surrendered, he has not confessed. He has appealed to his conscience, to his knowledge of good and evil, and out of this knowledge he has accused his Creator. He has not recognized the grace of the Creator which proves itself true by the fact that he calls Adam, by the fact that he does not let him flee. Adam sees this grace only as hate, as wrath, and this wrath kindles his own hate, his rebellion, his will to escape from God. Adam remains in the Fall. The Fall accelerates and becomes infinite. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1463:Bloom where you’re planted. Don’t make excuses. Don’t go through life thinking, I’ve got a disadvantage. I’ve got too many obstacles. I’m the wrong nationality. I come from the wrong family. I don’t have the connections. I could never get out of this environment.
You may not see how you will rise above, but God sees. He already has a way. Your destiny is not determined by how you were raised, or by your circumstances, or by how many odds are against you; your destiny is determined by the Creator of the universe. And if you take what God has given you and make the most of it, like Chi Chi did, God will open doors. He will give you good breaks, and He will place the right people across your path.
Get rid of your excuses. Quit waiting for things to change. Sow a seed and be happy right now. When you’re in difficult times, remember: Either God is doing a work in you or He’s using you to do a work in someone else. As long as you’re in faith, where you are is where you’re supposed to be.
Quit fighting to go somewhere else. Be the best you can be right where you are. If you make this decision to bloom where you’re planted, you pass the test. God promises He will pour out His blessings and favor. You’ll not only live happy, but also God will take you places you’ve never even dreamed of. ~ Joel Osteen,#NFDB
1464:The very forces of matter, in their blind advance, impose their own limits. That is why it is useless to
want to reverse the advance of technology. The age of the spinning-wheel is over and the dream of a
civilization of artisans is vain. The machine is bad only in the way that it is now employed. Its benefits
must be accepted even if its ravages are rejected. The truck, driven day and night, does not humiliate its
driver, who knows it inside out and treats it with affection and efficiency. The real and inhuman excess
lies in the division of labor. But by dint of this excess, a day comes when a machine capable of a hundred
operations, operated by one man, creates one sole object. This man, on a different scale, will have
partially rediscovered the power of creation which he possessed in the days of the artisan. The anonymous
producer then more nearly approaches the creator. It is not certain, naturally, that industrial excess will
immediately embark on this path. But it already demonstrates, by the way it functions, the necessity for
moderation and gives rise to reflections on the proper way to organize this moderation. Either this value
of limitation will be realized, or contemporary excesses will only find their principle and peace in
universal destruction. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1465:Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1466:I acknowledge my inadequacies as a spokesman. I acknowledge my many imperfections as a human being. And yet, as the Elders taught me, speaking out is my first duty, my first obligation to myself and to my people. To speak your mind and heart is Indian Way.
This book is not a plea or a justification. Neither is it an explanation or an apology for the events that overtook my life and many other lives in 1975 and made me unwittingly — and, yes, even unwillingly — a symbol, a focus for the sufferings of my people. But all of my people are suffering, so I'm in no way special in that regard.
You must understand.... I am ordinary. Painfully ordinary. This isn't modesty. This is fact. Maybe you're ordinary, too. If so, I honor your ordinariness, your humanness, your spirituality. I hope you will honor mine. That ordinariness is our bond, you and I. We are ordinary. We are human. The Creator made us this way. Imperfect. Inadequate. Ordinary.
Be thankful you weren't cursed with perfection. If you were perfect, there'd be nothing for you to achieve with your life. Imperfection is the source of every action. This is both our curse and our blessing as human beings. Our very imperfection makes a holy life possible.
We're not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be useful. ~ Leonard Peltier,#NFDB
1467:Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1468:Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility. People tend to organize themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept- rather than on the basis of language, skin color, location of birth, or any other criterion of tribalism. Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are benign, many of which are not. All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: "respect" for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses. While all faiths have been touched, here and there, by the spirit of ecumenicalism, the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed. Once a person believes- really believes- that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1469:And then I stand in front of God's Throne squinting up at His blazing glory and He says, 'You had your opportunities, boy. But did you listen? No. You went on heedlesly reading that garbagey magazine with pictures of naked girls in it. How juvenile! I gave geese more sense than that.'
Please, God. I'm only fourteen years old. A teenager. Have mercy. Be loving.
I was,' says God. 'For eons. And look at what it got me. You.'
God turns in disgust, just the way Daddy does. 'Sorry, but I'm the Creator. I take it personally. There are slugs and bugs and night-crawlers I feel better about having created - I mean, there are sparrows - I've got my eye on one right now. Is that sparrow consumed with lust? No. He mates in the spring and that's the end of it. Consider the lilies. Do they think about lily tits all the time? No. They look not and they lust not, and yet I say unto you that you will never be half as attractive as they. Therefore, I say unto you, think not about peckers and boobs and all that nonsense and your Heavenly Father will see that you meet a good woman and marry her, just as I do for the sparrow and walleye - yea verily, even the night-crawler and the eelpout. But I've told you this over and over for nineteen centuries. And now, verily, it's too late. Time's up, buster. Lights out! Game's over! ~ Garrison Keillor,#NFDB
1470:FORGIVENESS
The political score from four scores ago doesn't matter to anyone anymore. So why are we still keeping a tally of all the scores? If we are not applying the lessons to be gained from yesterday's history to address the problems of today - then why does any of it matter? Does Babe Ruth's baseball score from 1917 matter to us today? No. Does it matter that Gandhi bickered with his wife, or that Lincoln got into a brawl over Sally at a bar? No. Then why do tribal matches that happened thousands of years ago still mean so much to us today? To keep us from moving forward? To remind us of our racial differences and indifference? To revive tribal bitterness? And what father or God would want his children to keep a record of every argument they have ever had with each other - if there is nothing positive - only harm - to be gained by constantly reminding them? Would a wise man steer his followers to hold onto past hurts - or to squeeze them for every drop of wisdom that could be gained from them - then release them? Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only MORE hatred. Who wants that? And why? ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1471:ROM1.24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: ROM1.25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. ROM1.26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: ROM1.27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. ROM1.28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; ROM1.29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, ROM1.30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, ROM1.31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: ROM1.32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1472:There is a secret a person with great knowledge discovers along the path to truth. That is, the more doors you open to understanding the world, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit? ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1473:There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?
...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1474:They shared a meal together as was the custom of hospitality. As they ate, Noah and Emzara tried to explain to Terah and Amthelo about the call of Elohim on their son Abram’s life. They tried to explain that Elohim was the Creator God who required complete and exclusive loyalty to his kingship over all creation. They said that the gods were actually fallen Watchers, rebels from Elohim’s divine council in heaven, playing roles of deception to accomplish a diabolical war against God’s chosen seedline. And this little child was the seed through which an anointed king would one day come and achieve victory over the gods of the people, and bring back all the nations under the allotment of Elohim. Terah stopped them. He did not want to hear such blasphemy. He was too entrenched in his world of the pantheon, sorcery, magic, astrology and the occult. He started to physically tremble at the talk of an anointed coming king of the seedline. When Terah threatened to take Abram back with him if they continued in their proselytizing, they stopped. Noah concluded by saying, “We only love you and want to see you on the right side of the war that is coming.” “Coming?” said Terah. “You have really been cut off from civilization out here in these caves! The war is already here. And if what you say about this War of the Seed is true, then the General of this Elohim’s enemy is Nimrod of Babylon. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1475:The Firstborn Over All Creation (Col. 1:15–20) This passage includes a powerful defense of Christ’s deity. Apparently, a central component of the heresy that threatened the Colossian church was the denial of the deity of Christ. Ironically, throughout the centuries some cults have used the phrase “firstborn over all creation” (1:15) to undermine Christ’s deity. The assumption is that if Jesus was born at creation, then He is more like us than He is like God. The Greek word for firstborn, however, can refer to one who was born first chronologically, but it most often refers to preeminence in position or rank (Heb.1:6; Rom. 8:9). Firstborn in this context clearly means highest in rank, not first created (Ps. 89:27; Rev. 1:5) for several reasons: • Christ cannot be both “first begotten” and “only begotten” (see John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9); and, when the firstborn is one of a class, the class is in the plural form (1:18; Rom. 8:29), but “creation,” the class here, is in a singular form. • If Paul were teaching that Christ was a created being, he would be agreeing with the heresy that he was writing to refute. • It is impossible for Christ to be both created and the Creator of everything (1:16). Thus, Jesus is the firstborn in the sense that He has the preeminence (1:18) and that He possesses the right of inheritance “over all creation” (Heb. 1:2; Rev. 5:1–7, 13). ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1476:He left behind him five
or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation
on this verse in Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of
God floated upon the waters. With this verse he compares
three texts: the Arabic verse which says, The winds of God
36 Les Miserables
blew; Flavius Josephus who says, A wind from above was
precipitated upon the earth; and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase
of Onkelos, which renders it, A wind coming from
God blew upon the face of the waters. In another dissertation,
he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of
Ptolemais, great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and
establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be attributed
the divers little works published during the last century, under
the pseudonym of Barleycourt.
.........................Here is the note:—
‘Oh, you who are!
‘Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees
call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you
liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you
Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of
Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus,
Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God;
man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion,
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 37
and that is the most beautiful of all your names. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1477:There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. Hence the common divorce of opportunism from virtue and the resultant degeneration of human existence. Martyrdom is for saints, but the common people have their institutions, and these cannot be left to grow like lilies of the field; Peter keeps drawing his sword, as in the garden, to defend the creator and sustainer of the world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? How represent on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional form, or in a three-dimensional image a multi-dimensional meaning? How translate into terms of “yes” and “no” revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void? ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1478:It is never too late As people begin to learn the principles of Kabbalah, they often feel that they have done too many bad things in their lives to be able to transform and bond with the Creator. In fact, this is what they want to believe. It frees them from accepting the need for positive change. It allows them to abdicate the responsibility for transformation, which is nothing less than the true purpose of our lives. Recognizing this process is one of Kabbalah’s most profound psychological insights. It calls attention to the fact that apparent self-loathing is really just egotism with a reverse spin. The spark of the Creator is always within us, and it is always pure. If you take a penny and hold it up in front of your eye in just the right way, you can easily block out the sun. But is the penny bigger or more powerful than the sun just because it can hide the sun’s light? The penny does not extinguish the sun, but only conceals it. In the same way, our negative actions only conceal the Light within us—but we may begin to feel that the Light has gone out forever. No darkness that we bring upon ourselves, however, is greater than the Light of the Creator that is at our core. As long as we are alive, we have this divine Light within us, burning as brightly as on the day we were born. No matter how deeply hidden, the Light remains there waiting for us to reveal it. And it is never too late. Higher ~ Michael Berg, #NFDB
1479:But even if that were true, the key phrase “begin not hostilities” doesn’t necessarily mean what many Westerners assume or hope it means. The command to fight until “there prevail justice and faith in Allah” suggests there is an aspect to the warfare that is not purely defensive: Muslims must continue the war until Allah’s law prevails over the world, which implies a conflict without end. The passage concludes, “And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah” (2:193). Ibn Ishaq explains that this means that Muslims must fight against unbelievers “until God alone is worshipped.”11 Ibn Kathir also contends that the verse instructs Muslims to fight “so that the religion of Allah becomes dominant above all other religions.”12 Bulandshahri puts it in starker terms: “The worst of sins are Infidelity (Kufr) and Polytheism (shirk) which constitute rebellion against Allah, The Creator. To eradicate these, Muslims are required to wage war until there exists none of it in the world, and the only religion is that of Allah.”13 That bears repeating. “The worst of sins are Infidelity (Kufr) and Polytheism (shirk) which constitute rebellion against Allah, The Creator. To eradicate these, Muslims are required to wage war until there exists none of it in the world, and the only religion is that of Allah.” That’s an open-ended declaration of war against every non-Muslim, in all times and in all places. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
1480:The fact is that the Listeners are trying to work out precisely what it is that the Creator said when He made the universe.
The theory is quite straightforward.
Clearly, nothing that the Creator makes could ever be destroyed, which means that the echoes of those first syllables must still be around somewhere, bouncing and rebounding off all the matter in the cosmos but still audible to a really good listener.
Eons ago the Listeners found that ice and chance had carved this one valley into the perfect acoustic opposite of an echo valley, and had built their multic-hambered temple in the exact position that the one comfy chair always occupies in the home of a rabid hi-fi fanatic. Complex baffles caught and amplified the sound that was funnelled up the chilly valley, steering it ever inwards to the central chamber where, at any hour of the day or night, three monks always sat.
Listening.
There were certain problems caused by the fact that they didn't hear only the subtle echoes of the first words, but every other sound made on the Disc. In order to recognise the sound of the Words, they had to learn to recognise all other noises. This called for a certain talent, and a novice was only accepted for training if he could distinguish by sound alone, at a distance of a thousand yards, which side a dropped coin landed. He wasn;t actually accepted into the order until he could tell what colour it was. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1481:From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gives you life
Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.
And from seed to dust
There is ONE soul above all others --
That you must always show patience, respect, and trust
And this woman is your mother.
And when your soul departs your body
And your deeds are weighed against the feather
There is only one soul who can save yours
And this woman is your mother.
And when the heart of the universe
Asks her hair and mind,
Whether you were gentle and kind to her
Her heart will be forced to remain silent
And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,
Very much like the seaweed in the sea --
It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.
This woman whose heart has seen yours,
First before anybody else in the world,
And whose womb had opened the door
For your eyes to experience light and more --
Is your very own MOTHER.
So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,
Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish
How you treat her is the ultimate test.
If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way
With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.
And always remember,
That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,
Who sits on the throne of all existence,
Is exactly the same as in yours.
And her name is,
THE DIVINE MOTHER. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1482:[Tolstoy] denounced [many historians'] lamentable tendency to simplify. The experts stumble onto a battlefield, into a parliament or public square, and demand, "Where is he? Where is he?" "Where is who?" "The hero, of course! The leader, the creator, the great man!" And having found him, they promptly ignore all his peers and troops and advisors. They close their eyes and abstract their Napoleon from the mud and the smoke and the masses on either side, and marvel at how such a figure could possibly have prevailed in so many battles and commanded the destiny of an entire continent. "There was an eye to see in this man," wrote Thomas Carlyle about Napoleon in 1840, "a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he was such."
But Tolstoy saw differently. "Kings are the slaves of history," he declared. "The unconscious swarmlike life of mankind uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes." Kings and commanders and presidents did not interest Tolstoy. History, his history, looks elsewhere: it is the study of infinitely incremental, imperceptible change from one state of being (peace) to another (war).
The experts claimed that the decisions of exceptional men could explain all of history's great events. For the novelist, this belief was evidence of their failure to grasp the reality of an incremental change brought about by the multitude's infinitely small actions. ~ Daniel Tammet,#NFDB
1483:KINGDOM OF THE WOMB
From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gives you life
Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.
And from seed to dust
There is ONE soul above all others --
That you must always show patience, respect, and trust
And this woman is your mother.
And when your soul departs your body
And your deeds are weighed against the feather
There is only one soul who can save yours
And this woman is your mother.
And when the heart of the universe
Asks her hair and mind,
Whether you were gentle and kind to her
Her heart will be forced to remain silent
And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,
Very much like the seaweed in the sea --
It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.
This woman whose heart has seen yours,
First before anybody else in the world,
And whose womb had opened the door
For your eyes to experience light and more --
Is your very own MOTHER.
So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,
Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish
How you treat her is the ultimate test.
If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way
With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.
And always remember,
That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,
Who sits on the throne of all existence,
Is exactly the same as in yours.
And her name is,
THE DIVINE MOTHER. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1484:Sri Yukteswar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age. 4 The cycle is divided into an Ascending Arc and a Descending Arc, each of 12,000 years. Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called Kali, Dwapara, Treta, and Satya, corresponding to the Greek ideas of Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Golden Ages. My guru determined by various calculations that the last Kali Yuga or Iron Age, of the Ascending Arc, started about a.d. 500. The Iron Age, 1200 years in duration, is a span of materialism; it ended about a.d. 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments: the age of telegraphy, radio, airplanes, and other space-annihilators. The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in a.d. 4100; the age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators. During the 4800 years of Satya Yuga, final age in an Ascending Arc, the intelligence of man will be highly developed; he will work in harmony with the divine plan. A Descending Arc of 12,000 years, starting with a Descending Golden Age of 4800 years, then begins for the world (in a.d. 12,500); man gradually sinks into ignorance. These cycles are the eternal rounds of maya, the contrasts and relativities of the phenomenal universe. 5 Men, one by one, escape from creation’s prison of duality as they awaken to consciousness of their inseverable divine unity with the Creator. Master ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1485:Not everything in life is so black and white, but the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its keystone role in our religion seem to be exactly that. Either Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was, a prophet who, after seeing the Father and the Son, later beheld the angel Moroni, repeatedly heard counsel from Moroni's lips, and eventually received at his hands a set of ancient gold plates that he then translated by the gift and power of God, or else he did not. And if he did not, he would not be entitled to the reputation of New England folk hero or well-meaning young man or writer of remarkable fiction. No, nor would he be entitled to be considered a great teacher, a quintessential American religious leader, or the creator of great devotional literature. If he had lied about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he would certainly be none of these...
If Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon as a work of ancient origin, then I would move heaven and earth to meet the "real" nineteenth-century author. After one hundred and fifty years, no one can come up with a credible alternative candidate, but if the book were false, surely there must be someone willing to step forward-if no one else, at least the descendants of the "real" author-claiming credit for such a remarkable document and all that has transpired in its wake. After all, a writer that can move millions can make millions. Shouldn't someone have come forth then or now to cashier the whole phenomenon? ~ Jeffrey R Holland,#NFDB
1486:Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1487:God GOD, noun [Saxon god; German gott; Dutch god; Swedish and Danish gud; Gothic goth or guth; Pers. goda or choda; Hindoo, khoda, codam. As this word and good are written exactly alike in Saxon, it has been inferred that God was named from his goodness. But the corresponding words in most of the other languages, are not the same, and I believe no instance can be found of a name given to the Supreme Being from the attribute of goodness. It is probably an idea too remote from the rude conceptions of men in early ages. Except the word Jehovah, I have found the name of the Supreme Being to be usually taken from his supremacy or power, and to be equivalent to lord or ruler, from some root signifying to press or exert force. Now in the present case, we have evidence that this is the sense of this word, for in Persic goda is rendered dominus, possessor, princeps, as is a derivative of the same word. See Cast. Lex. Col. 231.] 1. The Supreme Being; Jehovah; the eternal and infinite spirit, the creator, and the sovereign of the universe. God is a spirit; and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4. 2. A false god; a heathen deity; an idol. Fear not the gods of the Amorites. Judges 6. 3. A prince; a ruler; a magistrate or judge; an angel. Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people. Exodus 22. Psalm 97. [Gods here is a bad translation.] 4. Any person or thing exalted too much in estimation, or deified and honored as the chief good. Whose god is their belly. Philippians 3. ~ Noah Webster, #NFDB
1488:There are three people you will be judged heavily on how you treat them in this lifetime. For the man, it is his mother for giving him life, his wife for showing him life, and his daughter for teaching her all that he learned from life. For the woman, it her father for giving her the seed of life, her husband for showing her life, and her son for teaching him all that he has learned from life. How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other, is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, and how they value LOVE. And what each parent must teach their kids, are the valuable lessons they gained in life. A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment -- the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love -- so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator and reflected back onto YOU. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1489:From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gives you life
Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.
And from seed to dust
There is ONE soul above all others --
That you must always show patience, respect, and trust
And this woman is your mother.
And when your soul departs your body
And your deeds are weighed against the feather
There is only one soul who can save yours
And this woman is your mother.
And when the heart of the universe
Asks her hair and mind,
Whether you were gentle and kind to her
Her heart will be forced to remain silent
And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,
Very much like the seaweed in the sea --
It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.
This woman whose heart has seen yours,
First before anybody else in the world,
And whose womb had opened the door
For your eyes to experience light and more --
Is your very own MOTHER.
So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,
Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish
How you treat her is the ultimate test.
If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way
With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.
And always remember,
That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,
Who sits on the throne of all existence,
Is exactly the same as in yours.
And her name is,
THE DIVINE MOTHER.
KINGDOM OF THE WOMB by Suzy Kassem
THE SPRING FOR WISDOM, 1993 ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1490:Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty of masters who would destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king of Egypt that no nation could enslave another, without also enslaving itself; that it was impossible to put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without putting manacles upon the brain of the master. Why did he not tell him that a nation founded upon slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and to liberty, he resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose we wished to make a treaty with a barbarous nation, and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, that when he came into the presence of the savage monarch, he should cast down an umbrella or a walking stick, which would change into a lizard or a turtle; what would we think? Would we not regard such a performance as beneath the dignity even of a president? And what would be our feelings if the savage king sent for his sorcerers and had them perform the same feat? If such things would appear puerile and foolish in the president of a great republic, what shall be said when they were resorted to by the creator of all worlds? How small, how contemptible such a God appears! ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
1491:The Supreme Mind
'O God! we acknowledge Thee to be the Supreme Mind
Who hast disposed and ordered the Universe;
Who gave it life and motion at the first,
And still continuest to guide and regulate it.
From Thee was its primal impulsion;
Thou didst bestow on thine Emanated Spirit of Light,
Divine wisdom and various power
To stablish and enforce its transcendent orbits.
Thou art the Inconceivable Energy
Which in the beginning didst cause all things;
Of whom shall no created being ever know
A millionth part of thy divine properties.
But the Spirit was the Spirit of the Universe-
Sacred, Holy, Generating Nature;
Which, obedient unto thy will,
Preserves and reproduces all that is in the Kosmos.
Nothing is superior to the Spirit
But Thou, alone, O God! who art the Creator and Lord;
Thou madest the Spirit to be thy servitor,
But this thy Spirit transcends all other creatures;
This is the Spirit which is in the highest heavens;
Whose influence permeates all that lives;
As a beautiful Flower diffuses fragrances
But is not diminished in aught thereby.
For all divine essences are the same,
Differing only in their degree and power and beauty;
But in no wise differing in their principle,
Which is the fiery essence of God himself.
Such is the animating flame of every existence
Being in God, purely perfect;
But in all other living things
Only capable of being made perfect.' ~ Dr E.V. Kenealy, The Book of Fo.
The Supreme Mind. from path of regeneration,#NFDB
1492:The Earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. The country was made with no lines of demarcation, and it's no man's business to divide it. I see the whites all over the country gaining wealth, and I see the desire to give us lands which are worthless.
The Earth and myself are of one mind. Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the creator, I might he induced to think you had a right to dispose of me.
Do not misunderstand me; but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to return to yours.
Brother, we have listened to your talk coming from our father, the Great White Chief in Washington, and my people have called upon me to reply to you.
The winds which pass through these aged pines we hear the moaning of departed ghosts, and if the voice of our people could have been heard, that act would never have been done. But alas though they stood around they could neither be seen nor heard. Their tears fell like drops of rain.
I hear my voice in the depths of the forest but no answering voice comes back to me. All is silent around me. My words must therefore be few. I can now say no more. He is silent for he has nothing to answer when the sun goes down. ~ Chief Joseph,#NFDB
1493:If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own feet, he or she may be a lifesaver, but the relationship is not one of love. Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. Anyone who tries to be alone with himself will discover how difficult it is. He will begin to feel restless, fidgety, or even to sense considerable anxiety. He will be prone to rationalize his unwillingness to go on with this practice by thinking that it has no value, is just silly, that it takes too much time, and so on, and so on. He will also observe that all sorts of thoughts come to mind which take possession of him. He will find himself thinking about his plans for later in the day, or about some difficulty in a job he has to do, or where to go in the evening, or about any number of things that fill his mind – rather than permitting it to empty itself. It would be helpful to practice a few very simple exercises, as for instance, to sit in a relaxed position (neither slouching, nor rigid), to close one’s eyes, and to try to see a white screen in front of one’s eyes, and to try to remove all interfering pictures and thoughts, then to try to follow one’s breathing; not to think about it, nor force it, but to follow it – and in doing so to sense it; furthermore to try to have a sense of 'I'; I = myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world. One should, at least, do such a concentration exercise every morning for twenty minutes (and if possible longer) and every evening before going to bed. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1494:God’s Anger at Sin 18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.* 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. 21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. 27 And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1495:But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes. *** The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes. *** The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1496:Hail to thee, O teacher of Brahmins!” Onesikritos said after seeking out Dandamis in his forest retreat. “The son of the mighty God Zeus, being Alexander who is the Sovereign Lord of all men, asks you to go to him. If you comply, he will reward you with great gifts; if you refuse, he will cut off your head!” The yogi received calmly this fairly compulsive invitation, and “did not so much as lift up his head from his couch of leaves.” “I also am a son of Zeus, if Alexander be such,” he commented. “I want nothing that is Alexander’s, for I am content with what I have, while I see that he wanders with his men over sea and land for no advantage, and is never coming to an end of his wanderings. “Go and tell Alexander that God the Supreme King is never the Author of insolent wrong, but is the Creator of light, of peace, of life, of water, of the body of man and of souls; He receives all men when death sets them free, being then in no way subject to evil disease. He alone is the God of my homage, who abhors slaughter and instigates no wars. “Alexander is no god, since he must taste of death,” continued the sage in quiet scorn. “How can such as he be the world’s master, when he has not yet seated himself on a throne of inner universal dominion? Neither as yet has he entered living into Hades, nor does he even know the course of the sun over the vast regions of this earth. Most nations have not so much as heard his name!” After this chastisement—surely the most caustic ever sent to assault the ears of the “Lord of the World”—the sage added ironically, ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1497:HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator’s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous. HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves shall be despised. HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion. HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another—plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid. HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass. HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differentness. HELPED are those who know. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1498:I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God. I want you to live. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is with it, not above or behind it. This is impossible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity - my activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1499:Ghazal 22 By Attar
Every heart that annihilates its self
becomes worthy of the King's confidence.
The flower that doesn't assume the heart's hue
will be afflicted by its own muddy essence.
If the heart and the clay are attached today
won't they separate from each other tomorrow?
Your body's clay will all turn to atoms;
each atom will turn into a spirit bird.
If the heart remains in the clay of the self
how will it abandon the grave's confinement?
The heart is a mirror with a tarnished back.
If cleaned it will reveal its countenance.
Clay becomes heart just as back turns to face;
when darkness is gone all shall illuminate.
Every time that back and front integrate
the mirror immerses in magnificence.
It's not possible for any creature
to turn God-like or become the Creator.
But a truthful thing could be said
if the essence and quality of the self fade.
Every time one becomes annihilated from these two
he will subsist in the essence of Oneness.
The Presence in speaking of this state says:
A person does not become Us, but becomes of Us.
When will a thing turn into the Existent?
When will the temporal become Eternal?
28
If you are searching for this unknown life
make yourself acquainted with these tasks.
Sit in the shadow of a master, for the blind are
better off with walking sticks.
Become a straw and upset the mountain
as the master changes you like amber.
If you do not do as Attar has told you
every sorrow you suffer will turn to dust.
~ Ali Alizadeh,#NFDB
1500:NEGLECT AND YOU WILL BE NEGLECTED
There are three people you will be judged heavily on how you treat them in this lifetime. For the man, it is his mother for giving him life, his wife for showing him life, and his daughter for teaching her all that he has learned from life. For the woman, it is her father for giving her the seed of life, her husband for showing her life, and her son for teaching him all that she has learned from life. How a person treats their parents is how they show their gratefulness to the Creator for life. How a husband and wife treat each other, is how they show the Creator how well they do with this gift of life, how well they value and honor the sacred oath they made before him, and how well they understand the Lord and his religion, LOVE. A father must be good to his wife and daughter, because from watching this treatment — the son will learn how to treat all women, and his daughter will know what a good man is supposed to act like. And a mother must always remain morally good and faithful to her husband, be attentive to all her children, and be filled with patience, forgiveness, kind words, compassion and love — so her children are raised to respect all mothers, and know what a good woman is supposed to act like. If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator — and reflected back onto YOU. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
62 Integral Yoga
36 Christianity
26 Poetry
24 Philosophy
23 Yoga
23 Kabbalah
14 Occultism
12 Psychology
12 Hinduism
4 Sufism
4 Baha i Faith
2 Theosophy
2 Integral Theory
1 Thelema
1 Mysticism
1 Fiction
1 Alchemy
60 Sri Aurobindo
25 Saint Augustine of Hippo
25 Nolini Kanta Gupta
23 The Mother
23 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
14 Sri Ramakrishna
12 Carl Jung
11 Vyasa
11 Satprem
8 Plotinus
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Swami Krishnananda
6 Aldous Huxley
5 Friedrich Schiller
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
4 Plato
4 Baha u llah
3 Swami Vivekananda
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Paul Richard
3 Jordan Peterson
3 George Van Vrekhem
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Robert Browning
2 Patanjali
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Kabir
2 James George Frazer
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Dadu Dayal
2 Baba Sheikh Farid
2 Anonymous
2 Alice Bailey
2 Aleister Crowley
23 General Principles of Kabbalah
18 The Life Divine
18 City of God
13 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
11 Vishnu Purana
9 The Synthesis Of Yoga
8 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
7 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
7 Talks
7 Essays On The Gita
6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Perennial Philosophy
5 Schiller - Poems
5 Savitri
5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
4 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
4 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 The Human Cycle
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
3 Questions And Answers 1953
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Letters On Yoga I
3 Kena and Other Upanishads
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Aion
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 The Golden Bough
2 The Book of Certitude
2 The Bible
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 Collected Poems
2 Browning - Poems
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The whole symbolic world is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-absorbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mistress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, The Creator. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still for those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — Atman — Brahman". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
Rani Rasmani spent a fortune for the construction of the temple garden and another fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
delightful to The Creator.
The moral of this chapter is, therefore, and exposition
--
calculated to rob The Creator of his cruel sport.
NOTE
--
universe is a whim of The Creator.
[151]
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is The Creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all
Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Why has The Creator made this world and human
beings? Does He expect something of us?
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Narayana: another name of Vishnu, one of the gods of the Hindu trinity. He watches over the creation, whereas Brahma is The Creator and Shiva the destroyer.
Rakshasa: demon of the vital plane, as opposed to an asura, a demon of the mental world.
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way the world is now physically organized, with the difference and specialization in the forms, in sexes, encourages a kind of opposition between the two poles, the union of which results in creation. So, naturally, each pole has enormous difficulty understanding the other (although it thinks and believes it does), especially understanding the pole I place underneath (gesture signifying the basis of the world), which is the effectively creative pole, that is to say, what is expressed by woman. She feels very well that without this (gesture above) the full understanding isnt there; but this, which is above, doesnt AT ALL understand the creative power of that which is belowit knows it in principle, but doesnt understand it. And there is a lack of adaptation, a sort of conflict, which shouldnt exist. It never existedneverbetween Sri Aurobindo and me, but I could see it didnt exist because he had adopted the attitude of complete surrender to the eternal Mother (the stage, in the creation, of complete surrender). I would see it, and it embarrassed me! It embarrassed me, I thought, But why does he think he has to do that (laughing), as if I couldnt understand! On the contrary, I thirst for the other attitude for identifying myself this way instead of that way (Mother presses her fist upward against her hand above): for identifying myself from below upward instead of from above downward. It was an aspiration, which has been there almost for eternities for the universal creative Force to identify itself with The Creator. And to identify itself not through the descent of The Creator, but through the ascent of the Force the conscious ascent. But Sri Aurobindo willed it that way, so it was that way and then I was very busy with my work. For the thirty years we lived together, it went on that way, perfectly smoothly; and I kept my aspiration quiet because I knew that it was his will. But since he left and I was obliged to do his work, so to speak, things have changed. But I didnt in the least want The Creator, because of my taking up the work, to be obliged to adapt himself to the creative Force (that wont do at all!), and my whole aspiration has been for the creative Force to consciously BECOME The Creator. Its becoming increasingly that way. And at the last meeting [with Sri Aurobindo], for a time (not the whole time, but some time), it was that way. Then I understood; it made me understand the play of all the forces in the two elements the two polesand how they could be joined, through what process that opposition could disappear so that the total Being might exist.
Were on the way. And its growing clearer and clearer. It will be tremendously interesting. But thats for later on.
0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because, according to theogonies, the gods have remained in contact with their Origin and they feel themselves to be the representation of the Origin, as in the Indian theogony in which they say that Shiva is the representative of the SupremeBrahma, The Creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva, the transformer and all three are conscious representatives of the Supreme, but partial ones.
Its perfectly obvious that those are only manners of speaking. There are indeed entities, they do exist, but its only a way of telling the story; in one way or another, its the same thing. Metaphysics is also one way of telling the story. And one isnt truer than the other.
0 1967-12-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Laughing) We could call it a mothers way of looking at her progeny, or The Creators way of looking at his creation! Very odd. You see, weve always been given the image of a smug and self-satisfied God, who says, Excellent. And here (laughing) its My! my!
So there.
0 1968-03-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came in the wake of a sentence someone had written (I forget who, some writer or another), which said (I am adapting it), When one sees how humorous the creation is, one is certain that The Creator must be smiling. With that sentence, I saw how relative the clothing is in the human consciousness there is no absolute, no absolute expression, the expression is always relative, and the impression it leaves is relative to the individual perceiving it.
I am trying to express it, but it was a concrete experience: the relativity of the mental clothing on the action of the higher Consciousness.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I forget who it was, I forget if it was a Russian or an Englishman, but he was well known: The Creator of materialism in the world (I dont remember who it was). And you know what he said? He said (I forget in what language), I thank God for having made me an atheist-for having created me an atheist!
I found that charming. I read it in English: Thank God, he made me an atheist!
0 1970-07-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
May God keep you many more years in the affection of your countless friendswho all need your advice and presence to purify their being and let it grow to the superhuman stature willed by The Creator.
Permit me, Mother, to express again my admiration, my attachment, and my immense desire to be near you as soon as possible.
0 1971-12-25, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its effect on us, the sensation it produces in us depends exclusively on the position of our consciousness. There is the consciousness of being in oneself or being in the whole (being in the whole is already a bit better than being egoistically oneself, and it has its advantages and disadvantages, but its not the truth), the Truth is the Divine as totalitytotality in time and totality in space. And that consciousness, the body CAN have, because this body had it (momentarily, for a few moments), and while it has it, everything is so you see, its not joy, its not pleasure, its not happiness, nothing of all that a sort of blissful peace and luminous and creative. Magnificent. Only, it comes and goes, comes and goes. And when you go out of it, you have the impression of falling into a horrible pitour ordinary consciousness (I mean the ordinary human consciousness) is a horrible pit. But we also know why it had to be momentarily that way, for it was necessary in order to go from this to that: everything that happens is necessary for the full development of the goal of creation. You could say (we could word-paint): the goal of creation is for the creature to become conscious as The Creator. There you are.
Its word-painting, but its in that direction.
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The imperatives of The Creator Self
Obeyed by unknowing earth, by conscious heaven;
02.12 - Mysticism in Bengali Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Bengali poetry was born some time towards the end of an era of decline in the Indian consciousness, almost towards the close of what is called the Buddhist period, but it was born with a veritable crown on its head. For it was sheer mystic poetry, mystic in substance, mystic in manner and expression. The poets were themselves mystics, that is to say spiritual seekers, sadhaks they were called Siddhas or Siddhacharyas. They told of their spiritual, rather occult experiences in an occult or oblique manner, the very manner of the ancient Vedic Rishis, in figures and symbols and similes. It was a form of beauty, not merely of truthof abstract metaphysical truth that rose all on a sudden, as it were, out of an enveloping darkness. It shone for a time and then faded slowly, perhaps spread itself out in the common consciousness of the people and continued to exist as a backwash in popular songs and fables and proverbs. But it was there and came up again a few centuries later and the crest is seen once more in a more elevated, polished and dignified form with a content of mental illumination. I am referring to Chandidasa, who was also a sadhak poet and is usually known as the father of Bengali poetry, being The Creator of modern Bengali poetry. He flourished somewhere in the fourteenth century. That wave too subsided and retired into the background, leaving in interregnum again of a century or more till it showed itself once more in another volume of mystic poetry in the hands of a new type of spiritual practitioners. They were the Yogis and Fakirs, and although of a popular type, yet possessing nuggets of gold in their utterances, and they formed a large family. This almost synchronised with the establishment and consolidation of the Western Power, with its intellectual and rational enlightenment, in India. The cultivation and superimposition of this Western or secular light forced the native vein of mysticism underground; it was necessary and useful, for it added an element which was missing before; a new synthesis came up in a crest with Tagore. It was a neo-mysticism, intellectual, philosophical, broad-based, self-conscious. Recently however we have been going on the downward slope, and many, if not the majority among us, have been pointing at mysticism and shouting: "Out, damned spot!" But perhaps we have struck the rock-bottom and are wheeling round.
For in the present epoch we are rising on a new crest and everywhere, in all literatures, signs are not lacking of a supremely significant spiritual poetry being born among us.
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the older order, however, a kindlier treatment was meted out to this class, this class of The Creators of values. They had patrons who looked after their physical well-being. They had the necessary freedom and leisure to follow their own bent and urge of creativity. Kings and princes, the court and the nobility, in spite of all the evils ascribed to them, and often very justly, have nevertheless been the nursery of art and culture, of all the art and culture of the ancient times. One remembers Shakespeare reading or enacting his drama before the Great Queen, or the poignant scene of Leonardo dying in the arms of Francis the First. Those were the truly great classical ages, and art or man's creative genius hardly ever rose to that height ever since. The downward curve started with the advent and growth of the bourgeoisie when the artist or the creative genius lost their supporters and had to earn their own living by the sweat of their brow. Indeed the greatest tragedies of frustration because of want and privation, occur, not as much among the "lowest" classes who are usually considered as the poorest and the most miserable in society, but in that section from where come the intellectuals, "men of light and leading," to use the epithet they are honoured with. For very few of this group are free to follow their inner trend and urge, but have either to coerce and suppress them or stultify them in the service of lesser alien duties, which mean "forced labour." The punishment for refusing to be drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in.
It is one of the great illusionsor perhaps a show plank for propagandato think or say that the so-called poorer classes are the poorest and the most miserable. It is not so in fact. Really poor are those who have a standard of life commensurate with their inner nature and consciousnessof beauty and orderliness and material sufficiency and yet their actual status and function in society do not provide them with the necessary where-withals and resources. No amount of philanthropic sentimentalising can suppress or wipe off the fact that the poor do not feel the pinch of poverty so much as do those who are poor and yet are to live and move as not poor. It all depends upon one's standard. One is truly rich or poor not in proportion- to one's income, but" in accordance with one's needs and the means to meet them. And all do not have the same needs and requirements. This does not mean that the needs of the princes, the aristocrats, the magnates are greater than those of the mere commoner. No, it means that there are people, there is a section of humanity found more or less in all these classes, but mostly in less fortunate classes, whose needs are intrinsically greater and they require preferential treatment. There should be none poor or miserable in society, well and good. But this should not mean that all the economic resources of the society must be requisitioned only to enrichto pamper the poor. For there is a pampering possible in this matter. We know the nouveaux riches, the parvenus and the kind of life they lead with their fair share boldly seized. A levelling, a formal equalisation of the economic status, although it may mean uplift in certain cases, may involve gross injustice to others. The ideal is not equal distribution but rational distribution of wealth, and that distribution should not depend upon any material function, but upon psychological demands. Is this bourgeois economics? Even if it is so, the truth has to be faced and recognised. You can call truth by the name bourgeois and hang it, but it will revive all the same, like the Phoenix out of the ashes.
--
In the old Indian social organisation there was at the basis such a psychological pattern and that must have been the reason why the structure lasted through millenniums. It was a hierarchical system but based upon living psychological forces. Each group or section or class in it had inevitably its appropriate function and an assured economic status. The Four Orders the Brahmin (those whose pursuit was knowledgeacquiring and giving knowledge), the Kshattriya (the fighters, whose business it was to give physical protection), the Vaishya (traders and farmers who were in charge of the wealth of the society, its production and distribution) and the Sudra (servants and mere labourers )are a natural division or stratification of the social body based upon the nature and function of its different members. In the original and essential pattern there is no sinister mark of inferiority branded upon what are usually termed as the lower orders, especially the lowest order. If some are considered higher and are honoured and respected as such, it meant simply that the functions and qualities they stand for constitute in some way higher values, it did not mean that the others have no value or are to be spurned or neglected. The brain must be given a higher place than the stomach, although all its support and nourishment come from there. Hierarchy means, in modern terms, that the essential services must pass first, should have certain priorities. And according to the older view-point, the Brahmin, being the emblem and repository of knowledge, was considered as the head of the social body. He is the fount and origin of a culture, The Creator of a civilisation; the others protect, nourish and serve, although all are equally necessary for the common welfare.
Fundamentally all human society is built upon this pattern which is psychological and which seems to be Nature's own life-plan. There is always this fourfold stratification or classification of members in any collective human grouping: the Intellectual (taken in the broadest sense) or the Intelligentsia, the Military, the Trader and the Labourer. In the earlier civilisationswhen civilisation was being formedespecially in the East, it ,was the first class that took precedence over the rest and was especially honoured; for it is they who give the tone and temper and frame of life in the society. In later epochs, in the mediaeval age for example, the age of conquerors and conquistadors, and of Digvijaya, man as the warrior, the Kshattriya, the Samurai or the Chivalry was given the place of honour. Next came the age of traders and merchants, and the industrial age with the invention of machines. Today the labourer is rising in his turn to take the prime place.
03.02 - The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The voice that chants to The Creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
03.09 - Art and Katharsis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
even if they make us sad do not depress the soul; it is a divine sadness fraught with a profound calm and a strange poignant sweetness of secret delight. The rhythm and the sound and the suggestions so insinuate themselves into our nerve and blood that these seem to be sublimatedas if by a process of oxygenationto a finer substance, a purer and more limpid and vibrant valency. A consciousness opens in our very flesh and marrow that enables us to pierce the veil of things and pass beyond and understandsee and experience the why and the how and the whither of it all. It is a consciousness cosmic in its purview and disposition, which even like The Creator could contemplate all and declare it all as good. Indeed, this is the Good which Art at its highest seeks to envisage and embody the summum bonum that accompanies a summit consciousness. It is idle to say that all or most poets have this revelatory vision of the SeerRishi but a poet is a poet in so far as he is capable of this vision; otherwise he remains more or less either a moralist or a mere sthete.
Whatever is ugly and gross, all the ills and evils of life that is to say, what appears as such to our external mind and senseswhen they have passed through the crucible of the poet's consciousness undergoes a sea-change and puts on an otherworldly beauty and value. We know of the alchemy of poetic transformation that was so characteristic of Wordsworth's manner and to which the poet was never tired of referring, how the physical and brute natureeven a most insignificant and meaningless and unshapely object in it attains a spiritual sense and beauty when the poet takes it up and treasures it in his tranquil and luminous and in-gathered consciousness, his "inward eye". A crude feeling, a raw passion, a tumult of the senses, in the same way, sifted through the poetic perception, becomes something that opens magic casements, glimpses the silence of the farthest Hebrides, wafts us into the bliss of the invisible and the beyond.
04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Veda speaks of Indra who became later on the king of the gods. And Zeus too occupies the same place in Greek Pantheon. Indra is, as has been pointed out by Sri Aurobindo, the Divine Mind, the leader of thought-gods (Maruts), The Creator of perfect forms, in which to clo the our truth-realisations in life. The later traditional Indra in India and the Greek Zeus seem to be formulations on a lower level of the original archetypal Indra, where the consciousness was more mentalised, intellectualised, made more rational, sense-bound, external, pragmatic. The legend of Athena being born straight out of the head of Zeus is a pointer as to the nature and character of the gods. The Roman name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind.
The Greek Mind, as I said, is the bridge thrown across the gulf existing between the spiritual, the occult, the intuitive and the sensuous, the physical, the material. Since the arrival of the Hellenes a highway has been built up, a metalled macada-mised road connecting these two levels of human experience and there is possible now a free and open communication from the one to the other. We need not speak any more of God and the gods and the divine principles indirectly through symbols and similes, but in mental terms which are closer to our normal understanding and we can also utilise the form of our intellection and reasoning to represent and capture something of what lies beyond intellect and reason.
05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There have been religions, approaches to the Divine, which did not believe in the divinity of man, the Chaldean line, the Semitic, for example. According to these, The Creator and the created are separate in nature and being; to call anything created as God himself is blasphemy. The ancient Egyptian, the Hebrew or the Muslim place God high in Paradise, and, in their view, man can be only his servant or slave, his worker or warrior. Man is too small and too earthly to be ever identified with God: he can only be a worshipper. Man can love God, at the most, as his Beloved. But this devotion is for something afar, like the desire of the moth for the star. And to equate the two is to confuse realities. Man as worshipper and devotee can attain certain divine qualities, but limited and modified and always humanized to a large extent. And God can never become man. He sends down his representative, his vicar, prophet or apostle who acts for him and in and through whom He acts, but He himself does not come down and put on the form or flesh. The universe is Gods handiwork and testifies to his miracle and glory; but the universe is not God. Between the watch and the watchmaker there is always a hiatus and an incommensurability.
But can we say, I am born of God, and yet I am not God? So the Indian boldly declares, all this is the supreme Divine, there is nothing else than the Divinesarvam khalvidam brahma I am He, Thou are That, or again, that which is in me and the conscious being which is there in the Sun are one and the same thing. God has created man and the world, He is in man and in the world, He has become and is man and the world. Not only so. Not only does God become the clod of earth by reducing his potentialto zero, so to say; but He descends often enough in his own being and consciousness here below, assuming a human form for a special work and a special purpose. This is the Indian conception of Avatarhood.
05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is one concept in Whitehead which seems rather strange to us; it is surely a product of the brain-mind. God, according to him, is not The Creator: he is only the Redeemer, he is a shaper but not the source and origin of things. That is because he thinks that if God is made The Creator of the world, he would be held responsible for the evil there. This difficulty comes when one thinks of God too much in the popular anthropomorphic way, like someone seated above the world and passing judgment upon a world which is not his doing. God is perhaps a lover of the world, but not its Mastera certain Christian outlook says. According to Sri Aurobindo, God is a triple reality in his transcendental, cosmic and individual aspect. In creating the world, God creates, that is to say, manifests himself. And Evil is an evolute in the process of God's self-creation through self-limitation: it proceeds to self-annihilation and even self-transmutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature.
To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle Age, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered only as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify and reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real spiritual experiences or revelations); but the New Illumination came and philosophy declared her autonomy, only that autonomy did not last long. For today in Europe, Philosophy has become the handmaid of Science. It was natural, since Reason is not a self-sufficient faculty, it is mediatory and must be ancillary either to something above it 'or something below iteither to Revelation or to sense-perception.
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The world's dread teacher, The Creator, pain.
Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;
07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Was The Creator and the lord of all.
Mind was a single innumerable look
07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of insects is the outcome of The Creators of the vital world. That is why when you see the insects under a microscope they take on appearances that are absolutely diabolical. Enlarged on a screen they look like veritable monsters, so terrifying they are. Microscopic monsters they are. So it is said, beings of the vital world thought of amusing themselves and created these impossible beasts making human existence uncomfortable.
You can of course ask how these intermediaries themselves came into being, not out of the Divine? Intermediaries come out of other still higher and higher intermediaries till the chain reaches the Supreme. Originally, that is to say, if you trace back to the original source, there is there, of course, only the Divine. Then how has the deformation come in? I explained to you once that if you do not remain one with the Divine, under his direct influence, do not follow the movement of creation or expansion exactly as the Divine wills, this rupture of contact is sufficient to bring about the greatest evil of all, division. Even the most luminous, the most powerful beings may decide to follow their own movement instead of obeying the divine movement. They may be in themselves marvellous beings, and human beings, if they saw them, would take them for the Divine himself, yet they can, since they follow their own will and work not in harmony with the universe, be the source of the greatest disorders. There is nothing that is not the Divine, only there comes about a disorder, that is to say, each thing is not in its proper place. The problem is, how this is to be remedied.
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In truth, the question itself is wrong. It is childish. It presupposes things that are themselves questionable. There are certain ideas about creation which have been almost universally current, more or less permanently accepted by human thought during ages; they are of an astounding simplicity. There is a world here, it is said, and up there somewhere there is a being called God; This person one day thought of creating some kind of thing, a visible form. The world was the result. Evidently we see a lot of mistakes in his work. We conclude The Creator perhaps is a well-meaning benevolent person, but not all-powerful; some other thing or being there is that contradicts him. Or perhaps he is all-powerful but then has no heart and must be cruelty itselfviewing the condition of his creation which is a story of sorrow and trouble and misery. Such an idea, I say, is simplicity itself, the simplicity of a child brain. When one speaks of God The Creator as a potter making a pot, one thinks of him as a human being, only in bigger proportions. Truly, it is not God who has made man in his image, it is man who has made God in his image.
As I say, the question is wrongly put. The very form of the question already assumes a certain notion about God and creation. Your postulates or axioms themselves are vitiated.
The universe and its creator are not separate things, they are one and identical in their origin. The universe is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You cannot divide the two, making one The Creator and the other, his work, the watch-maker and his watch. You put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to answer, It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again, you will no longer feel and see as you do now you are not yourself, therefore your question and your problem! Indeed, when you unite your consciousness with the divine consciousness there is no longer any problem. Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask, how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself going out and separating itself and creating all this disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, If you want to know, you had better unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know. And repeat, when you come to this identification, all problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that things are not all right, that they should be otherwise comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things that were and are have to give place to things that shall be and shall be better and better than they have been. The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite harmonious in some other age but now appears quite discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not do what we have to do, we would not try to make it better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves, confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only under one condition; be one with the immensity. The drop of water cannot very well ask how the ocean is: it has to lose itself into the ocean.
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08.11 - The Work Here, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Are Not Dogs More Faithful Than Men? Thought The Creator
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightThe Work Here
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Are Not Dogs More Faithful Than Men? Thought The Creator
08.12 - Thought the Creator, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:08.12 - Thought The Creator
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightThought The Creator
Thought The Creator
Human thought always creates forms in the mental world. It is a creative force. You are creating thought-forms constantly and sending them out into the atmosphere around; they go abroad to do their work. You are yourself surrounded always by such formations. No doubt there are people who cannot think clearly; they form around them only a kind of whirl. But they who think clearly and strongly create thought-forms that go out to accomplish their task and return to the source. There are cases of people who are troubled by their own formations that return to them or upon them as if to possess them and which they cannot get rid of; they do not know how to unmake a form which they make. When you have made a particularly strong formation, it remains always linked to you; it comes back again and again hitting your head and gathering force. In the end it becomes a necessity for you. There is a whole world of mystery to learn in this matter. Men live in ignorance; they have powers of which they are thoroughly unconscious or know very little.
08.13 - Thought and Imagination, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thought The Creator Poetry and Poetic Inspiration
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightThought and Imagination
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Thought The Creator Poetry and Poetic Inspiration
09.11 - The Supramental Manifestation and World Change, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now imagine, as I have just asked you to do, that really there exists a Consciousness, a Will manifesting these combinations successively and indefinitely, never repeating twice the same thing; then we must come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity, and if the universe is new at each moment of eternity we are forced to admit there is nothing absolutely impossible; even further, what we call logical is not necessarily the true, and the logic or what might almost be called the fancy of The Creator has no limit to it.
Therefore, if for some reason (which it is difficult to express) a combination is not followed up by that which is nearest to it, but another one freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, all our external certainties and all our surface logic would fall to the ground.
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet stands The Creator Self, the almighty Lord
And watches his will done by the forms of Gods
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
I would point out primarily and emphasize the fact that the motion we are considering is that due to the fire latent in matter itself, a motion that is the prime characteristic and basic quality of the Primordial Ray of Active Intelligence. To express it otherwise: it is the outstanding faculty of the third Logos, of Brahma [142] viewed as The Creator, and this faculty is the product or result of an earlier manifestation. Each of the three Logoi, when in manifestation and thus personified, is exemplifying some one quality which predominates over the others. Each, more or less, exemplifies all, but each demonstrates one of the three aspects so profoundly as to be recognised as that aspect itself. In much the same way, for instance, the different incarnating jivas carry a vibration which is their main measure, though they may also have lesser vibrations that are subsidiary to them. Let us get this clear, for the truth embodied is fundamental.
1. The threefold goal,
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If this is borne in mind it leads to a realisation that the separation of the Spirit from the material vehicle involves two aspects of the One great All; herein is seen the work of The Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer.
In the final perfection of this third sense of sight, the term used is the wholly inadequate one of realisation. Let the student study carefully the lowest and highest demonstration of the senses as laid down in the tabulation earlier imparted, and note the occult significance of the expressions used in the summation.
1.00f - DIVISION F - THE LAW OF ECONOMY, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
This Law of Economy has several subsidiary laws which govern its effects on the different grades of matter. As said before, this is the Law swept into action by the sounds as uttered by the Logos. The Sacred Word, or the uttered Sound of The Creator, exists in different forms, and though in reality but one Word, has several syllables. The syllables all together form a solar [217] phrase; separated they form certain words of power, producing different effects. [xciv] 92
The great WORD that peals through one hundred years of Brahma or persists in reverberation throughout a solar system, is the sacred sound of A U M. In differentiation and as heard in time and space, each of those three mystic letters stands for the first letter of a subsidiary phrase, consisting of various sounds. One letter, with a sequence of four sounds, makes up the vibration or note of Brahma, which is the intelligence aspect dominant in matter. Hence the mystery hidden in [218] the pentagon, in the fifth principle of mind, and in the five planes of human evolution. These five letters when sounded forth on the right note, give the key to the true inwardness of matter and also to its control,this control being based on the right interpretation of the Law of Economy.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
We see you rejoicing in that which ye have amassed for others and shutting out yourselves from the worlds which naught except My guarded Tablet can reckon. The treasures ye have laid up have drawn you far away from your ultimate objective. This ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it. Wash from your hearts all earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the Kingdom of your Lord, The Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the world to tremble and all its peoples to wail, except them that have renounced all things and clung to that which the Hidden Tablet hath ordained.
80
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Ye are but vassals, O kings of the earth! He Who is the King of Kings hath appeared, arrayed in His most wondrous glory, and is summoning you unto Himself, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Take heed lest pride deter you from recognizing the Source of Revelation, lest the things of this world shut you out as by a veil from Him Who is The Creator of heaven. Arise, and serve Him Who is the Desire of all nations, Who hath created you through a word from Him, and ordained you to be, for all time, the emblems of His sovereignty.
83
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Hearken ye, O Rulers of America and the Presidents of the Republics therein, unto that which the Dove is warbling on the Branch of Eternity: "There is none other God but Me, the Ever-Abiding, the Forgiving, the All-Bountiful." Adorn ye the temple of dominion with the ornament of justice and of the fear of God, and its head with the crown of the remembrance of your Lord, The Creator of the heavens.
Thus counselleth you He Who is the Dayspring of Names, as bidden by Him Who is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. The Promised One hath appeared in this glorified Station, whereat all beings, both seen and unseen, have rejoiced. Take ye advantage of the Day of God. Verily, to meet Him is better for you than all that whereon the sun shineth, could ye but know it. O concourse of rulers! Give ear unto that which hath been raised from the Dayspring of Grandeur: "Verily, there is none other God but Me, the Lord of Utterance, the All-Knowing." Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.
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O Pen of the Most High! Move Thou upon the Tablet at the bidding of Thy Lord, The Creator of the Heavens, and tell of the time when He Who is the Dayspring of Divine Unity purposed to direct His steps towards the School of Transcendent Oneness; haply the pure in heart may gain thereby a glimpse, be it as small as a needle's eye, of the mysteries of Thy Lord, the Almighty, the Omniscient, that lie concealed behind the veils. Say: We, indeed, set foot within the School of inner meaning and explanation when all created things were unaware. We saw the words sent down by Him Who is the All-Merciful, and We accepted the verses of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, which He+F1 presented unto Us, and hearkened unto that which He had solemnly affirmed in the Tablet. This we assuredly did behold. And We assented to His wish through Our behest, for truly We are potent to command.
176
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
symbol of The Creators body was more than an image, it
expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the bears in honour of The Creator.
37 We must surely go the way of the waters, which always tend
1.01 - Description of the Castle, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
3.: As this is so, we need not tire ourselves by trying to realize all the beauty of this castle, although, being His creature, there is all the difference between the soul and God that there is between the creature and The Creator; the fact that it is made in God's image teaches us how great are its dignity and loveliness. It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin. Would it not be gross ignorance, my daughters, if, when a man was questioned about his name, or country, or parents, he could not answer? Stupid as this would be, it is unspeakably more foolish to care to learn nothing of our nature except that we possess bodies, and only to realize vaguely that we have souls, because people say so and it is a doctrine of faith. Rarely do we reflect upon what gifts our souls may possess, Who dwells within them, or how extremely precious they are. Therefore we do little to preserve their beauty; all our care is concentrated on our bodies, which are but the coarse setting of the diamond, or the outer walls of the castle.6
4.: Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse.7' Think over this comparison very carefully; God grant it may enlighten you about the different kinds of graces He is pleased to bestow upon the soul. No one can know all about them, much less a person so ignorant as I am. The knowledge that such things are possible will console you greatly should our Lord ever grant you any of these favours; people themselves deprived of them can then at least praise Him for His great goodness in bestowing them on others. The thought of heaven and the happiness of the saints does us no harm, but cheers and urges us to win this joy for ourselves, nor will it injure us to know that during this exile God can communicate Himself to us loathsome worms; it will rather make us love Him for such immense goodness and infinite mercy.
1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[2]: In this stanza occurs a series of the appellations of Viṣṇu: 1. Puṇḍarīkākṣa, having eyes like a lotus, or heart-pervading; or Puṇḍarīka is explained supreme glory, and Akṣa imperishable: the first is the most usual etymon. 2. Vīswabhāvana, The Creator of the universe, or the cause of the existence of all things. 3. Hṛṣīkeśa, lord of the senses. 4. Mahā puruṣa, great or supreme spirit; puruṣa meaning that which abides or is quiescent in body (puri sété), 5. Pūrvaja, produced or appearing before creation; the Orphic πρωτογόνος. In the fifth book, c. 18, Viṣṇu is described by five appellations, which are considered analogous to these; or, 1. Bhūtātmā, one with created things, or Puṇḍarīkākṣa; 2. Pradhānātmā, one with crude nature, or Viśvabhāvana; 3. Indriyātmā, one with the senses, or Hṛṣikeśa; 4. Paramātmā, supreme spirit, or Mahāpuruṣa; and Ātmā, soul; living soul, animating nature and existing before it, or Pūrvaja.
[3]: Brahma, in the neuter form, is abstract supreme spirit; and Īśvara is the Deity in his active nature, he who is able to do or leave undone, or to do any thing in any other manner than that in which it is done.
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[6]: Pradhānabuddhyādisū. This predicate of the Deity distinguishes most of the Purāṇas from several of the philosophical systems, which maintain, as did the earliest Grecian systems of cosmogony, the eternal and independent existence of the first principle of things, as nature, matter, or chaos. Accordingly, the commentator notices the objection. Pradhāna being without beginning, it is said how can Viṣṇu be its parent? To which he replies, that this is not so, for in a period of worldly destruction (Pralaya), when The Creator desists from creating, nothing is generated by virtue of any other energy or parent. Or, if this be not satisfactory, then the text may be understood to imply that intellect (Buddhi) &c. are formed through the materiality of crude nature, or Pradhāna.
[7]: Viṣṇu is commonly derived in the Purāṇas from the root Vis, to enter, entering into, or pervading the universe, agreeably to the text of the Vedas, 'Having created that (world), he then afterwards enters into it;' being, as our comment observes, undistinguished by place, time, or property. According to the Mātsya P. the name alludes to his entering into the mundane egg: according to the Padma P., to his entering into or combining with Prakriti, as Puruṣa or spirit. In the Mokṣa Dharma of the Mahābhārata, s. 165, the word is derived from the root vī, signifying motion, pervasion, production, radiance; or, irregularly, from krama, to go with the particle vi, implying, variously, prefixed.
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The science of the structure of the body is called anatomy : it is a great science, but most men are heedless of it. If any study it, it is only for the purpose of acquiring skill in medicine, and not for the sake of becoming acquainted with the perfection of the power of God. But whoever will occupy himself with anatomy, and therein contemplate the wonders of the works of God, will reap three advantages. The first advantage will be, that in learning the composition of the thing made, and thereby gaining a comprehensive and condensed view of all other things like it he will see that it is impossible to discover imperfection or incompetence in the being who has created him in such perfection. The Creator himself will be acknowledged to be almighty and perfect. The second advantage will be, that he will see that it is impossible that a being who has created an organization so intelligent, capable of comprehension, endowed with beauty, and useful, should be otherwise than perfect in knowledge himself. And lastly, we shall understand the mercy, favor and perfect compassion of God towards us. Nothing that is either useful or ornamental has been omitted in the framing of our bodies, whether it be such things as are the sources of life, like the spirit and the head; or such as sustain life, as the hand, the foot, the mouth and the teeth : or such as are a means of ornament, as the beard, elegance of form, black hair and the lips. It is to be observed that similar organs have been provided not only for man, but for all creatures, so that nothing is wanting to initiate and sustain life in the mouse, the wasp, the snake and the ant. God has done all things perfectly, and may his name be glorified !
The investigator of truth this fact well knows,
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
creating. God as The Creator of the Universe is not meant by
the Isvara of the Yogis, although, according to the Vedas,
Isvara is The Creator of the universe. Seeing that the universe
is harmonious, it must be the manifestation of one will. The
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Or let us take, for this example will serve us best, the Vedic institution of the fourfold order, caturvara, miscalled the system of the four castes,for caste is a conventional, vara a symbolic and typal institution. We are told that the institution of the four orders of society was the result of an economic evolution complicated by political causes. Very possibly;1 but the important point is that it was not so regarded and could not be so regarded by the men of that age. For while we are satisfied when we have found the practical and material causes of a social phenomenon and do not care to look farther, they cared little or only subordinately for its material factors and looked always first and foremost for its symbolic, religious or psychological significance. This appears in the Purushasukta of the Veda, where the four orders are described as having sprung from the body of the creative Deity, from his head, arms, thighs and feet. To us this is merely a poetical image and its sense is that the Brahmins were the men of knowledge, the Kshatriyas the men of power, the Vaishyas the producers and support of society, the Shudras its servants. As if that were all, as if the men of those days would have so profound a reverence for mere poetical figures like this of the body of Brahma or that other of the marriages of Sury, would have built upon them elaborate systems of ritual and sacred ceremony, enduring institutions, great demarcations of social type and ethical discipline. We read always our own mentality into that of these ancient forefa thers and it is therefore that we can find in them nothing but imaginative barbarians. To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in Gods house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of The Creators body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
From this symbolic attitude came the tendency to make everything in society a sacrament, religious and sacrosanct, but as yet with a large and vigorous freedom in all its forms,a freedom which we do not find in the rigidity of savage communities because these have already passed out of the symbolic into the conventional stage though on a curve of degeneration instead of a curve of growth. The spiritual idea governs all; the symbolic religious forms which support it are fixed in principle; the social forms are lax, free and capable of infinite development. One thing, however, begins to progress towards a firm fixity and this is the psychological type. Thus we have first the symbolic idea of the four orders, expressingto employ an abstractly figurative language which the Vedic thinkers would not have used nor perhaps understood, but which helps best our modern understanding the Divine as knowledge in man, the Divine as power, the Divine as production, enjoyment and mutuality, the Divine as service, obedience and work. These divisions answer to four cosmic principles, the Wisdom that conceives the order and principle of things, the Power that sanctions, upholds and enforces it, the Harmony that creates the arrangement of its parts, the Work that carries out what the rest direct. Next, out of this idea there developed a firm but not yet rigid social order based primarily upon temperament and psychic type2 with a corresponding ethical discipline and secondarily upon the social and economic function.3 But the function was determined by its suitability to the type and its helpfulness to the discipline; it was not the primary or sole factor. The first, the symbolic stage of this evolution is predominantly religious and spiritual; the other elements, psychological, ethical, economic, physical are there but subordinated to the spiritual and religious idea. The second stage, which we may call the typal, is predominantly psychological and ethical; all else, even the spiritual and religious, is subordinate to the psychological idea and to the ethical ideal which expresses it. Religion becomes then a mystic sanction for the ethical motive and discipline, Dharma; that becomes its chief social utility, and for the rest it takes a more and more other-worldly turn. The idea of the direct expression of the divine Being or cosmic Principle in man ceases to dominate or to be the leader and in the forefront; it recedes, stands in the background and finally disappears from the practice and in the end even from the theory of life.
1.01 - The Lord of hosts, #Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, #Anonymous, #Various
Ten are the numbers out of nothing, and not the number nine, ten and not eleven. Comprehend this great wisdom, understand this 7 knowledge, inquire into it and ponder on it, render it evident and lead 8 The Creator back to His throne again.
SECTION 4.
1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We are in a world of interrelated facts and figures, and Eastern thought has tried to solve this question by positing a Creator for the world, independent of individual percipients. We have standard expositions on this theme in such texts as the Panchadasi, Vichara Sagara, etc. on the basis of certain proclamations in the Upanishads, for instance. Nobody has seen The Creator. Nobody can imagine that a Creator can exist, or must exist, or does exist. But the necessity of thought, the conditions of thinking seem to demand the presence of such a thing as a Creator for the world; otherwise, we cannot explain perception. The very fact of the perception of things the inherent meaning that we see in objects of perception compels us to accept the existence of a prior cause behind the objects of perception, and it seems that the world could exist even if we do not exist. We have arguments by modern scientists biologists and evolutionists who tell us that once upon a time the world was unpopulated; there were no percipients of the world. According to the astronomical theory, the world, the earth, is only a chip off the block of the sun, and was boiling and incandescent in its original state, so naturally no human being or nothing living could have existed at that time, not even a plant or a shrub. But did it exist? The earth did exist. So the earth could exist even if there is nobody to look at it or observe it.
These assumptions have led to the conclusion that the object exists independently of its being perceived, and the universe was created much earlier than the creation of the human individual. This theory gets confirmation from the expositions in the Puranas, the Epics, etc., wherein we are told that God created the world. He did not create man first; man is perhaps the last of creation. Even in the Aittareya Upanishad, on which perhaps the Panchadasi, etc., take their stand, we are given to understand that man was not the first creation, and that perhaps nothing perceiving was ever existent. Nothing perceiving, nothing thinking, nothing willing, conscious, ever existed except that One which willed Itself to be many, and the world was so created, etc., is the doctrine.
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The point is that the perception of an object need not bind us, though it can bind us. It need not bind us, because we can correctly perceive the existent object as it was created by Ishvara, merely reflecting in our minds the character of the object as it really is in itself from the point of view of The Creator. Then, perceptions would not be binding. For instance, a human being, tentatively speaking, may be regarded as Ishvara's creation. A human being is not created by another human being by the will of creativity. The object in front of me such as a tree, or a mountain, or the shining orb of the sun, and the moon and the stars may be regarded as parts of Ishvara's creation. We can simply perceive them as such.
But I can perceive a human being in another way altogether by which I can bind myself namely, this human being is my father; this human being is my friend; this human being is my enemy; this human being can do something for me, this way or that way. This is what is known as jiva srishti, which is an attitude of subjective appreciation and evaluation which an individual projects in respect of an external object. A woman is a human being, but the moment that woman is regarded as mother, or a wife, or a sister, that attitude becomes jiva srishti. A relationship that seems to obtain between one individual and another in a subjective manner is the projection of the mind of the jiva or the individual, which is the cause of joy and sorrow in the world and is the essence of samsara bondage.
1.02.4.2 - Action and the Divine Will, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Truth. Surya is The Creator or manifester, Savitri, who manifests
in this mortal world the world or state of immortality, dispels
1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
One hundred times the happiness of the emperor of this world is the happiness of the pitris, another level which is superior to the physical world. One hundred times the happiness of the pitris is the happiness of the gandharvas, who are celestial musicians in a world which is still higher than that of the pitris. One hundred times the happiness of the gandharvas is the happiness of the celestials in heaven the devas, as we call them. One hundred times the happiness of these celestials is the happiness of Indra, the king of the gods. One hundred times the happiness of the king of the gods is the happiness of the preceptor, the Guru of the gods Brihaspati. One hundred times the happiness of Brihaspati is the happiness of Prajapati, The Creator Brahma. One hundred times the happiness of Brahma The Creator is the happiness of Virat, the Supreme. Beyond that is Hiranyagarbha, and beyond that, Ishvara, and beyond Ishvara is the Absolute.
So where are we in this scheme? What is our happiness? It is the happiness of a cup of coffee, cup of tea, or a sweet which has no meaning compared to these calculations of astounding existences which are transcendent to human comprehension. When I say a hundred times, it is not merely a mathematical increase of the quantity of happiness; it is also a corresponding increase of the quality of happiness. As mentioned earlier, the quality of happiness in waking life is superior to the happiness in dream; it is not merely quantitative increase, but is also a qualitative increase. The joy of waking life is greater and more intense than the quality of joy in dream. So these calculations given in the Upanishad mean an increase of happiness one hundred times, both in quantity and in quality, so that when we go to the top, we are in an uncontrollable ecstasy of unbounded bliss.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Even when we think of The Creator as a transcendent father, the anthropomorphic idea still persists and stultifies the aim at introducing a higher quality of thought into the concept of God. That is why we are unhappy even in meditation, even in our highest spiritual exalted moods. Even when we are exalted, we are quantitatively exalted; qualitatively, we are very poor. We are unhappy in some way or the other, and no one can make us happy. A tremendous effort is necessary to introduce a superior quality in the concept of reality. The difficulty lies in the mind being the only instrument that we have for doing anything whatsoever, and who is it who will introduce a higher order of value or a greater quality into this concept, other than the mind itself? But how can we expect the mind to conceive of a higher quality of reality other than the one in which it has found itself at the present moment? How can we jump over our own skin? Is it possible? How can we expect the mind to think of a reality superior in quality to the one in which it is living at present, and with which it is identified wholly? An immediate answer to this question cannot be given. However, there is an answer.
Sadhana is a very mysterious process. It is not like the ordinary efforts that we put forth into our workaday life. Every effort, even the first effort in the practice of sadhana, brings about an improvement. The impetus that is created by the first step that we take will carry us forward with a greater impetus towards the next step by the generation of a force which is superior to the powers of the mind in its ordinary operations. Also, there is a peculiar something in human nature which is called 'aspiration'. It is difficult to understand what it actually means. It is not merely a hoping for something in the ordinary sense. It is a surge of the soul's force from within, and we must underline these words, 'soul's force', for it is not merely the mental faculties. The soul's force rises up, wells up within us in a totality of action, drawing forth the whole value that we are at present, and pointing to something which is wholly other than the present whole from which the soul is being drawn.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
cannot be said to be The Creators of language, although they may use it idiosyncratically even
creatively. It is the capability for human linguistic activity whatever that is that is The Creator. The
cumulative consequences of this capability, expressed over centuries, have modified the behavior of all the
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metaphorically, to be The Creator of life and fertility.253
Marduk, in his manifestation as Namtillaku, is also the god who restores to life254 who can restore all
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Know, therefore, that man from his own existence knows the existence of a Creator; from his own attributes, he knows the attributes of his maker; from the control which he has over his own kingdom, he knows the control that God exercises over all the world. The reason of this is, that when a man looks at himself, beginning at the time when there was no trace or notion of his existence, and contemplates his creation with attention, he sees that he had his origin from a drop of water. He had neither mind nor understanding: and neither fat, flesh nor bones. Afterwards by divine operation and sovereign power, most strange and wonderful internal changes took place, and strong organs, passions, affections, and agreeable qualities rose up all adorned with beauty. When man comes to look upon his organs and members, whether upon the external, as the hand, the foot, the eye, the tongue and the mouth, or upon the internal organs, as the liver, the stomach and the spleen, he sees that each is the result of a special wisdom, that each one has been created for some peculiar ue, and that each one is in its place and perfect. After a man has observed these things, he knows that The Creator has power to do what he pleases with all things, that his knowledge includes and embraces in perfection whatever is to be known of creatures [43] either externally or internally, and that his power and wisdom pervade every organ and particle.
Beloved, in proportion as a man analyzes the nature of his body and the variety of uses of its several members, his reverence and love for its Creator and Maker will increase. Let a man observe, for example, that his hands are made like columns and separated from the body, to serve as an instrument to seize, or take hold of, or to defend it from an enemy. At the extremity of the hands are five fingers, four of which are in a row, and some long and some short, SO that when they take hold of anything, they may come equally together in the palm of the hand. The thumb, which is opposite to the four fingers, is shorter than any of them and stronger, that it may be a help to the whole and render them capable of retaining and grasping. The four fingers have three joints each, and the thumb has but two, that when contracted they may become like the bowl of a spoon or ladle, and that when open they may become like a plate, and so discharge an infinity of services. The front teeth were formed sharp, to cut and separate the food : the side teeth were formed broad to mash and grind the food. The tongue was formed like a spoon to throw the food into the throat. There is, also, under the tongue, an organ by which water is poured out, and the food is made of the consistence of dough, that it may be more easily swallowed and digested. All the organs, in short, have been devised with the best arrangement and form for use, and each one of them is punctual day and night in discharging its function. Think not, that they are lazy or sleeping. If the minds of the intelligent, the science of the learned, and the wisdom of the sage had been united and had been employed since the beginning of the world, in reflection and contrivance, they could not have discovered anything more excellent than the present arrangement, [44] nor any forms more useful and beautiful. If the eye had been attached to the top of the head, or the ear to the nape of the neck, or the mouth to the back of the body, or if three fingers had been given instead of four, it is plain to a person of intelligence that the existing advantages would not have been secured, and the present beauty of form and appearance would have been imperfect.
1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
kāra; Tanmātras; elements; objects of sense; senses; of the mundane egg. Viṣṇu the same as Brahmā The Creator; Viṣṇu the preserver; Rudra the destroyer.
PARĀŚARA said, Glory to the unchangeable, holy, eternal, supreme Viṣṇu, of one universal nature, the mighty over all: to him who is Hiranygarbha, Hari, and Śa
kara[1], The Creator, the preserver, and destroyer of the world: to Vāsudeva, the liberator of his worshippers: to him, whose essence is both single and manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscrete and discrete: to Viṣṇu, the cause of final emancipation[2], Glory to the supreme Viṣṇu, the cause of the creation, existence, and end of this world; who is the root of the world, and who consists of the world[3].
Having glorified him who is the support of all things; who is the smallest of the small[4]; who is in all created things; the unchanged, imperishable[5] Puruṣottama[6]; who is one with true wisdom, as truly known[7]; eternal and incorrupt; and who is known through false appearances by the nature of visible objects[8]: having bowed to Viṣṇu, the destroyer, and lord of creation and preservation; the ruler of the world; unborn, imperishable, undecaying: I will relate to you that which was originally imparted by the great father of all (Brahmā), in answer to the questions of Dakṣa and other venerable sages, and repeated by them to Purukutsa, a king who reigned on the banks of the Narmadā. It was next related by him to Sāraswata, and by Sāraswata to me[9]. Who can describe him who is not to be apprehended by the senses: who is the best of all things; the supreme soul, self-existent: who is devoid of all the distinguishing characteristics of complexion, caste, or the like; and is exempt front birth, vicissitude, death, or decay: who is always, and alone: who exists every where, and in whom all things here exist; and who is thence named Vāsudeva[10]? He is Brahma[11], supreme, lord, eternal, unborn, imperishable, undecaying; of one essence; ever pure as free from defects. He, that Brahma, was all things; comprehending in his own nature the indiscrete and discrete. He then existed in the forms of Puruṣa and of Kāla. Puruṣa (spirit) is the first form, of the supreme; next proceeded two other forms, the discrete and indiscrete; and Kāla (time) was the last. These four-Pradhāna (primary or crude matter), Puruṣa (spirit), Vyakta (visible substance), and Kāla (time)-the wise consider to be the pure and supreme condition of Viṣṇu[12]. These four forms, in their due proportions, are the causes of the production of the phenomena of creation, preservation, and destruction. Viṣṇu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics[13].
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khya this incongruity does not occur; for there Pradhāna is independent, and coordinate with primary spirit. The Purāṇas give rise to the inconsistency by a lax use of both philosophical and pantheistical expressions. The most incongruous epithets in our text are however explained away in the comment. Thus nitya, 'eternal,' is said to mean 'uniform, not liable to increase or diminution:' Sadasadātmaka, 'comprehending what is and what is not,' means 'having the power of both cause and effect', as proceeding from Viṣṇu, and as giving origin to material things. Anādi, 'without beginning,' means 'without birth', not being engendered by any created thing, but proceeding immediately from the first cause. 'The mother,' or literally the womb of the world', means the passive agent in creation,' operated on or influenced by the active will of The Creator. The first part of the passage in the text is a favourite one with several of. the Purāṇas, but they modify it and apply it after their own fashion. In the Viṣṇu the original is ###, rendered as above. The Vāyu, Brahmānda, and p. 11 Kūrmma Purāṇas have 'The indiscrete cause, which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and whom those who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti-is the uncognizable Brahma, who was before all.' But the application of two synonymes of Prakriti to Brahma seems unnecessary at least. The Brahmā P. corrects the reading apparently: the first line is as before; the second is, ###. The passage is placed absolutely; 'There was an indiscrete cause eternal, and cause and effect, which was both matter and spirit (Pradhāna and Puruṣa), from which this world was made. Instead of 'such' or this,' some copies read 'from which Īśvara or god (the active deity or Brahmā) made the world.' The Hari Vaṃśa has the same reading, except in the last term, which it makes ### that is, according to the commentator, the world, which is Īśvara, was made.' The same authority explains this indiscrete cause, avyakta kārana, to denote Brahmā, The Creator an identification very unusual, if not inaccurate, and possibly founded on misapprehension of what is stated by the Bhaviṣya P.: 'That male or spirit which is endowed with that which is the indiscrete cause, &c. is known in the world as Brahmā: he being in the egg, &c.' The passage is precisely the same in Manu, I, 11; except that we have 'visṛṣta' instead of 'viśiṣṭha:' the latter is a questionable reading, and is probably wrong: the sense of the latter is, detached; and the whole means very consistently, 'embodied spirit detached from the indiscrete cause of the world is known as Brahmā.' The Padma P. inserts the first line, ### &c., but has 'Which creates undoubtedly Mahat and the other qualities' assigning the first epithets, therefore, as the Viṣṇu does, to Prakriti only. The Li
ga also refers the expression to Prakriti alone, but makes it a secondary cause: 'An indiscrete cause, which those acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti, proceeded from that Īśvara (Śiva).' This passage is one of very many instances in which expressions are common to several Purāṇas that seem to be borrowed from one another, or from some common source older than any of them, especially in this instance, as the same text occurs in Manu.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
again to be regulated. We are The Creators and we have to
regulate that creation, and as soon as we can do that we shall
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore The Creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
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Brahmanaspati is The Creator; by the word, by his cry he creates - that is to say he expresses, he brings out all existence and conscious knowledge and movement of life and eventual forms from the darkness of the Inconscient. Rudra, the Violent and Merciful, the Mighty One, presides over the struggle of life to affirm itself; he is the armed, wrathful and beneficent Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is wounded and suffers and complains and submits. Vishnu of the vast pervading motion holds in his triple stride all these worlds; it is he that makes a wide room for the action of Indra in our limited mortality; it is by him and with him that we rise into his highest seats where we find waiting for us the Friend, the Beloved, the Beatific Godhead.
Our earth shaped out of the dark inconscient ocean of existence lifts its high formations and ascending peaks heavenward; heaven of mind has its own formations, clouds that give out their lightnings and their waters of life; the streams of the clarity and the honey ascend out of the subconscient ocean below and seek the superconscient ocean above; and from above that ocean sends downward its rivers of the light and truth and bliss even into our physical being. Thus in images of physical Nature the Vedic poets sing the hymn of our spiritual ascension.
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
himself that is The Creator and the energy of creation and the cause and the method and the result of the working, the mechanist and the machine, the music and the musician, the poet and the poem,
supermind, mind, and life and matter, the soul and Nature.18
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In Eckharts phrase, God, The Creator and perpetual re-creator of the world, becomes and disbecomes. In other words He is, to some extent at least, in time. A temporal God might have the nature of the traditional Hebrew God of the Old Testament; or He might be a limited deity of the kind described by certain philosophical theologians of the present century; or alternatively He might be an emergent God, starting unspiritually at Alpha and becoming gradually more divine as the aeons rolled on towards some hypothetical Omega. (Why the movement should be towards more and better rather than less and worse, upwards rather than downwards or in undulations, onwards rather than round and round, one really doesnt know. There seems to be no reason why a God who is exclusively temporala God who merely becomes and is ungrounded in eternityshould not be as completely at the mercy of time as is the individual mind apart from the spirit. A God who becomes is a God who also disbecomes, and it is the disbecoming which may ultimately prevail, so that the last state of emergent deity may be worse than the first.)
The ground in which the multifarious and time-bound psyche is rooted is a simple, timeless awareness. By making ourselves pure in heart and poor in spirit we can discover and be identified with this awareness. In the spirit we not only have, but are, the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground.
1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The extent of our love of God, the intensity of our feeling for God, will depend upon our idea of God, our concept of God. There are various concepts of The Creator, of God, the Absolute, etc., according to the various philosophical theories, doctrines, and religious traditions. One of the primitive forms of conceiving God is that He is The Creator of the world. We have a childish idea of a creator. A creator is one who makes things, and God is someone who has made this world. "God made this world" is an old saying which we often repeat. God made the world and, therefore, God is The Creator of the world. God is the Father of the world and, therefore, all His children should love Him as the Supreme Parent. The idea of creatorship that is in our minds is the conditioning factor of our love towards this Creator. We have seen in this world that if someone makes something, he is the efficient or sometimes the instrumental cause of that particular thing that he has made, and the thing that he has made is an effect that is produced by him, standing outside him. God can thus be regarded as extra-cosmic, which is the usual way in which we conceive God.
We cannot imagine God usually, normally speaking, in any other way than as someone standing outside the world. If a carpenter makes a table or a chair, we can call him The Creator of the table or the chair; and the table stands outside him, so that there is no proper relationship between what he has made and his own existence. Hence, we have to cry to God in a loud tone so that our voices may reach Him in the transcendent paradise where He is seated. We have a concept of paradise in every religion. In the Hindu religion we call it Vaikuntha, or Brahmaloka, Kailasa, etc., but whatever term we use, it is a concept of heaven the highest heaven where God is seated which we have to reach. We love God as we love any other object in this world, because God Himself has become an object of the love of the individual.
Here I have to take a few moments to give some sort of an idea as to what love is, so that we may have an idea as to its relationship to the object of love. Most people have no idea of what it is and, therefore, it has been given many definitions. The most common definition of love is that it is a psychological emotion, a welling up of certain feelings in respect of an object. Love is the manner in which the mind arranges itself in respect of an object which it needs. Just as when one is on a battleground and there is a necessity to gird up one's loins for an immediate attack, one prepares oneself thoroughly, from head to foot, for the purpose of the task on hand or, a wrestler in the field prepares himself for the purpose for which he is there, and in this preparation he is worked up into a feeling of total concentration of his personality for the achievement of that purpose in a similar manner, the mind works itself up into a concentrated feeling in respect of the object which it needs for a particular purpose, at a particular time. This working up of the mind in sympathy with the object which it needs at a particular time is the love that the mind has for the object. Therefore, love may be regarded as a condition of the mind. It is a state of mind not a perpetual state, but a temporary state of the mind in respect of that particular object which is necessary at that particular moment.
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The juristic concept of God as a lawgiver, a lawmaker and a dispenser of justice is a pre-eminent feature in the concept of God in most religions. This feeling can be regarded as one of the channelising factors which can draw all the forces of the mind towards God. The teachers of bhakti tell us that if God is regarded as All-in-all, as the Supreme Maker and the All-powerful Being, even if He be The Creator in the sense of an ordinary maker of things, a day will come when this quantitative expanse of devotion will automatically bring about, in a subtle manner, a qualitative transformation also, so that human love can become divine love.
1.03 - ON THE AFTERWORLDLY, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
eyes. The Creator wanted to look away from himself;
so he created the world.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Petrie, was one of the abstract Gods (as distinguished from human or cosmic gods) and The Creator of the cosmic egg ;
THE SEPHIROS
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Indian systems, he is Brahma The Creator, from whom sprang the seven Prajapati- our seven lowest Sephiros - who, at his behest, completed the creation of the world.
The Diamond is attri buted to Keser, because it is the most permanent and glittering of precious jewels. For various reasons, too, the ancients made the Swan a corres- pondence of this digit. In the legends of all peoples, the
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
PUNDIT ISWAR CHANDRA VIDYASAGAR was born in the village of Beersingh, not far from Kamarpukur, Sri Ramakrishna's birthplace. He was known as a great scholar, educator, writer, and philanthropist. One of The Creators of modern Bengali, he was also well versed in Sanskrit grammar and poetry. His generosity made his name a household word with his countrymen, most of his income being given in charity to widows, orphans, indigent students, and other needy people. Nor was his compassion limited to human beings: he stopped drinking milk for years so that the calves should not be deprived of it, and he would not drive in a carriage for fear of causing discomfort to the horses. He was a man of indomitable spirit, which he showed when he gave up the lucrative position of principal of the Sanskrit College of Calcutta because of a disagreement with the authorities. His affection for his mother was especially deep. One day, in the absence of a ferryboat, he swam a raging river at the risk of his life to fulfil her wish that he should be present at his brother's wedding. His whole life was one of utter simplicity. The title Vidyasagar, meaning "Ocean of Learning", was given him in recognition of his vast erudition.
Master's visit to the scholar
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"Ramprasad asks the mind only to guess the nature of God. He wishes it to understand that what is called Brahman in the Vedas is addressed by Him as the Mother. He who is attri buteless also has attri butes. He who is Brahman is also akti. When thought of as inactive, He is called Brahman, and when thought of as The Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, He is called the Primordial Energy, Kli.
"Brahman and akti are identical, like fire and its power to bum. When we talk of fire we automatically mean also its power to burn. Again, the fire's power to burn implies the fire itself. If you accept the one you must accept the other.
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This condition of prakriti or pradhana the mulaprakriti, as it is called becomes the cause of the first manifestation in the process of evolution. This first form of manifestation, cosmologically, is called mahat in the terminology of the Samkhya. This is a Sanskrit word which practically means what is known as cosmic intellect or universal intelligence. This is, in the language of the Puranas and the Epics, the condition of The Creator or Brahma wherein all individualities are brought together into a single universal point of view. There are no various points of view there; there is only one point of view, and that is the cosmic point of view. Here, everything is directly experienced without the instrumentality of the senses. There is not even this mind as we see it in our own personal individuality. It is pure intelligence, subtly manifest in cosmic sattva, which is the first manifestation of prakriti. .
Then the Samkhya tells us that there is a gradual solidification or concretisation of this state, and there is manifest a tendency to self-affirmation of a cosmic nature which is called ahamkara. This ahamkara is not the egoism of the human being, but it is a logical presupposition of the manifestation of variety. It is purely a logical 'x' without which we cannot explain anything that is manifest subsequently, but it has no connection whatsoever with the pride or the individual egoism of the human beings that we see usually. Sometimes these states of prakriti, mahat and ahamkara, mentioned in the Samkhya, are identified with the principles of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat which are mentioned in the Vedanta doctrine.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
St. Bernard speaks in what seems a similar strain. What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. And in another of his letters he says: Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a magister. The phrases are similar; but their inner significance is very different. In Augustines language, God alone is to be enjoyed; creatures are not to be enjoyed but usedused with love and compassion and a wondering, detached appreciation, as means to the knowledge of that which may be enjoyed. Wordsworth, like almost all other literary Nature-worshippers, preaches the enjoyment of creatures rather than their use for the attainment of spiritual endsa use which, as we shall see, entails much self-discipline for the user. For Bernard it goes without saying that his correspondents are actively practising this self-discipline and that Nature, though loved and heeded as a teacher, is only being used as a means to God, not enjoyed as though she were God. The beauty of flowers and landscape is not merely to be relished as one wanders lonely as a cloud about the countryside, is not merely to be pleasurably remembered when one is lying in vacant or in pensive mood on the sofa in the library, after tea. The reaction must be a little more strenuous and purposeful. Here, my brothers, says an ancient Buddhist author, are the roots of trees, here are empty places; meditate. The truth is, of course, that the world is only for those who have deserved it; for, in Philos words, even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of The Creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to make himself worthy of the cosmos. He ought to transform himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos. For those who have not deserved the world, either by making themselves worthy of its creator (that is to say, by non-attachment and a total self-naughting), or, less arduously, by making themselves worthy of the cosmos (by bringing order and a measure of unity to the manifold confusion of undisciplined human personality), the world is, spiritually speaking, a very dangerous place.
That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, Canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor Canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
At the close of the past (or Pādma) Kalpa, the divine Brahmā, endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Nārāyaṇa, the incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the form of Brahmā, the god without beginning, The Creator of all things; of whom, with respect to his name Nārāyaṇa, the god who has the form of Brahmā, the imperishable origin of the world, this verse is repeated, "The waters are called Nārā, because they were the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and as in them his first (Ayana) progress (in the character of Brahmā) took place, he is thence named Nārāyaṇa (he whose place of moving was the waters)[2]." He, the lord, concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and being desirous to raise it up, created another form for that purpose; and as in preceding Kalpas he had assumed the shape of a fish or a tortoise, so in this he took the figure of a boar. Having adopted a form composed of the sacrifices of the Vedas[3], for the preservation of the whole earth, the eternal, supreme, and universal soul, the great progenitor of created beings, eulogized by Sanaka and the other saints who dwell in the sphere of holy men (Janaloka); he, the supporter of spiritual and material being, plunged into the ocean. The goddess Earth, beholding him thus descending to the subterrene regions, bowed in devout adoration, and thus glorified the god:-
Prīthivī (Earth).-Hail to thee, who art all creatures; to thee, the holder of the mace and shell: elevate me now from this place, as thou hast upraised me in days of old. From thee have I proceeded; of thee do I consist; as do the skies, and all other existing things. Hail to thee, spirit of the supreme spirit; to thee, soul of soul; to thee, who art discrete and indiscrete matter; who art one with the elements and with time. Thou art The Creator of all things, their preserver, and their destroyer, in the forms, oh lord, of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Rudra, at the seasons of creation, duration, and dissolution. When thou hast devoured all things, thou reposest on the ocean that sweeps over the world, meditated upon, oh Govinda, by the wise. No one knoweth thy true nature, and the gods adore thee only in the forms it bath pleased thee to assume. They who are desirous of final liberation, worship thee as the supreme Brahmā; and who that adores not Vāsudeva, shall obtain emancipation? Whatever may be apprehended by the mind, whatever may be perceived by the senses, whatever may he discerned by the intellect, all is but a form of thee. I am of thee, upheld by thee; thou art my creator, and to thee I fly for refuge: hence, in this universe, Mādhavī (the bride of Mādhava or Viṣṇu) is my designation. Triumph to the essence of all wisdom, to the unchangeable, the imperishable: triumph to the eternal; to the indiscrete, to the essence of discrete things: to him who is both cause and effect; who is the universe; the sinless lord of sacrifice[4]; triumph. Thou art sacrifice; thou art the oblation; thou art the mystic Omkāra; thou art the sacrificial fires; thou art the Vedas, and their dependent sciences; thou art, Hari, the object of all worship[5]. The sun, the stars, the planets, the whole world; all that is formless, or that has form; all that is visible, or invisible; all, Puruṣottama, that I have said, or left unsaid; all this, Supreme, thou art. Hail to thee, again and again! hail! all hail!
Parāśara said:-
1.04 - The 33 seven double letters, #Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, #Anonymous, #Various
fact, inquire about it, and make it so evident, that 35 The Creator be acknowledged to be on His throne again.
.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
with The Creator of things. From this viewpoint, cognitive transformations alter the structure of existence as
such; transform the very relationship between heaven and earth, creator and created; permanently alter the
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma The Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
"This is my thought." This is how a good mind-reader can read what goes on in a person whose language he does not even know, because it is not the "thoughts" that he catches but the vibrations, to which he then attributes his own corresponding mental form. But we should not really be too surprised, because if we were capable of creating a single thing ourselves, even a tiny little thought, we would be The Creators of the world! Where is the I in you that can create all that? Mother used to ask. It is just that the process is not perceptible to the ordinary man,
firstly, because he lives in constant tumult, and secondly because the process through which vibrations are appropriated is almost instantaneous and automatic. Through his education and environment,
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Hunger that is Death, they said, is The Creator and master of
this world, and they figured vital existence in the image of
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love. Of all the motions and affections of the soul, love is the only one by means of which the creature, though not on equal terms, is able to treat with The Creator and to give back something resembling what has been given to it. When God loves, he only desires to be loved, knowing that love will render all those who love Him happy.
St. Bernard
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
of The Creator is imprinted on the soul, not on the body). (Cf. trans, by H. Chad-
wick, p. 488.)
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my soul is made after the image of The Creator, so as to be an image of an image;
for my soul is not directly the image of God, but is made after the likeness of the
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rather difficult to attri bute the cause of evil to The Creator in
so many words.
1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
the Prophet: "The love of The Creator," she said, "has prevented my loving the creature." Ibrahim Ben Adham, in his prayers, said, "O God! In my eyes heaven itself is less than a gnat in comparison with the love of Thee and the joy of Thy remembrance which thou hast granted me."
He who supposes that it is possible to enjoy happiness in the next world apart from the love of God is far gone in error, for the very essence of the future life is to arrive at God as at an object of desire long aimed at and attained through countless obstacles. This enjoyment of God is happiness. But if he had no delight in God before, he will not delight in Him then, and if his joy in God was but slight before it will be but slight then. In brief, our future happiness will be in strict proportion to the degree in which we have loved God here.
1.05 - The Creative Principle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
But, on the other hand, when we speak of an act of The Creator with the idea that it explains the evolutionary action, we forget first to ask ourselves how this creator himself could reach such a point or how he could have produced anything at all without there taking place a veritable fact of evolution.
For in every act of creation, whatever otherwise may be its nature, there is always necessarily established that relation of antecedent and consequent which characterises the evolutionary action. The only difference is that in one case what appears derives from an antecedent more or less known and in the other from a principle of which we are ignorant, a reality without any visible relation with the phenomenon produced. The relation exists nevertheless between the two terms, whatever the first of them may be. All creation is a disguised evolution. What is creation? What is meant by this word suspected and equivocal by reason of the confusions to which it lends itself and the extent to which it has been, abused?
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But even if The Creator were absent, if it were a question of a creative operation effected not only ex nihilo but a nihilo, by nothing and by nobody, that is to say without any creator but itself, it is not from nothing but still from something that it would evolve in passing thus, without any assistance, from all that it was not to that which it becomes, from non-being to being.
For by this nothing we mean without knowing it all or rather the all of which we know nothing. This nothing is only the symbol of our ignorance. And what we call non-being or nothingness is, in sum, only the beyond of all our limits of existence.
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But it is not this ultimate sense which is generally given to the word, creation. Those who employ it, stop usually half way in their search after the primary fact. They furnish The Creator with a propitious chaos all ready to be put in the form he chooses and from the concourse of these two they conceive the rise of the worlds of existence.
To create, then, means in their view to make something out of something else. And if the word keeps its value, it is because that other thing, in fact, could not give birth to aught without the power which sets it at work. It is in this sense that the word is applied to the production of the artist whose mastery has alone to be reckoned, since the only importance his material has for him is the obstacle it represents. Chaos can only discharge this negative role. But it is sufficient that it should be and that The Creator should utilise it for the original act to appear as an act of formation or rather of transformation antilogous to those which voluntarily or involuntarily every being is at each moment accomplishing.
Certainly, it is quite possible that each great beginning has been the effect of an exceptional intervention of power or of will. In the great hierarchy of existence, there are formative beings who can thus create things. It is even possible that certain of them, before things took substantial form, drew from themselves the elements and the means of their creation. But does not man at each instant, by his word, by his thought, thus create without knowing it?
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Whether we consider The Creator to be immanent or transcendent, alien to the world or one with it, whether we confound the idea of God with that of the universe, as in Pantheism, or identify the universe with the thought of God, as in Idealism, the question of The Creator remains that of the creation itself. And the problem remains the same, whether it be of a first Being or of a first Thing. How could this being, if it is relative, rise out of the Absolute? And how if it is absolute, could it create the relative? Can the Absolute create anything that does not already exist? And if anything in the Absolute can create itself other than it is, how in so creating itself does it become the relative? Or more simply, how, by what mystery of evolution does it become?
***
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The notion of the spirits intrinsic kinship with The Creator was abstractly elaborated, in much more
detail, in the eventual course of development of Judeo-Christian thought. From this viewpoint, man is
--
figure, is an Oriental Christ-equivalent (or, perhaps, an image of the paraclete or Holy Ghost). The Creator
of this work has superimposed the bodhisattva on a tunnel in the sky, ringed by transformative fire. This
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the individual to adopt the redemptive role of the hero, The Creator of culture; the same fall that lifted the
curtain on the drama of human history. Whether or not it would have been better for humanity to have
1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Whilst he (Brahmā) formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was. meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning with ignorance, and consisting of darkness. From that great being appeared fivefold Ignorance, consisting of obscurity, illusion, extreme illusion, gloom, utter darkness[2]. The creation of The Creator thus plunged in abstraction, was the fivefold (immovable) world, without intellect or reflection, void of perception or sensation, incapable of feeling, and destitute of motion[3]. Since immovable things were first created, this is called the first creation. Brahmā, beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested, to the products of which the term Tiryaksrotas is applied, from their nutriment following a winding course[4]. These were called beasts, &c., and their characteristic was the quality of darkness, they being destitute of knowledge, uncontrolled in their conduct, and mistaking error for wisdom; being formed of egotism and self-esteem, labouring under the twenty-eight kinds of imperfection[5], manifesting inward sensations, and associating with each other (according to their kinds).
Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahmā again meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the quality of goodness, termed Ūrddhasrotas[6]. The beings thus produced in the Ūrddhasrotas creation were endowed with pleasure and enjoyment, uneñcumbered internally or externally, and luminous within and without. This, termed the creation of immortals, was the third performance of Brahmā, who, although well pleased with it, still found it incompetent to fulfil his end. Continuing therefore his meditations, there sprang, in consequence of his infallible purpose, the creation termed Arvāksrotas, from indiscrete nature. The products of this are termed Arvāksrotasas[7], from the downward current (of their nutriment). They abound with the light of knowledge, but the qualities of darkness and of foulness predominate. Hence they are afflicted by evil, and are repeatedly impelled to action. They have knowledge both externally and internally, and are the instruments (of accomplishing the object of creation, the liberation of soul). These creatures were mankind.
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Next from Brahmā, in a form composed of the quality of foulness, was produced hunger, of whom anger was born: and the god put forth in darkness beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspects, and with long beards. Those beings hastened to the deity. Such of them as exclaimed, Oh preserve us! were thence called Rākṣasas[16]: others, who cried out, Let us eat, were denominated from that expression Yakṣas[17]. Beholding them so disgusting, the hairs of Brahmā were shrivelled up, and first falling from his head, were again renewed upon it: from their falling they became serpents, called Sarpa from their creeping, and Ahi because they had deserted the head[18]. The Creator of the world, being incensed, then created fierce beings, who were denominated goblins, Bhūtas, malignant fiends and eaters of flesh. The Gandharvas were next born, imbibing melody: drinking of the goddess of speech, they were born, and thence their appellation[19]. The divine Brahmā, influenced by their material energies, having created these beings, made others of his own will. Birds he formed from his vital vigour; sheep from his breast; goats from his mouth; kine from his belly and sides; and horses, elephants, Sarabhas, Gayals, deer, camels, mules, antelopes, and other animals, from his feet: whilst from the hairs of his body sprang herbs, roots, and fruits.
Brahmā having created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, various plants, employed them in sacrifices, in the beginning of the Tretā age. Animals were distinguished into two classes, domestic (village) and wild (forest): the first class contained the cow, the goat, the hog, the sheep, the horse, the ass, the mule: the latter, all beasts of prey, and many animals with cloven hoofs, the elephant, and the monkey. The fifth order were the birds; the sixth, aquatic animals; and the seventh, reptiles and insects[20].
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And The Creator displayed infinite variety in the objects of sense, in the properties of living things, and in the forms of bodies: he determined in the beginning, by the authority of the Vedas, the names and forms and functions of all creatures, and of the gods; and the names and appropriate offices of the Ṛṣis, as they also are read in the Vedas. In like manner as the products of the seasons designate in periodical revolution the return of the same season, so do the same circumstances indicate the recurrence of the same Yuga, or age; and thus, in the beginning of each Kalpa, does Brahmā repeatedly create the world, possessing the power that is derived from the will to create, and assisted by the natural and essential faculty of the object to be created.
Footnotes and references:
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
To them this symbol of The Creators body was more than
an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his commonsense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of The Creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artistand the philosopher and the man of science are also artistsknows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Michael, the first angel of The Creator, has "the shape of a
lion." 20 He obviously stands in the place of Ialdabaoth, who is
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "How is it ever possible for one man to liberate another from the bondage of the world? God alone, The Creator of this world-bewitching maya, can save men from maya. There is no other refuge but that great Teacher, Satchidananda. How is it ever possible for men who have not realized God or received His command, and who are not streng thened with divine strength, to save others from the prison-house of the world?
"One day as I was passing the Panchavati on my way to the pine-grove, I heard a bullfrog croaking. I thought it must have been seized by a snake. After some time, as I was coming back, I could still hear its terrified croaking. I looked to see what was the matter, and found that a water-snake had seized it. The snake could neither swallow it nor give it up. So there was no end to the frog's suffering. I thought that had it been seized by a cobra it would have been silenced after three croaks at the most. As it was only a water-snake, both of them had to go through this agony. A man's ego is destroyed after three croaks, as it were, if he gets into the clutches of a real teacher.
1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Śrī, the bride of Viṣṇu, the mother of the world, is eternal, imperishable; in like manner as he is all-pervading, so also is she, oh best of Brahmans, omnipresent. Viṣṇu is meaning; she is speech. Hari is polity (Naya); she is prudence (Nīti). Viṣṇu is understanding; she is intellect. He is righteousness; she is devotion. He is The Creator; she is creation. Śrī is the earth; Hari the support of it. The deity is content; the eternal Lakṣmī is resignation. He is desire; Śrī is wish. He is sacrifice; she is sacrificial donation (Dakṣinā). The goddess is the invocation which attends the oblation; Janārddana is the oblation. Lakṣmī is the chamber where the females are present (at a religious ceremony); Madhusūdana the apartment of the males of the family. Lakṣmī is the altar; Hari the stake (to which the victim is bound). Śrī is the fuel; Hari the holy grass (Kuśa). He is the personified Sāma veda; the goddess, lotus-throned, is the tone of its chanting. Lakṣmī is the prayer of oblation (Svāhā); Vāsudeva, the lord of the world, is the sacrificial fire. Saurī (Viṣṇu) is Śa
kara (Śiva); and Śrī is the bride of Śiva (Gaurī). Keśava, oh Maitreya, is the sun; and his radiance is the lotus-seated goddess. Viṣṇu is the tribe of progenitors (Pitrigana); Padma. is their bride (Swadhā), the eternal bestower of nutriment. Śrī is the heavens; Viṣṇu, who is one with all things, is wide extended space. The lord of Śrī is the moon; she is his unfading light. She is called the moving principle of the world; he, the wind which bloweth every where. Govinda is the ocean; Lakṣmī its shore. Lakṣmī is the consort of Indra (Indrānī); Madhusūdana is Devendra. The holder of the discus (Viṣṇu) is Yama (the regent of Tartarus); the lotus-throned goddess is his dusky spouse (Dhūmornā). Śrī is wealth; Śridhara (Viṣṇu) is himself the god of riches (Kuvera). Lakṣmī, illustrious Brahman, is Gaurī; and Keśava, is the deity of ocean (Varuna). Śrī is the host of heaven (Devasenā); the deity of war, her lord, is Hari. The wielder of the mace is resistance; the power to oppose is Śrī. Lakṣmī is the Kāṣṭhā and the Kalā; Hari the Nimeṣa and the Muhūrtta. Lakṣmī is the light; and Hari, who is all, and lord of all, the lamp. She, the mother of the world, is the creeping vine; and Viṣṇu the tree round which she clings. She is the night; the god who is armed with the mace and discus is the day. He, the bestower of blessings, is the bridegroom; the lotus-throned goddess is the bride.
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Patanjali gives an example of how prakriti works. It works in a spontaneous manner, like the flow of water into the fields. Nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3) is the sutra. We are not The Creators of the powers of nature. In yoga we do not manifest or bring about something which was not already there. Just as the example given in this sutra tells us, a farmer working in the fields allows water to flow into certain fields, not by creating new water, as the water is already there; he has only to open up a passage for the movement of the water and divert its course in the way required. The role that the farmer plays is incidental. He is not the material cause of the movement of the water. He becomes an agent in the sense that he provides conditions necessary for the flow of water in a particular direction. Likewise is this practice of yoga. It is not going to create new things which were not already there.
The powers, or the siddhis, which the Vibhuti Pada speaks about are not creations, inventions, etc., but are only spontaneous actions of prakriti just as there is a spontaneous movement of water in the fields. What does yoga practice do? It does exactly what the farmer does in the fields. Instead of blocking the passage of water and not allowing it to flow into the field for the purpose of irrigation, the farmer opens up a stream, creates a channel, and allows the water to flow. This is what yoga does. At present the movement of energies, which flow of their own accord, are blocked. The movements are blocked due to there being no passage for the entry of the forces of nature. What is it that blocks the entry of these forces? There is only one thing which is the principal obstruction of the operation of natural forces in us. That is the I-principle, the ego, the asmita, which has various other accompaniments raga, dvesa, etc. Raga, dvesa, abhinivesa all these things mentioned earlier are accompanying features of the single impediment which is asmita. We are so powerful in our ego that nothing from outside can enter it. It is hard like flint, and it is, therefore, incapable of allowing the entry of any force into itself, just as any amount of water poured on hard rock will not enter the rock.
--
We have been told much about it in earlier sutras. But essentially, the law of prakriti is such that it has no internal distinction within itself. To create internal distinctions or differences of bodies, personalities, individualities, etc., would be a result of disharmony of some kind or the other. In the totality of nature, internal differences are unknown, just as the body, our individual bodily organism, has no feeling of internal differences. There is a principle which brings all these forces together and creates in us a sense of oneness. Likewise in nature, there is a principle which brings all the forces together. The more we approach this centre of unification of nature, the more are we natural, and the more we depart from it, the more are we unnatural. This is the meaning of this particular sutra, nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3): The instrumental cause, which is the practice of yoga, is not actually The Creator of the powers or siddhis, but only an agent which allows the operation of natural forces, in the same way as the farmer operates as an instrumental cause in the movements of waters in the fields. This is the literal meaning of this sutra.
To sum up the teaching of these two sutras cited just now, the present state of existence of a human individual is unnatural, and we should not make the mistake of thinking that we are living a normal life. Our present way of life is abnormal in the sense that it does not harmonise with what eternally exists. The temporal features that we are manifesting in our personal lives are the opposites of the eternal features of prakriti. Hence, yoga is an instrumental agent in bringing about conditions by which there is a spontaneity of entry of eternal laws into our personality. And in this process of the entry of the eternal characters of prakriti into us, we develop various powers. Thus, the powers, or siddhis, are nothing but experiences which are incumbent upon our gradual proximity to the ultimate nature of prakriti. This is what the sutra tells us.
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Thou The Creator and Protector; Thou the Helmsman who dost steer
My craft across the sea of life.
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
We must again remember that the Ptanjala Yoga philosophy is based upon the Sankhya philosophy; only in the latter there is no place for God, while with the Yogis God has a place. The Yogis, however, do not mention many ideas about God, such as creating. God as The Creator of the universe is not meant by the Ishvara of the Yogis. According to the Vedas, Ishvara is The Creator of the universe; because it is harmonious, it must be the manifestation of one will. The Yogis want to establish a God, but they arrive at Him in a peculiar fashion of their own. They say:
1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"We glorify him who is all things; the lord supreme over all; unborn, imperishable; the protector of the mighty ones of creation; the unperceived, indivisible Nārāyaṇa; the smallest of the smallest, the largest of the largest, of the elements; in whom are all things, from whom are all things; who was before existence; the god who is all beings; who is the end of ultimate objects; who is beyond final spirit, and is one with supreme soul; who is contemplated as the cause of final liberation by sages anxious to be free; in whom are not the qualities of goodness, foulness, or darkness, that belong to undeveloped nature. May that purest of all pure spirits this day be propitious to us. May that Hari be propitious to us, whose inherent might is not an object of the progressive chain of moments or of days, that make up time. May he who is called the supreme god, who is not in need of assistance, Hari, the soul of all embodied substance, be favourable unto us. May that Hari, who is both cause and effect; who is the cause of cause, the effect of effect; he who is the effect of successive effect; who is the effect of the effect of the effect himself; the product of the effect of the effect of the effect, or elemental substance; to him I bow[5]. The cause of the cause; the cause of the cause of the cause; the cause of them all; to him I bow. To him who is the enjoyer and thing to be enjoyed; The Creator and thing to be created; who is the agent and the effect; to that supreme being I bow. The infinite nature of Viṣṇu is pure, intelligent, perpetual, unborn, undecayable, inexhaustible, inscrutable, immutable; it is neither gross nor subtile, nor capable of being defined: to that ever holy nature of Viṣṇu I bow. To him whose faculty to create the universe abides in but a part of but the ten-millionth part of him; to him who is one with the inexhaustible supreme spirit, I bow: and to the glorious nature of the supreme Viṣṇu, which nor gods, nor sages, nor I, nor Śa
kara apprehend; that nature which the Yogis, after incessant effort, effacing both moral merit and demerit, behold to be contemplated in the mystical monosyllable Om: the supreme glory of Viṣṇu, who is the first of all; of whom, one only god, the triple energy is the same with Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva: oh lord of all, great soul of all, asylum of all, undecayable, have pity upon thy servants; oh Viṣṇu, be manifest unto us."
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The gods, having heard this prayer uttered by Brahmā, bowed down, and cried, "Be favourable to us; be present to our sight: we bow down to that glorious nature which the mighty Brahmā does not know; that which is thy nature, oh imperishable, in whom the universe abides." Then the gods having ended, Vrihaspati and the divine Ṛṣis thus prayed: "We bow down to the being entitled to adoration; who is the first object of sacrifice; who was before the first of things; The Creator of The Creator of the world; the undefinable: oh lord of all that has been or is to be; imperishable type of sacrifice; have pity upon thy worshippers; appear to them, prostrate before thee. Here is Brahmā; here is Trilocana (the three-eyed Śiva), with the Rudras; Puṣā, (the sun), with the Ādityas; and Fire, with all the mighty luminaries: here are the sons of Asvinī (the two Asvinī Kumāras), the Vasus and all the winds, the Sādhyas, the Viśvadevas, and Indra the king of the gods: all of whom bow lowly before thee: all the tribes of the immortals, vanquished by the demon host, have fled to thee for succour."
Thus prayed to, the supreme deity, the mighty holder of the conch and discus, shewed himself to them: and beholding the lord of gods, bearing a shell, a discus, and a mace, the assemblage of primeval form, and radiant with embodied light, Pitāmahā and the other deities, their eyes moistened with rapture, first paid him homage, and then thus addressed him: "Repeated salutation to thee, who art indefinable: thou art Brahmā; thou art the wielder of the Pināka bow (Śiva); thou art Indra; thou art fire, air, the god of waters, the sun, the king of death (Yama), the Vasus, the Māruts (the winds), the Sādhyas, and Viśvadevas. This assembly of divinities, that now has come before thee, thou art; for, The Creator of the world, thou art every where. Thou art the sacrifice, the prayer of oblation, the mystic syllable Om, the sovereign of all creatures: thou art all that is to be known, or to be unknown: oh universal soul, the whole world consists of thee. We, discomfited by the Daityas, have fled to thee, oh Viṣṇu, for refuge. Spirit of all, have compassion upon us; defend us with thy mighty power. There will be affliction, desire, trouble, and grief, until thy protection is obtained: but thou art the remover of all sins. Do thou then, oh pure of spirit, shew favour unto us, who have fled to thee: oh lord of all, protect us with thy great power, in union with the goddess who is thy strength[6]." Hari, The Creator of the universe, being thus prayed to by the prostrate divinities, smiled, and thus spake: "With renovated energy, oh gods, I will restore your strength. Do you act as I enjoin. Let all the gods, associated with the Asuras, cast all sorts of medicinal herbs into the sea of milk; and then taking the mountain Mandara for the churning-stick, the serpent Vāsuki for the rope, churn the ocean together for ambrosia; depending upon my aid. To secure the assistance of the Daityas, you must be at peace with them, and engage to give them an equal portion of the fruit of your associated toil; promising them, that by drinking the Amrita that shall be produced from the agitated ocean, they shall become mighty and immortal. I will take care that the enemies of the gods shall not partake of the precious draught; that they shall share in the labour alone."
Being thus instructed by the god of gods, the divinities entered into alliance with the demons, and they jointly undertook the acquirement of the beverage of immortality. They collected various kinds of medicinal herbs, and cast them into the sea of milk, the waters of which were radiant as the thin and shining clouds of autumn. They then took the mountain Mandara for the staff; the serpent Vāsuki for the cord; and commenced to churn the ocean for the Amrita. The assembled gods were stationed by Kṛṣṇa at the tail of the serpent; the Daityas and Dānavas at its head and neck. Scorched by the flames emitted from his inflated hood, the demons were shorn of their glory; whilst the clouds driven towards his tail by the breath of his mouth, refreshed the gods with revivifying showers. In the midst of the milky sea, Hari himself, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain, as it was whirled around. The holder of the mace and discus was present in other forms amongst the gods and demons, and assisted to drag the monarch of the serpent race: and in another vast body he sat upon the summit of the mountain. With one portion of his energy, unseen by gods or demons, he sustained the serpent king; and with another, infused vigour into the gods.
1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We have cut little pieces out of that great indivisible oneness, that fullness of the world, that global self. We have sliced little pieces out of space and time, particles of self and not-self, protons and electrons, pluses and minuses tightly wedded to one another, good and evil, night and day inextricably bound to one another, incomplete without one another, never complete with each other; for all the nights and days together will never make a complete day; all the pluses and minuses, goods and evils, selves and not-selves added up will never make a full beauty, a single being. And we have replaced oneness by multiplicity, love by loves, rhythm by harmonies that are broken and restored. But our fusion is nothing but an addition, and life is born out of death as if we constantly had to destroy in order to be, split in order to join in a new appearance of unity which is only the sum of the same separations, of the same good and evil, of plus and minus, of a self that is a million past selves but not a single little full drop. We have drawn a little circle in the great indivisible Life, enclosed a fragment of being in a gelatine capsule, set apart one note of the great rhythm beneath a shell of beast or man, and seized a few hard and trenchant thoughts from the great rainbow current whose strands dangled over the bushes of the world. We have cut up the great Look in the heart of things and produced a thousand irreducible facets. And since we could no longer see anything of the great world, shielded, fragmented and syncopated as it was, we have invented eyes to see what we had driven away, ears to hear what whispered everywhere, fingers to grasp a few fragments of a full beauty we had truncated, and thirst, desire, hunger for everything that was no longer us antennas, thousands of antennas to capture the one note that would fill our hearts. And since we could no longer grasp anything without these inventions, these eyes, senses and gray cells oh, so gray! we came to believe that the world was inaccessible without them, that it resembled the reading on our little dials, and that perhaps we were even The Creators of the broken waves going through our antennas. We have said I, others, and I again and I forever and ever, in a black or a yellow skin, under an Athenian shell or a Theban one, under these ruins or those, under the same old ruins of little I's who die without knowing why, who live by fragments, enjoy themselves without ever really enjoying themselves, and come back again and again to understand what they had not understood and, perhaps, to build the full City of the great self at last. When we touch that fullness, our good will no longer clash with our evil, our pluses with our minuses, because everything will be our good and flow in the same direction; our nights will no longer be the opposite of our days, our loves a fraction of all loves, our little notes a cry torn from the great Note, because there will be only one music playing through our millions of instruments, only one love with a million faces and only one great day with its cool shades and rainbow cascades beneath the great tree of the world. Then it may become unnecessary to die, because we will have found the secret of the life that is reborn from its own joy one dies only from lack of joy and in order to find an ever greater joy.
This all, this great all has been seen by sages in their visions and by a few rare poets and thinkers: All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, to the south of us and to the North of us and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.19 Thou art woman and thou art man also; Thou art the boy and girl, and Thou art yonder worn and aged man that walkest bending upon a staff.... Thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet eyed.20 Thou art That, O Swetaketu.21 This great all that is us has shined at the summit of human accomplishment, left a few hieroglyphic traces on the walls of Thebes, and nourished initiates here and there at times we have entered a white radiance above the worlds where, in a flash, we have dissolved the little self and emerged into a cosmic consciousness.... But none of that has changed the world. We still did not have the clue that would connect that vision to this earth and make a new world with a new look. Our truths remained fragile; the earth remained refractory and rightly so. Why should it obey the illuminations from above if that light does not affect its matter, if it itself does not see and it itself is not illuminated? In truth, wisdom is very wise and the earth's darkness is not a negation of the Spirit, any more than night is a negation of day; it is an expectation and a calling for light, and so long as we do not call the light here, why should it trouble itself to move from its summits? So long as we do not turn our nocturnal half toward its sun, why should it be filled with light? If we seek solar wholeness on the summits of the mind, we shall have wholeness there, in a lovely thought; if we seek it in the heart, we shall have it there, in a tender emotion if we seek it in matter at every instant, we shall have that same wholeness in matter and at every instant of matter. We have to know where we are looking. We cannot reasonably find the light where we are not looking. Then, perhaps, we shall realize that this earth was not so dark after all. It was our look that was dark, our want of being that brought about the want of things. The earth's resistance is our own resistance and the promise of a solid truth: an innumerable bursting of rainbows into incarnate myriads instead of an empty radiance on the heights of the Spirit.
1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
were no impact of forces and no reactions, the consciousness would still be there, but static and inactive. But again this activity of consciousness might not be limited to an interpretation or a passive reaction to forces; it might also, if it chose, be The Creator or determinant of its reactions - as for instance to a blow on the body or the vital it might refuse the natural reactions of pain or anger and remain still and immobile or it might return an unusual reaction of love or pleasure. Also this consciousness might not be only a recipient and seer of forces, but a creator or putter out of forces - it might be not only a knower, but an energy, a dynamis. In this view, your definition becomes totally inadequate. Farther, the word personality is misleading; for what we usually know as personality is itself only a formation of consciousness. Behind it we are aware of a Person or Purusha who puts forward the mutable surface formation we call personality and who may even have many personalities at a time or different personalities at different times. This Purusha would be then a being and consciousness, would be not a result or an activity, but a constant reality, an intrinsic power of awareness and action inherent in the being, - as the being is self-existent, so the consciousness self-existent in the being, the Purusha. This is the realisation we have of it in Yogic experience, eternal reality of consciousness inherent in the eternal reality of existence, as in the concept and experience of Sachchidananda.
This is the crucial point in the question, what is consciousness, whether it is a temporary phenomenon of Nature or a reality in itself fundamental to existence. The first is the conclusion that is drawn, and must be drawn, from normal experience on the surface. The other is at best a metaphysical speculation or an instinctive feeling in humanity unless we go beyond the normal experience, deepen and widen the range of our present consciousness and test its inner depths and inferior abysses and supernormal heights, until we can touch its fundamental or its ultimate or its total reality as is done in Yoga. To judge from only normal and superficial experience as the ordinary mind does with phenomena is to miss the truth of things - we have to go behind the surface phenomenon to find the reality of what a
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The friend who said, 'We are lost!' did not know that there is a God who is our Protector. The friend who asked the others to pray to God was a jnani. He was aware that God is The Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the world. The third friend, who didn't want to trouble God with prayers and suggested climbing the tree, had ecstatic love of God. It is the very nature of such love that it makes a man think himself stronger than his Beloved. He is always alert lest his Beloved should suffer. The one desire of his life is to keep his Beloved from even being pricked in the foot by a thorn."
Ram served the Master and the devotees with delicious sweets.
1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Covetousness, envy, pride and wrath are the four elements of self, or nature, or hell, all of them inseparable from it. And the reason why it must be thus, and cannot be otherwise, is because the natural life of the creature is brought forth for the participation of some high supernatural good in The Creator. But it could have no fitness, no possible capacity to receive such good, unless it was in itself both an extremity of want and an extremity of desire for some high good. When therefore this natural life is deprived of or fallen from God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want continually desiring, and an extremity of desire continually wanting. And because it is that, its whole life can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride and wrath, all which is precisely nature, self, or hell. Now covetousness, pride and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire. Wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till one or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will. These four properties generate their own torment. They have no outward cause, nor any inward power of altering themselves. And therefore all self or nature must be in this state until some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. Whilst man indeed lives among the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may hold him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God, must find itself unavoidably devoured or shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride and wrath.
William Law
1.11 - The Second Genesis, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The desire to be, to exist distinct and separate from all that is not oneself, is evidently the essential cause of the world of forms and distinctions. If it is asked, What was the cause of the universe? we must reply, Itself. Who was The Creator of the being? Itself: itself is its own object, itself alone its reason for existence.
The universal manifestation is only the theatre on which all that wills to be affirms itself and advertises its existence. To be, to live, to exist for oneself, to take on individual consciousness, to play ones own play of will, to exercise and increase ones powers of personal action and reaction, to become something which is no longer the All and is yet the centre of all, to oppose and impose oneself on all, to be in oneself apart and alone the Absolute, such is the first creative desire. And in this creation to take place, to come to light, to be born, that is to say, to appear and substitute itself for what was before it and hold henceforth its place in the environment at the expense of others on the great scene of the world, to occupy that stage the most largely and for the longest time possible, to enjoy the sport of its lights and to play among its decorations, to be in the face of the universe a distinct, original and willing ego whose image shall be reflected as in innumerable mirrors by other egos,such is the desire of all that is.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
in a later language, not so much The Creator of Maya as himself
a creation of Maya? Do not both Lord and cosmos disappear
1.12 - Dhruva commences a course of religious austerities, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[3]: Explained severally the Brahmāṇḍa, or material universe; Brahmā, The Creator; Manu, the ruler of the period; and supreme or presiding spirit.
[4]: So the inscription upon the temple of Sais: Ἐγὼ εἶμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸς, καὶ ὂν, καὶ ἐσόμενον. So the Orphic verse, cited by Eusebius, beginning
1.12 - Love The Creator, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.12 - Love The Creator
class:The Wherefore of the Worlds
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Love The Creator
15th July 1915
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "The husb and of Mani Mallick's granddaughter was here. He read in a book that God could not be said to be quite wise and omniscient; otherwise, why should there be so much misery in the world? As regards death, it would be much better to kill a man all at once, instead of putting him through slow torture. Further, the author writes that if he himself were The Creator, he would have created a better world."
M. listened to these words in surprise and made no comment.
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature, nistraigun.ya. The Brahman is one but self-displayed in two aspects, the immutable Being and The Creator and originator of works in the mutable becoming, atman, sarvabhutani; it is the immobile omnipresent Soul of things and it is the spiritual principle of the mobile working of things, Purusha poised in himself and Purusha active in Prakriti; it is aks.ara and ks.ara. In both of these aspects the Divine Being, Purushottama, manifests himself in the universe; the immutable above all qualities is His poise of peace, self-possession, equality, samam brahma; from that proceeds His manifestation in the qualities of Prakriti and their universal workings; from the Purusha in Prakriti, from this
Brahman with qualities, proceed all the works1 of the universal energy, Karma, in man and in all existences; from that work proceeds the principle of sacrifice. Even the material interchange between gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typified in the dependence of rain and its product food on this working and on them the physical birth of creatures. For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajna, with the Divine
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as The Creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated sacrifice of the God-Man.
In the modern world the gods to whom human sacrifice is offered are personifications, not of Nature, but of mans own, home-made political ideals. These, of course, all refer to events in timeactual events in the past or the present, fancied events in the future. And here it should be noted that the philosophy which affirms the existence and the immediate realizableness of eternity is related to one kind of political theory and practice; the philosophy which affirms that what goes on in time is the only reality, results in a different kind of theory and justifies quite another kind of political practice. This has been clearly recognized by Marxist writers,* who point out that when Christianity is mainly preoccupied with events in time, it is a revolutionary religion, and that when, under mystical influences, it stresses the Eternal Gospel, of which the historical or pseudo-historical facts recorded in Scripture are but symbols, it becomes politically static and reactionary.
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
same symbolism to describe Adam's relation to The Creator on
the one hand and to the lower creatures on the other. 13
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the centre of being, The Creator, and the divine substance
hidden in the creature. Lest the reader be confused by this
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means that he is playing the role of The Creator-god in Genesis. 67
Just as Adam, before the creation of Eve, was supposed by vari-
1.13 - Posterity of Dhruva, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
The virtues thus celebrated by the Sūta and the Magadhā were chersed in the remembrance of the Rāja, and practised by him when occasion arose. Protecting this earth, the monarch performed many great sacrificial ceremonies, accompanied by liberal donations. His subjects soon approached him, suffering from the famine by which they were afflicted, as all the edible plants had perished during the season of anarchy. In reply to his question of the cause of their coming, they told him, that in the interval in which the earth was without a king all vegetable products had been withheld, and that consequently the people had perished. "Thou," said they, "art the bestower of subsistence to us; thou art appointed, by The Creator, the protector of the people: grant us vegetables, the support of the lives of thy subjects, who are perishing with hunger."
On hearing this, Prithu took up his divine bow Ajagava, and his celestial arrows, and in great wrath marched forth to assail the Earth. Earth, assuming the figure of a cow, fled hastily from him, and traversed, through fear of the king, the regions of Brahmā and the heavenly spheres; but wherever went the supporter of living things, there she beheld Vaiṇya with uplifted weapons: at last, trembling with terror, and anxious to escape his arrows, the Earth addressed Prithu, the hero of resistless prowess. "Know you not, king of men," said the Earth, "the sin of killing a female, that you thus perseveringly seek to slay me." The prince replied; "When the happiness of many is secured by. the destruction of one malignant being, the death of that being is an act of virtue." "But," said the Earth, "if, in order to promote the welfare of your subjects, you put an end to me, whence, best of monarchs, will thy people derive their support." "Disobedient to my rule," rejoined Prithu, "if I destroy thee, I will support my people by the efficacy of my own devotions." Then the Earth, overcome with apprehension, and trembling in every limb, respectfully saluted the king, and thus spake: "All undertakings are successful, if suitable means of effecting them are employed.
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[7]: The birth of Prithu is to be considered as the sacrifice, of which Brahmā, The Creator, was the performer; but in other places, as in the Padma, it is considered that an actual sacrificial rite was celebrated, at which the first encomiasts were produced. The Bhāgavata does not account for their appearance.
[8]: 'Having willed or determined the Manu Svāyambhuva to be the calf:' ###. So the Padma P.: ###. The Bhāgavata has, 'Having made the Manu the calf.' By the calf,' or Manu in that character, is typified, the commentator observes, the promoter of the multiplication of progeny: ###.
1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
11:The philosophies which recognise Mind alone as The Creator of the worlds or accept an original principle with Mind as the only mediator between it and the forms of the universe, may be divided into the purely noumenal and the idealistic. The purely noumenal recognise in the cosmos only the work of Mind, Thought, Idea: but Idea may be purely arbitrary and have no essential relation to any real Truth of existence; such Truth, if it exists, may be regarded as a mere Absolute aloof from all relations and irreconcilable with a world of relations. The idealistic interpretation supposes a relation between the Truth behind and the conceptive phenomenon in front, a relation which is not merely that of an antinomy and opposition. The view I am presenting goes farther in idealism; it sees the creative Idea as Real-Idea, that is to say, a power of Conscious Force expressive of real being, born out of real being and partaking of its nature and neither a child of the Void nor a weaver of fictions. It is conscious Reality throwing itself into mutable forms of its own imperishable and immutable substance. The world is therefore not a figment of conception in the universal Mind, but a conscious birth of that which is beyond Mind into forms of itself. A Truth of conscious being supports these forms and expresses itself in them, and the knowledge corresponding to the truth thus expressed reigns as a supramental Truth-consciousness organising real ideas in a perfect harmony before they are cast into the mental-vital-material mould. Mind, Life and Body are an inferior consciousness and a partial expression which strives to arrive in the mould of a various evolution at that superior expression of itself already existent to the Beyond-Mind. That which is in the Beyond-Mind is the ideal which in its own conditions it is labouring to realise.
12:From our ascending point of view we may say that the Real is behind all that exists; it expresses itself intermediately in an Ideal which is a harmonised truth of itself; the Ideal throws out a phenomenal reality of variable conscious-being which, inevitably drawn towards its own essential Reality, tries at last to recover it entirely whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental. The very facts of our consciousness, its constitution and its necessity presuppose such a triple order; they negate the dual and irreconcilable antithesis of a mere Absolute to a mere relativity.
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14:But if we suppose an infinite Mind which would be free from our limitations, that at least might well be The Creator of the universe? But such a Mind would be something quite different from the definition of mind as we know it: it would be something beyond mentality; it would be the supramental Truth. An infinite Mind constituted in the terms of mentality as we know it could only create an infinite chaos, a vast clash of chance, accident, vicissitude wandering towards an indeterminate end after which it would be always tentatively groping and aspiring. An infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Mind would not be mind at all, but supramental knowledge.
15:Mind, as we know it, is a reflective mirror which receives presentations or images of a pre-existent Truth or Fact, either external to or at least vaster than itself. It represents to itself from moment to moment the phenomenon that is or has been. It possesses also the faculty of constructing in itself possible images other than those of the actual fact presented to it; that is to say, it represents to itself not only phenomenon that has been but also phenomenon that may be: it cannot, be it noted, represent to itself phenomenon that assuredly will be, except when it is an assured repetition of what is or has been. It has, finally, the faculty of forecasting new modifications which it seeks to construct out of the meeting of what has been and what may be, out of the fulfilled possibility and the unfulfilled, something that it sometimes succeeds in constructing more or less exactly, sometimes fails to realise, but usually finds cast into other forms than it forecasted and turned to other ends than it desired or intended.
1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not works and I should be The Creator of confusion and slay these creatures. As those who know not act with attachment to the action, he who knows should act without attachment, having for his motive to hold together the peoples. He should not create a division of their understanding in the ignorant who are attached to their works; he should set them to all actions, doing them himself with knowledge and in Yoga." There are few more important passages in the Gita than these seven striking couplets.
But let us clearly understand that they must not be interpreted, as the modern pragmatic tendency concerned much more with the present affairs of the world than with any high and far-off spiritual possibility seeks to interpret them, as no more than a philosophical and religious justification of social service, patriotic, cosmopolitan and humanitarian effort and attachment to the hundred eager social schemes and dreams which attract the modern intellect. It is not the rule of a large moral and intellectual altruism which is here announced, but that of a spiritual unity with God and with this world of beings who dwell in him and in whom he dwells. It is not an injunction to subordinate the individual to society and humanity or immolate egoism on the altar of the human collectivity, but to fulfil the individual in God and to sacrifice the ego on the one true altar of the allembracing Divinity. The Gita moves on a plane of ideas and experiences higher than those of the modern mind which is at the stage indeed of a struggle to shake off the coils of egoism, but is still mundane in its outlook and intellectual and moral rather than spiritual in its temperament. Patriotism, cosmopolitanism, service of society, collectivism, humanitarianism, the ideal or religion of humanity are admirable aids towards our escape from our primary condition of individual, family, social, national egoism into a secondary stage in which the individual realises, as far as it can be done on the intellectual, moral and emotional level, - on that level he cannot do it entirely in the right and perfect way, the way of the integral truth of his being, - the oneness of his existence with the existence of other beings. But
1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is especially evident in the two realms which in the ordinary scale of our powers stand nearest to the reason and on either side of it, the aesthetic and the ethical being, the search for Beauty and the search for Good. Mans seeking after beauty reaches its most intense and satisfying expression in the great creative arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, but in its full extension there is no activity of his nature or his life from which it need or ought to be excluded,provided we understand beauty both in its widest and its truest sense. A complete and universal appreciation of beauty and the making entirely beautiful our whole life and being must surely be a necessary character of the perfect individual and the perfect society. But in its origin this seeking for beauty is not rational; it springs from the roots of our life, it is an instinct and an impulse, an instinct of aesthetic satisfaction and an impulse of aesthetic creation and enjoyment. Starting from the infrarational parts of our being, this instinct and impulse begin with much imperfection and impurity and with great crudities both in creation and in appreciation. It is here that the reason comes in to distinguish, to enlighten, to correct, to point out the deficiencies and the crudities, to lay down laws of aesthetics and to purify our appreciation and our creation by improved taste and right knowledge. While we are thus striving to learn and correct ourselves, it may seem to be the true law-giver both for the artist and the admirer and, though not The Creator of our aesthetic instinct and impulse, yet The Creator in us of an aesthetic conscience and its vigilant judge and guide. That which was an obscure and erratic activity, it makes self-conscious and rationally discriminative in its work and enjoyment.
But again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic seeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is accomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed and left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does not fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the reason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, The Creator within us; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power which must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations, but in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in power and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and truth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the influx, moderate and repress the divine enthusiasm of creation and force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings down the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself the intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high and even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent. Genius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and its instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of the reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement when it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the mere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of vision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical process of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts the canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down by it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to put forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the intellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well and with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is formal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the embodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its inner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source of ecstasy, Ananda.
There have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason, in which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in poetry and art; there have even been nations which in their great formative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a meticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain greatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and perfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme inspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been not the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim. Their leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and nature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction rather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in inspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not merely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely correct, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste. Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created.
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This predominance given to reason and taste first and foremost, sometimes even almost alone, in the creation and appreciation of beauty arises from a temper of mind which is critical rather than creative; and in regard to creation its theory falls into a capital error. All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner power of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the form to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity of the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of beauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its svarpa and svabhva. Therefore this discriminating inner sense rejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere diversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective, while it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the full truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony, proportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any set law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth of the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of beauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis. The discrimination which works in The Creator is therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working. When it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational, and this happens when these cease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands or vagaries,the work is flawed and a subsequent act of self-criticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist who attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or recreation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty.
In the appreciation of beauty it has a part, but it is not even there the supreme judge or law-giver. The business of the intellect is to analyse the elements, parts, external processes, apparent principles of that which it studies and explain their relations and workings; in doing this it instructs and enlightens the lower mentality which has, if left to itself, the habit of doing things or seeing what is done and taking all for granted without proper observation and fruitful understanding. But as with truth of religion, so with the highest and deepest truth of beauty, the intellectual reason cannot seize its inner sense and reality, not even the inner truth of its apparent principles and processes, unless it is aided by a higher insight not its own. As it cannot give a method, process or rule by which beauty can or ought to be created, so also it cannot give to the appreciation of beauty that deeper insight which it needs; it can only help to remove the dullness and vagueness of the habitual perceptions and conceptions of the lower mind which prevent it from seeing beauty or which give it false and crude aesthetic habits: it does this by giving to the mind an external idea and rule of the elements of the thing it has to perceive and appreciate. What is farther needed is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an intuitive response in the soul. Reason which studies always from outside, cannot give this inner and more intimate contact; it has to aid itself by a more direct insight springing from the soul itself and to call at every step on the intuitive mind to fill up the gap of its own deficiencies.
We see this in the history of the development of literary and artistic criticism. In its earliest stages the appreciation of beauty is instinctive, natural, inborn, a response of the aesthetic sensitiveness of the soul which does not attempt to give any account of itself to the thinking intelligence. When the rational intelligence applies itself to this task, it is not satisfied with recording faithfully the nature of the response and the thing it has felt, but it attempts to analyse, to lay down what is necessary in order to create a just aesthetic gratification, it prepares a grammar of technique, an artistic law and canon of construction, a sort of mechanical rule of process for the creation of beauty, a fixed code or Shastra. This brings in the long reign of academic criticism superficial, technical, artificial, governed by the false idea that technique, of which alone critical reason can give an entirely adequate account, is the most important part of creation and that to every art there can correspond an exhaustive science which will tell us how the thing is done and give us the whole secret and process of its doing. A time comes when The Creator of beauty revolts and declares the charter of his own freedom, generally in the shape of a new law or principle of creation, and this freedom once vindicated begins to widen itself and to carry with it the critical reason out of all its familiar bounds. A more developed appreciation emerges which begins to seek for new principles of criticism, to search for the soul of the work itself and explain the form in relation to the soul or to study The Creator himself or the spirit, nature and ideas of the age he lived in and so to arrive at a right understanding of his work. The intellect has begun to see that its highest business is not to lay down laws for The Creator of beauty, but to help us to understand himself and his work, not only its form and elements but the mind from which it sprang and the impressions its effects create in the mind that receives. Here criticism is on its right road, but on a road to a consummation in which the rational understanding is overpassed and a higher faculty opens, suprarational in its origin and nature.
For the conscious appreciation of beauty reaches its height of enlightenment and enjoyment not by analysis of the beauty enjoyed or even by a right and intelligent understanding of it,these things are only a preliminary clarifying of our first unenlightened sense of the beautiful,but by an exaltation of the soul in which it opens itself entirely to the light and power and joy of the creation. The soul of beauty in us identifies itself with the soul of beauty in the thing created and feels in appreciation the same divine intoxication and uplifting which the artist felt in creation. Criticism reaches its highest point when it becomes the record, account, right description of this response; it must become itself inspired, intuitive, revealing. In other words, the action of the intuitive mind must complete the action of the rational intelligence and it may even wholly replace it and do more powerfully the peculiar and proper work of the intellect itself; it may explain more intimately to us the secret of the form, the strands of the process, the inner cause, essence, mechanism of the defects and limitations of the work as well as of its qualities. For the intuitive intelligence when it has been sufficiently trained and developed, can take up always the work of the intellect and do it with a power and light and insight greater and surer than the power and light of the intellectual judgment in its widest scope. There is an intuitive discrimination which is more keen and precise in its sight than the reasoning intelligence.
1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Someone told me of an extraordinarily high degree of purity. He said: A certain man,2 on seeing a beautiful body, thereupon glorified The Creator, and from that one look he was moved to the love of God and to a fountain of tears. And it was wonderful to see how what would have been a cause of destruction for one was for another the supernatural cause of a crown. If such a person always feels and behaves in the same way on similar occasions, then he has risen immortal before the general resurrection.
Let us be guided by the same rule in singing melodies and songs. For lovers of God are moved to holy gaiety, to divine love and to tears both by worldly and by spiritual songs; but lovers of pleasure to the opposite.
1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That the Gita contains as its kernel this second and real object of the Avatarhood, is evident even from this passage by itself rightly considered; but it becomes much clearer if we take it, not by itself, - always the wrong way to deal with the texts of the Gita, - but in its right close connection with other passages and with the whole teaching. We have to remember and take together its doctrine of the one Self in all, of the Godhead seated in the heart of every creature, its teaching about the relations between The Creator and his creation, its strongly emphasised idea of the vibhuti, - noting too the language in which the
Teacher gives his own divine example of selfless works which applies equally to the human Krishna and the divine Lord of the worlds, and giving their due weight to such passages as that in the ninth chapter, "Deluded minds despise me lodged in the human body because they know not my supreme nature of being,
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the divine consciousness The Creator of the fourfold Law and the doer of the works of the world and at the same time in the silence of the divine consciousness the impartial witness of the works of his own Nature, - for he is always, beyond both the silence and the action, the supreme Purushottama. And the Gita is able to meet all these oppositions and to reconcile all these contraries because it starts from the Vedantic view of existence, of God and the universe.
For in the Vedantic view of things all these apparently formidable objections are null and void from the beginning.
1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Creator, the same language which he will employ when he has to describe his creation of the world. "Although I am the unborn Lord of creatures, I create (loose forth) my self by my
Maya," presiding over the actions of my Prakriti. Here there is no question of the Lord and the human Jiva or of the Father and the Son, the divine Man, but only of the Lord and his Prakriti.
1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
The illustrious son of the Daitya king, Prahlāda, being yet a boy, resided in the dwelling of his preceptor, where he read such writings as are studied in early years. On one occasion he came, accompanied by his teacher, to the court of his father, and bowed before his feet as he was drinking. Hiraṇyakaśipu desired his prostrate son to rise, and said to him, "Repeat, boy, in substance, and agreeably, what during the period of your studies you have acquired." "Hear, sire," replied Prahlāda, "what in obedience to your commands I will repeat, the substance of all I have learned: listen attentively to that which wholly occupies my thoughts. I have learned to adore him who is without beginning, middle, or end, increase or diminution; the imperishable lord of the world, the universal cause of causes." On hearing these words, the sovereign of the Daityas, his eyes red with wrath, and lip swollen with indignation, turned to the preceptor of his son, and said, "Vile Brahman, what is this preposterous commendation of my foe, that, in disrespect to me, you have taught this boy to utter?" "King of the Daityas," replied the Guru, "it is not worthy of you to give way to passion: that which your son has uttered, he has not been taught by me." "By whom then," said Hiraṇyakaśipu to the lad, "by whom has this lesson, boy, been taught you? your teacher denies that it proceeds from him." "Viṣṇu, father," answered Prahlāda, "is the instructor of the whole world: what else should any one teach or learn, save him the supreme spirit?" "Blockhead," exclaimed the king, "who is this Viṣṇu, whose name you thus reiterate so impertinently before me, who am the sovereign of the three worlds?" "The glory of Viṣṇu," replied Prahlāda, "is to be meditated upon by the devout; it cannot be described: he is the supreme lord, who is all things, and from whom all things proceed." To this the king rejoined, "Are you desirous of death, fool, that you give the title of supreme lord to any one whilst I survive?" "Viṣṇu, who is Brahma," said Prahlāda, "is The Creator and protector, not of me alone, but of all human beings, and even, father, of you: he is the supreme lord of all. Why should you, sire, be offended?" Hiraṇyakaśipu then exclaimed, "What evil spirit has entered into the breast of this silly boy, that thus, like one possessed, he utters such profanity?" "Not into my heart alone," said Prahlāda, "has Viṣṇu entered, but he pervades all the regions of the universe, and by his omnipresence influences the conduct of all beings, mine, fattier, and thine[2]." "Away with the wretch!" cried the king; "take him to his preceptor's mansion. By whom could he have been instigated to repeat the lying praises of my foe?"
According to the commands of his father, Prahlāda was conducted by the Daityas back to the house of his Guru; where, assiduous in attendance on his preceptor, he constantly improved in wisdom. After a considerable time had elapsed, the sovereign of the Asuras sent for him again; and on his arrival in his presence, desired him to recite some poetical composition. Prahlāda immediately began, "May he from whom matter and soul originate, from whom all that moves or is unconscious proceeds, he who is the cause of all this creation, Viṣṇu, be favourable unto us!" On hearing which, Hiraṇyakaśipu exclaimed, "Kill the wretch! he is not fit to live, who is a traitor to his friends, a burning brand to his own race!" and his attendants, obedient to his orders, snatched up their weapons, and rushed in crowds upon Prahlāda, to destroy him. The prince calmly looked upon them, and said, "Daityas, as truly as Viṣṇu is present in your weapons and in my body, so truly shall those weapons fail to harm me:" and accordingly, although struck heavily and repeatedly by hundreds of the Daityas, the prince felt not the least pain, and his strength was ever renewed. His father then endeavoured to persuade him to refrain from glorifying his enemy, and promised him immunity if the would not be so foolish as to persevere but Prahlāda replied, that he felt no fear as long as his immortal guardian against all dangers was present in his mind, the recollection of whom was alone sufficient to dissipate all the perils consequent upon birth or human infirmities.
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[2]: The Purāṇas teach constantly incompatible doctrines. According to this passage, the Supreme Being is not the inert cause of creation only, but exercises the p. 128 functions of an active Providence. The commentator quotes a text of the Veda in support of this view: 'Universal soul entering into men, governs their conduct.' Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the Vedas as in the Purāṇas; but apparently the most ancient parts of the Hindu ritual recognised an active ruler in The Creator of the universe; the notion of abstract deity originating with the schools of philosophy.
[3]: This is the purport of the sentence apparently, and is that which the comment in part confirms. Literally it is, 'A blow is the pleasure of those whose eyes are darkened by ignorance, whose limbs, exceedingly benumbed, desire pleasure by exercise: The commentator divides the sentence, however, and reads it, 'As fatigue would be like pleasure to paralyzed limbs; and a blow is enjoyment to those who are blinded by delusion; that is, by love; for to them a slap, or even a kick, from a mistress would be a favour.' It is not improbably an allusion to some such venerable pastime as blindman's buff. This interpretation, however, leaves the construction of the first half of the sentence imperfect, unless the nominative and verb apply to both portions.
1.17 - ON THE WAY OF THE CREATOR, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
object:1.17 - ON THE WAY OF The Creator
author class:Friedrich Nietzsche
--
ON THE WAY OF The Creator
Is it your wish, my brother, to go into solitude? Is
--
Lonely one, you are going the way of The Creator:
65
1.17 - The Divine Soul, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:If we suppose this soul to take its poise, its centre in the consciousness of the individual Divine living and acting in distinct relation with the "others", still it will have in the foundation of its consciousness the entire unity from which all emerges and it will have in the background of that consciousness the extended and the modified unity and to any of these it will be capable of returning and of contemplating from them its individuality. In the Veda all these poises are asserted of the gods. In essence the gods are one existence which the sages call by different names; but in their action founded in and proceeding from the large Truth and Right Agni or another is said to be all the other gods, he is the One that becomes all; at the same time he is said to contain all the gods in himself as the nave of a wheel contains the spokes, he is the One that contains all; and yet as Agni he is described as a separate deity, one who helps all the others, exceeds them in force and knowledge, yet is inferior to them in cosmic position and is employed by them as messenger, priest and worker, - The Creator of the world and father, he is yet the son born of our works, he is, that is to say, the original and the manifested indwelling Self or Divine, the One that inhabits all.
10:All the relations of the divine soul with God or its supreme Self and with its other selves in other forms will be determined by this comprehensive self-knowledge. These relations will be relations of being, of consciousness and knowledge, of will and force, of love and delight. Infinite in their potentiality of variation, they need exclude no possible relation of soul with soul that is compatible with the preservation of the inalienable sense of unity in spite of every phenomenon of difference. Thus in its relations of enjoyment the divine soul will have the delight of all its own experience in itself; it will have the delight of all its experience of relation with others as a communion with other selves in other forms created for a varied play in the universe; it will have too the delight of the experiences of its other selves as if they were its own - as indeed they really are. And all this capacity it will have because it will be aware of its own experiences, of its relations with others and of the experiences of others and their relations with itself as all the joy or Ananda of the One, the supreme Self, its own self, differentiated by its separate habitation of all these forms comprehended in its own being but still one in difference. Because this unity is the basis of all its experience, it will be free from the discords of our divided consciousness, divided by ignorance and a separatist egoism; all these selves and their relations will play consciously into each other's hands; they will part and melt into each other as the numberless notes of an eternal harmony.
1.18 - Hiranyakasipu's reiterated attempts to destroy his son, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Thus spoken to by the youth, the priests of the Daitya sovereign were incensed, and instantly had recourse to magic incantations, by which a female form, enwreathed with fiery flame, was engendered: she was of fearful aspect, and the earth was parched beneath her tread, as she approached Prahlāda, and smote him with a fiery trident on the breast. In vain! for the weapon fell, broken into a hundred pieces, upon the ground. Against the breast in which the imperishable Hari resides the thunderbolt would be shivered, much more should such a weapon be split in pieces. The magic being, then directed against the virtuous prince by the wicked priest, turned upon them, and, having quickly destroyed them, disappeared. But Prahlāda, beholding them perish, hastily appealed to Kṛṣṇa, the eternal, for succour, and said, "Oh Janārddana! who art every where, The Creator and substance of the world, preserve these Brahmans from this magical and insupportable fire. As thou art Viṣṇu, present in all creatures, and the protector of the world, so let these priests be restored to life. If, whilst devoted to the omnipresent Viṣṇu, I think no sinful resentment against my foes, let these priests be restored to life. If those who have come to slay me, those by whom poison was given me, the fire that would have burned, the elephants that would have crushed, and snakes that would have stung me, have been regarded by me as friends; if I have been unshaken in soul, and am without fault in thy sight; then, I implore thee, let these, the priests of the Asuras, be now restored to life." Thus having prayed, the Brahmans immediately rose up, uninjured and rejoicing; and bowing respectfully to Prahlāda, they blessed him, and said, "Excellent prince, may thy days be many; irresistible be thy prowess; and power and wealth and posterity be thine." Having thus spoken, they withdrew, and went and told the king of the Daityas all that had passed.
Footnotes and references:
1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
One can assume other attitudes toward God as well the attitude in which the devotee serenely contemplates God as The Creator, the attitude of service to Him, the attitude of friendship, the attitude of motherly affection, or the attitude of conjugal love. The conjugal relationship, the attitude of a woman to her husb and or sweetheart, contains all the rest-serenity, service, friendship, and motherly affection. (To M.) Which one of these appeals to your mind?"
M: "I like them all."
1.18 - Mind and Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:That apprehending consciousness, the Prajnana, places, as we have seen, the working of the indivisible All, active and formative, as a process and object of creative knowledge before the consciousness of the same All, originative and cognisant as the possessor and witness of its own working, - somewhat as a poet views the creations of his own consciousness placed before him in it as if they were things other than The Creator and his creative force, yet all the time they are really no more than the play of self-formation of his own being in itself and are indivisible there from their creator. Thus Prajnana makes the fundamental division which leads to all the rest, the division of the Purusha, the conscious soul who knows and sees and by his vision creates and ordains, and the Prakriti, the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his knowledge and his vision, his creation and his allordaining power. Both are one Being, one existence, and the forms seen and created are multiple forms of that Being which are placed by Him as knowledge before Himself as knower, by Himself as Force before Himself as Creator. The last action of this apprehending consciousness takes place when the Purusha pervading the conscious extension of his being, present at every point of himself as well as in his totality, inhabiting every form, regards the whole as if separately, from each of the standpoints he has taken; he views and governs the relations of each soulform of himself with other soul-forms from the standpoint of will and knowledge appropriate to each particular form.
9:Thus the elements of division have come into being. First, the infinity of the One has translated itself into an extension in conceptual Time and Space; secondly, the omnipresence of the One in that self-conscious extension translates itself into a multiplicity of the conscious soul, the many Purushas of the Sankhya; thirdly, the multiplicity of soul-forms has translated itself into a divided habitation of the extended unity. This divided habitation is inevitable the moment these multiple Purushas do not each inhabit a separate world of its own, do not each possess a separate Prakriti building a separate universe, but rather all enjoy the same Prakriti, - as they must do, being only soulforms of the One presiding over the multiple creations of His power, - yet have relations with each other in the one world of being created by the one Prakriti. The Purusha in each form actively identifies himself with each; he delimits himself in that and sets off his other forms against it in his consciousness as containing his other selves which are identical with him in being but different in relation, different in the various extent, various range of movement and various view of the one substance, force, consciousness, delight which each is actually deploying at any given moment of Time or in any given field of Space. Granted that in the divine Existence, perfectly aware of itself, this is not a binding limitation, not an identification to which the soul becomes enslaved and which it cannot exceed as we are enslaved to our self-identification with the body and unable to exceed the limitation of our conscious ego, unable to escape from a particular movement of our consciousness in Time determining our particular field in Space; granted all this, still there is a free identification from moment to moment which only the inalienable self-knowledge of the divine soul prevents from fixing itself in an apparently rigid chain of separation and Time succession such as that in which our consciousness seems to be fixed and chained.
1.200-1.224 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Him? They are mere words. The sage is Brahman - that is all. Mental functioning is necessary to communicate his experience. He is said to be contemplating the unbroken expanse. The Creator, Suka and others are also said never to swerve from such contemplation.
--
The subtle body of The Creator is the mystic sound Pranava, which is sound and light. The universe resolves into sound and light and then into transcendence - Param.
Talk 216.
1.20 - ON CHILD AND MARRIAGE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
creator. Thirst for The Creator, an arrow and longing
for the overman: tell me, my brother, is this your will
1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
All these monarchs, and whatever others may be invested with authority by the mighty Viṣṇu, as instruments for the preservation of the world; all the kings who have been, and all who shall be; are all, most worthy Brahman, but portions of the universal Viṣṇu. The rulers of the gods, the rulers of the Daityas, the rulers of the Dānavas, and the rulers of all malignant spirits; the chief amongst beasts, amongst birds, amongst men, amongst serpents; the best of trees, of mountains, of planets; either those that now are, or that shall hereafter be, the most exalted of their kind; are but portions of the universal Viṣṇu. The power of protecting created things, the preservation of the world, resides with no other than Hari, the lord of all. He is The Creator, who creates the world; he, the eternal, preserves it in its existence; and he, the destroyer, destroys it; invested severally with the attributes of foulness, goodness, and gloom. By a fourfold manifestation does Janārddana operate in creation, preservation, and destruction. In one portion, as Brahmā, the invisible assumes a visible form; in another portion he, as Marīci and the rest, is the progenitor of all creatures; his third portion is time; his fourth is all beings: and thus he becomes quadruple in creation, invested with the quality of passion. In the preservation of the world he is, in one portion, Viṣṇu; in another portion he is Manu and the other patriarchs; he is time in a third; and all beings in a fourth portion: and thus, endowed with the property of goodness, Puruṣottama preserves the world. When he assumes the property of darkness, at the end of all things, the unborn deity becomes in one portion Rudra; in another, the destroying fire; in a third, time; and in a fourth, all beings: and thus, in a quadruple form, he is the destroyer of the world. This, Brahman, is the fourfold condition of the deity at all seasons.
Brahmā, Dakṣa, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Hari, which are the causes of creation. Viṣṇu, Manu and the rest, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Viṣṇu, which are the causes of duration. Rudra, the destroying fire, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Janārddana that are exerted for universal dissolution. In the beginning and the duration of the world, until the period of its end, creation is the work of Brahmā, the patriarchs, and living animals. Brahmā creates in the beginning; then the patriarchs beget progeny; and then animals incessantly multiply their kinds: but Brahmā is not the active agent in creation, independent of time; neither are the patriarchs, nor living animals. So, in the periods of creation and of dissolution, the four portions of the god of gods are equally essential. Whatever, oh Brahman, is engendered by any living being, the body of Hari is cooperative in the birth of that being; so whatever destroys any existing thing, movable or stationary, at any time, is the destroying form of Janārddana as Rudra. Thus Janārddana is The Creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the whole world-being threefold-in the several seasons of creation, preservation, and destruction, according to his assumption of the three qualities: but his highest glory[3] is detached from all qualities; for the fourfold essence of the supreme spirit is composed of true wisdom, pervades all things, is only to be appreciated by itself, and admits of no similitude.
Maitreya said:-
1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
From this point of view it is an excellent thing, a sign of great promise, that the wheel of civilisation has been following its past and present curve upward from a solid physical knowledge through a successive sounding of higher and higher powers that mediate between Matter and Spirit. The human intellect in modern times has been first drawn to exhaust the possibilities of materialism by an immense dealing with life and the world upon the basis of Matter as the sole reality, Matter as the Eternal, Matter as the Brahman, anna brahma. Afterwards it had begun to turn towards the conception of existence as the large pulsation of a great evolving Life, The Creator of Matter, which would have enabled it to deal with our existence on the basis of Life as the original reality, Life as the great Eternal, pro brahma. And already it has in germ, in preparation a third conception, the discovery of a great self-expressing and self-finding inner Mind other than our surface mentality as a master-power of existence, and that should lead towards a rich attempt to deal with our possibilities and our ways of living on the basis of Mind as the original reality, the great Eternal, mano brahma. It would also be a sign of promise if these conceptions succeeded each other with rapidity, with a large but swift evocation of the possibilities of each level; for that would show that there is a readiness in our subconscient Nature and that we need not linger in each stage for centuries.
But still a subjective age of mankind must be an adventure full of perils and uncertainties as are all great adventures of the race. It may wander long before it finds itself or may not find itself at all and may swing back to a new repetition of the cycle. The true secret can only be discovered if in the third stage, in an age of mental subjectivism, the idea becomes strong of the mind itself as no more than a secondary power of the Spirits working and of the Spirit as the great Eternal, the original and, in spite of the many terms in which it is both expressed and hidden, the sole reality, ayam tm brahma. Then only will the real, the decisive endeavour begin and life and the world be studied, known, dealt with in all directions as the self-finding and self-expression of the Spirit. Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Drishtim jnanamayim kritva, Brahma mayam pasyet jagat - Make your outlook right. The Creator knows how to take care of His Creation.
D.: What is the best thing to do for ensuring the future?
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Drishtim jnanamayim kritva, Brahma mayam pasyet jagat Make your outlook right. The Creator knows how to take care of His Creation.
D.: What is the best thing to do for ensuring the future?
--
There are three outlooks possible:(1) The Vyavaharika: The man sees the world in all its variety, surmises The Creator and believes in himself as the subject. All these are thus reduced to the three fundamentals, jagat, jiva and Isvara. He learns the existence of The Creator and tries to reach him in order to gain immortality. If one is thus released from bondage, there are all other individuals existing as before who should work out their own salvation. He more or less admits the One Reality underlying all these phenomena. The phenomena are due to the play of maya. Maya is the sakti of Isvara or the activity of Reality. Thus, existence of different souls, objects, etc., do not clash with the advaitic point of view.
(2) The Pratibhasika: The jagat, jiva and Isvara are all cognised by the seer only. They do not have any existence independent of
--
The question arises why then do all the sastras speak of the Lord as The Creator? How can the creature that you are create The Creator and argue that the jagat, jiva and Isvara are mental conceptions only?
The answer is as follows:You know that your father of this jagrat state is dead and that several years have elapsed since his death. However you see him in your dream and recognise him to be your father, of whom you were born and who has left patrimony to you. Here The Creator is in the creature. Again, you dream that you are serving a king and that you are a part in the administrative wheel of the kingdom. As soon as you wake up all of them have disappeared leaving you, the single individual, behind. Where were they all? Only in yourself.
The same analogy holds good in the other case also.
1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But, evidently, the individual embodied mind is not The Creator of the phenomenon of Matter; earth-existence cannot be the result of the human mind which is itself the result of earthexistence. If we say that the world exists only in our own minds, we express a non-fact and a confusion; for the material world
existed before man was upon the earth and it will go on existing if man disappears from the earth or even if our individual mind abolishes itself in the Infinite. We must conclude then that there is a universal Mind, subconscious to us in the form of the universe or superconscious in its spirit, which has created that form for its habitation. And since The Creator must have preceded and must exceed its creation, this really implies a superconscient Mind which by the instrumentality of a universal sense creates2 in itself the relation of form with form and constitutes the rhythm of the material universe. But this also is no complete solution; it tells us that Matter is a creation of Consciousness, but it does not explain how Consciousness came to create Matter as the basis of its cosmic workings.
6:We shall understand better if we go back at once to the original principle of things. Existence is in its activity a ConsciousForce which presents the workings of its force to its consciousness as forms of its own being. Since Force is only the action of one sole-existing Conscious-Being, its results can be nothing else but forms of that Conscious-Being; Substance or Matter, then, is only a form of Spirit. The appearance which this form of Spirit assumes to our senses is due to that dividing action of Mind from which we have been able to deduce consistently the whole phenomenon of the universe. We know now that Life is an action of Conscious-Force of which material forms are the result; Life involved in those forms, appearing in them first as inconscient force, evolves and brings back into manifestation as Mind the consciousness which is the real self of the force and which never ceased to exist in it even when unmanifest. We know also that
1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
conquerors that the grave of The Creator was upon the top of Mount
Cabunian. Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Vice or passion is not originally planted in nature, for God is not The Creator of passions. But there are in us many natural virtues from Him, among which are certainly the following: mercy, for even the pagans are compassionate; love, for even dumb animals often weep at the loss of one another; faith, for we all give birth to it of ourselves; hope, for we lend, and sail, and sow, hoping for the best.2 So if, as has been shown, love is a natural virtue in us, and is the bond3 and fulfilment of the law,4 then it follows that the virtues are not far from nature. And those who plead their inability to practise them ought to be ashamed.
Above nature are chastity, freedom from anger, humility, prayer, vigil, fasting, constant compunction. Some of them men teach us, others angels, and of others the Teacher and Giver is God the Word Himself.
--
All creatures have received from The Creator their order of being and their beginning, and some their end too. But the end of virtue is infinite. For the Psalmist says: I have seen the end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is exceedingly broad and boundless.1 If some good ascetics pass from the strength of action to the strength2 of contemplation, and if love never ceases,3 and if the Lord will guard the coming in of your fear and the going out4 of your love, then from this it follows that there is actually no limit to love. We shall never cease to advance in it, either in the present or in the future life, continually adding light to light. And however strange what I have said may seem to many, nevertheless it shall be said. According to the testimonies we have given, I would say, blessed Father, even the spiritual beings (i.e. the angels) do not lack progress; on the contrary, they ever add glory to glory, and knowledge to knowledge.
Do not be astonished if the demons often suggest to us good thoughts, and intellectual arguments against them. The aim of our foes in this case is to make us believe that they also know the thoughts of our hearts.
--
God is not the cause or The Creator of evil, and those who say that certain passions are natural to the soul have been deceived not knowing that we have turned the constituent qualities of nature into passions. For instance, nature gives us the seed for childbearing, but we have perverted this into fornication. Nature provides us with the means of showing anger against the serpent but we have used this against our neighbour. Nature inspires us with zeal to make us compete for the virtues, but we compete in evil. It is natural for the soul to desire glory, but the glory on high. It is natural to be overbearing, but against the demons. Joy is also natural to us, but a joy on account of the Lord and the welfare of our neighbour. Nature has also given us resentment, but to be used against the enemies of the soul. We have received a desire for pleasure,5 but not for profligacy.
An energetic soul rouses the demons against itself. But as our conflicts increase, so do our crowns. He who has never been struck by the enemy will certainly not be crowned. But the warrior who does not flinch despite his incidental falls will be glorified by the angels as a champion.
1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:Here in the material world everything is founded upon the formula of material substance. Sense, Life, Thought found themselves upon what the ancients called the Earth-Power, start from it, obey its laws, accommodate their workings to this fundamental principle, limit themselves by its possibilities and, if they would develop others, have even in that development to take account of the original formula, its purpose and its demand upon the divine evolution. The sense works through physical instruments, the life through a physical nerve-system and vital organs, the mind has to build its operations upon a corporeal basis and use a material instrumentation, even its pure mental workings have to take the data so derived as a field and as the stuff upon which it works. There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not The Creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not The Creators of life's action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not The Creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.
7:In the next grade of substance the initial, dominating, determining fact is no longer substantial form and force, but life and conscious desire. Therefore the world beyond this material plane must be a world based upon a conscious cosmic vital Energy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire and their self-expression and not upon an inconscient or subconscient will taking the form of a material force and energy. All the forms, bodies, forces, life-movements, sense-movements, thought-movements, developments, culminations, self-fulfilments of that world must be dominated and determined by this initial fact of Conscious-Life to which Matter and Mind must subject themselves, must start from that, base themselves upon that, be limited or enlarged by its laws, powers, capacities, limitations; and if Mind there seeks to develop yet higher possibilities, still it must then too take account of the original vital formula of desire-force, its purpose and its demand upon the divine manifestation.
1.28 - On holy and blessed prayer, mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
17. Try to lift up, or rather, to shut off your thought within the words of your prayer, and if in its infant state it wearies and falls, lift it up again. Instability is natural to the mind, but God is powerful to establish everything. If you persevere indefatigably in this labour, He who sets the bounds to the sea of the mind will visit you too, and during your prayer will say to the waves: Thus far shalt thou come and no further.4 Spirit cannot be bound; but where The Creator of the spirit is, everything obeys.
18. If you have ever seen the Sun5 as you ought, you will also be able to converse with Him fitly. But if not, how can you truly hold converse with what you have not seen?
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
16:Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself, - Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness, - which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as The Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above.
17:A divine Life in the manifestation is then not only possible as the high result and ransom of our present life in the Ignorance but, if these things are as we have seen them, it is the inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature's evolutionary endeavour.
1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1. Brahma first of the Gods was born, The Creator of all, the
world's protector; he to Atharvan, his eldest son, declared
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
There are three outlooks possible:(1) The Vyavaharika: The man sees the world in all its variety, surmises The Creator and believes in himself as the subject. All these are thus reduced to the three fundamentals, jagat, jiva and Isvara. He learns the existence of The Creator and tries to reach him in order to gain immortality. If one is thus released from bondage, there are all other individuals existing as before who should work out their own salvation. He more or less admits the One Reality underlying all these phenomena. The phenomena are due to the play of maya. Maya is the sakti of Isvara or the activity of Reality. Thus, existence of different souls, objects, etc., do not clash with the advaitic point of view.
(2) The Pratibhasika: The jagat, jiva and Isvara are all cognised by the seer only. They do not have any existence independent of
--
The question arises why then do all the sastras speak of the Lord as The Creator? How can the creature that you are create The Creator and argue that the jagat, jiva and Isvara are mental conceptions only?
The answer is as follows:You know that your father of this jagrat state is dead and that several years have elapsed since his death. However you see him in your dream and recognise him to be your father, of whom you were born and who has left patrimony to you. Here The Creator is in the creature. Again, you dream that you are serving a king and that you are a part in the administrative wheel of the kingdom. As soon as you wake up all of them have disappeared leaving you, the single individual, behind. Where were they all? Only in yourself.
The same analogy holds good in the other case also.
1.32 - Expounds these words of the Paternoster Fiat voluntas tua sicut in coelo et in terra. Describes how much is accomplished by those who repeat these words with full resolution and how well, #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
union between The Creator and the creature. Ask yourselves if that will not be a rich reward for
you, and if you have not a good Master. For, knowing how the good will of His Father is to be
1.3.4.04 - The Divine Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight.
Physical, he seeks for his immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
14.03 - Janaka and Yajnavalkya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Once upon a time King Janaka invited sages from everywhere, whoever wanted to come to the assembly. The king from time to time used to call such assemblies for spiritual discussion and interchange of experiences. This time he summoned the assembly for a special reason. He had collected a herd of one thousand cows and nuggets of gold were tied to the horns of each. When all had gathered and taken their places he announced that whoever considered himself the best knower of Brahman (Brahmishtha) might come forward and take away the cows. None stirred. No one had the temerity to declare that he was the best knower and the most eligible for the prize. The king repeated his announcement. Then all of a sudden people saw Yajnavalkya advancing and telling his disciples to take hold of the herd and drive it home. A hue and cry arose: How is it? How dare he? One came forward and asked Yajnavalkya: How is it, Yajnavalkya? Do you consider yourself the most wise in the matter of Brahman? First prove your claim and then touch the cows. Yajnavalkya in great humility bowed down and said to the assembly: I bow down to the great sages. I have come here solely with the intention of getting the cows. As for the knowledge of Brahman, I leave it to the knowers of Brahman. All the others in one voice said: That will not do, Yajnavalkya. You cannot get away so easily. Come, sit down and prove your worth. Yajnavalkya had no way of escape. So one by one the sages came up and put questions and enigmas to Yagnavalkya. All he answered quietly and perfectly to their full satisfaction. Towards the end a woman stood up, Gargi, a fair and famous name too. She said: Yajnavalkya, I shall put two questions to you like two arrows directed at you, even as a king shoots his arrows at his enemies; if you can meet and parry them, yours the victory. Yajnavalkaya: "Let me hear then". Gargi: "Yajnavalkya, you once said that the earth is the warp and woof woven upon water; upon what is woven the water?" Yajnavalkya: "Air". "Upon what then is air woven?" "Sky". "Upon what is woven the sky?" "The world of Gandharvas." "Upon what the Gandharvas?""Upon the Sun." She continued her questioning. And thus she was led successively through higher and higher worlds from the Sun to the Moon, then to the Stars, then to the Gods and the King of Gods, then to The Creator of the Gods and the peoples1 and finally to the Brahmaloka (the world of the One Supreme Transcendent Reality).
Gargi still continued and asked again: "Upon what is Brahman woven?" To this Yajnavalkya cried halt and warned her: "Now, Gargi, your questioning goes too far, beyond the limits. If you question farther, your head will fall off. You are questioning about a thing that does not bear questioning m ati prksih anati prany devat the Gods abide not our question." So Gargi had to desist and Yajnavalkya was accepted as the best of the sages (Brahmishtha) and he could drive his cattle away home.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Quite so. That is the question. I see before my eyes a battalion of sepoys passing. Therefore I am. The world must have been created by God. How shall I see The Creator?
M.: See yourself, who sees these, and the problem is solved.
--
Or are they of later growth? (2) Is The Creator impartial? Then why is one born lame, another blind, and so on? (3) Are the eight Dikpalas, thirty-three crores of gods and the seven rishis existent even today?
M.: Refer these questions to yourself and the answer will be found.
After a pause, Sri Bhagavan continued: if we first know our Self then all other matters will be plain to us. Let us know our Self and then enquire concerning The Creator and creation. Without first knowing the Self, to seek knowledge of God, etc., is ignorance.
A man suffering from jaundice sees everything yellow. If he tells others that all things are yellow who will accept his statement?
--
Being to save him. Thus are born faith and devotion to the Lord. How to worship Him? The creature is powerless and The Creator is Allpowerful. How to approach Him? To entrust oneself to His care is the only thing left for him; total surrender is the only way. Therefore he surrenders himself to God. Surrender consists in giving up oneself and ones possessions to the Lord of Mercy. Then what is left over for the man? Nothing - neither himself nor his possessions. The body liable to be born and to die having been made over to the Lord, the man need
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi no longer worry about it. Then birth and death cannot strike terror. The cause of fear was the body; it is no longer his; why should he fear now?
--
Brahma, The Creator, created four sons from his mind. They were Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanathkumara and Sanatsujata. They asked their creator why they were brought into existence. Brahma said: I must create the universe. But I want to go to do tapas for realising the Self. You are brought forth in order that you may create the universe. That will be by multiplying yourselves. They did not like the idea. They wondered why they should take the trouble on themselves. It is natural for one to seek the source. They therefore wanted to regain their source and be happy. So they did not obey the commands of Brahma but left him. They desired guidance for realisation of the Self. They were the best equipped individuals for Self-Realisation. Guidance should be only from the best of Masters. Who could it be but Siva - the yogiraja. Siva appeared before them sitting under the sacred banyan tree. Being yogiraja should
--
What is the nature of the illusion? All are in the grip of enjoyment, i.e., bhokta, bhogyam, bhoga. This is due to the wrong notion that bhogya vastu (the objects) are real. The ego, the world and The Creator are the fundamentals underlying the illusion. If they are known to be not apart from the Self there will be no more illusion.
The first four stanzas deal with the world. It is shown to be the same as the Master whose Self is that of the seeker also, or the Master to whom the seeker surrenders himself. The second four stanzas deal with the individual whose Self is shown to be the Self of the Master.
--
the killer. Either The Creator (Brahma) or Death (Yama) may be
said to have come in the guise of such a master. He cannot liberate
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Quite so. That is the question. I see before my eyes a battalion of sepoys passing. Therefore I am. The world must have been created by God. How shall I see The Creator?
M.: See yourself, who sees these, and the problem is solved.
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
divine mediator between men and The Creator. The various names
applied to him are significant both of his divinity and of his
--
message to the superior gods or to The Creator himself. The
following is the form of prayer addressed to the eagle-owl when it
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Being to save him. Thus are born faith and devotion to the Lord. How to worship Him? The creature is powerless and The Creator is Allpowerful. How to approach Him? To entrust oneself to His care is the only thing left for him; total surrender is the only way. Therefore he surrenders himself to God. Surrender consists in giving up oneself and one's possessions to the Lord of Mercy. Then what is left over for the man? Nothing - neither himself nor his possessions. The body liable to be born and to die having been made over to the Lord, the man need
544
--
Brahma, The Creator, created four sons from his mind. They were Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanathkumara and Sanatsujata. They asked their creator why they were brought into existence. Brahma said: "I must create the universe. But I want to go to do tapas for realising the Self. You are brought forth in order that you may create the universe. That will be by multiplying yourselves." They did not like the idea. They wondered why they should take the trouble on themselves. It is natural for one to seek the source. They therefore wanted to regain their source and be happy. So they did not obey the commands of Brahma but left him. They desired guidance for realisation of the Self. They were the best equipped individuals for Self-Realisation. Guidance should be only from the best of Masters. Who could it be but Siva - the yogiraja. Siva appeared before them sitting under the sacred banyan tree. Being yogiraja should
--
What is the nature of the illusion? All are in the grip of enjoyment, i.e., bhokta, bhogyam, bhoga. This is due to the wrong notion that bhogya vastu (the objects) are real. The ego, the world and The Creator are the fundamentals underlying the illusion. If they are known to be not apart from the Self there will be no more illusion.
The first four stanzas deal with the world. It is shown to be the same as the Master whose Self is that of the seeker also, or the Master to whom the seeker surrenders himself. The second four stanzas deal with the individual whose Self is shown to be the Self of the Master.
17.02 - Hymn to the Sun, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
May The Creator create for me the very best creation; the heat blazes; towards that I utter my words. [26]
Professor of all wealth, she yearns with her mind and heart after her child: lo, she comes uttering her cry.
18.05 - Ashram Poets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Creator in His Dreaming
The Creator in his dreaming has created
This immortal thing in creation,
19.17 - On Anger, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If the wise on a day to day observation praise someone as of flawless conduct, intelligent and endowed with knowledge and character, who then would dare to blame him who is as it were a coin of gold? The gods praise him, even The Creator praises him. .
[11]
1929-04-21 - Visions, seeing and interpretation - Dreams and dreaml and - Dreamless sleep - Visions and formulation - Surrender, passive and of the will - Meditation and progress - Entering the spiritual life, a plunge into the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Jeanne dArc was evidently in relation with some entities belonging to what we call the world of the Gods (or as the Catholics say, the world of the Saints, though it is not quite the same). The beings she saw she called archangels. These beings belong to the intermediate world between the higher mind and the supramental, the world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. It is the world of The Creators, the Formateurs.
The two beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne dArc would, if seen by an Indian, have a quite different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of ones mind. To what you see you give the form of that which you expect to see. If the same being appeared simultaneously in a group where there were Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, it would be named by absolutely different names. Each would say, in reference to the appearance of the being, that he was like this or like that, all differing and yet it would be one and the same manifestation. You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother, the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, and others would give other names. It is the same Force, the same Power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths.
1929-05-19 - Mind and its workings, thought-forms - Adverse conditions and Yoga - Mental constructions - Illness and Yoga, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the nature of the power that thought possesses? How and to what extent am I The Creator of my world?
According to the Buddhist teachings, every human being lives and moves in a world of his own, quite independent of the world in which another lives; it is only when a certain harmony is created between these different worlds that they interpenetrate and men can meet and understand one another. This is true of the mind; for everybody moves in a mental world of his own, created by his own thoughts. And it is so true that always, when something has been said, each understands it in a different way; for what he catches is not the thing that has been spoken but something he has in his own head. But it is a truth that belongs to the movement of the mental plane and holds good only there.
1929-05-26 - Individual, illusion of separateness - Hostile forces and the mental plane - Psychic world, psychic being - Spiritual and psychic - Words, understanding speech and reading - Hostile forces, their utility - Illusion of action, true action, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And what do you mean when you say that the individual creates or originates a movement? Does he do it all out of himself or out of nothing as it were? If a being were able to create in that way a thought or feeling or action or anything else, he would be The Creator of the world. It is only if the individual goes back in his consciousness into the greater Consciousness which is the origin of things, that he can be an originator; he can initiate a movement only by identifying himself with the conscious Power which is the ultimate source of all movements.
There are many planes of consciousness; and the determinism of one plane is not the same as the determinism of another. So, when you speak of the creative individual, of what part of him are you thinking? For he is a very composite entity. Is it his psychic being of which you speak, or the mental or the vital or the physical? Between the unseen source of a movement and its manifestation, its external expression through the individual, there are all these steps and many others; and on each many modifications of it take place, many distortions and deformations. It is these changes that give the illusion of a new creation, a new origin, or a new starting-point for a movement. It is like when you put a stick into water; you see the stick, not in its true line, but bent into an angle. But it is an illusion, a distortion by the sight; it is not even a real angle.
1953-07-29, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"If a being were able to create in that way a thought or feeling or action or anything else, he would be The Creator of the world He can initiate a movement only by identifying himself with the conscious Power which is the ultimate source of all movements."
Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (26 May 1929)
1953-10-14, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one single solution to the problemnot to make any distinction between God and the universe at the origin. The universe is the Divine projected in space, and God is the universe at its origin. It is the same thing under one aspect or another. And you cannot divide them. It is the opposite conception to that of The Creator and his work. Only, it is very convenient to speak of The Creator and his work, it makes explanations very easy and the teaching quite elementary. But it is not the truth. And then you say: How is it that God who is all-powerful has allowed the world to be like this? But it is your own conception! It is because you yourself happen to be in the midst of a set of circumstances that seems to you unpleasant, so you project that upon the Divine and you tell him: Why have you made such a world?I did not make it. It is you yourself. And if you become Myself once again, you will no longer feel as you do. What makes you feel as you do is that you are no longer Myself. This is what He could tell you in answer. And the fact is that when you succeed in uniting your consciousness with the divine consciousness, there is no problem left. Everything appears quite natural and simple and all right and exactly what it had to be. But when you cut yourself off from the origin and stand over against Him, then truly everything goes wrong, nothing can go right!
But if you ask for a logic that pushes things to the extreme end, you question how it is that the Divine has tolerated parts of his own self to be separated from him and all this disorder to be created. You may say that. And I then will reply: If you want to know, it is better to unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why He has done these things. It is not by questioning Him mentally, for your mind cannot understand. And I repeat it, when you reach such an identification, all problems are solved. And this feeling that things are not all right and that they should be otherwise, comes just because there is a divine will for a constant unfolding in perpetual progress and things that were must give place to things that shall be and shall be better than what the others were. And the world that was good yesterday is no longer good tomorrow. The whole world that could appear absolutely harmonious and perfect at one time, well, today it is discordant, no longer harmonious, because now we conceive and see the possibility of a better world. And if we were to find it all right we would not do what we ought to do, that is, make the effort needed for it to become better.
1953-11-11, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I no longer remember. The three formed modeslove, light and lifewhich correspond to Sachchidananda. The seven attri butes I have a list somewhere. There is an old tradition which says that the world was created seven times, that is, the first six times it returned into The Creator. This is the idea of pralaya2 It is said that this happened six times and that we are now the seventh creation, and that this is the last one. It is the one which will persist, and it is the creation of Equilibrium. All these creations I have also noted down somewhere, it is written down. I no longer know their order. There are six creations, one after another, created in accordance with this special mode, found imperfect and withdrawn into the Origin, recreated and withdrawn into the Originsix times thus. And it is a progressive order. When one knows that order, one understands the principle of each creation. Well, this tradition said that the principle of our latest creation, at present, is the principle of Equilibrium, and that this is the last. That means the world will not go back again into pralaya, and there will be a perpetual progress. And this is the creation of Equilibrium.
Consequently, now, there is no longer anything good or bad: there is what is in equilibrium and what is not in equilibrium. There is imbalance and balance. Thats all. And what I have said there was based upon that.
1955-05-18 - The Problem of Woman - Men and women - The Supreme Mother, the new creation - Gods and goddesses - A story of Creation, earth - Psychic being only on earth, beings everywhere - Going to other worlds by occult means, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, here you have said that the Supreme Mother is the creatrix of the universe. But in India usually it is said that Brahma is The Creator.
But Sri Aurobindo has said that the Supreme Mother is the mother of Brahma. She is the Mother of all the gods.
1955-10-26 - The Divine and the universal Teacher - The power of the Word - The Creative Word, the mantra - Sound, music in other worlds - The domains of pure form, colour and ideas, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of The Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that theres a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology The Creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, The Creative Word. And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domainwhereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any reflection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about Bonjour, Good Day, didnt I? When people meet and say Bonjour, they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying Good Day which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: Ah! I hope he has a good day, without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, Good Day, you make it more concrete and more effective.
1956-10-03 - The Mothers different ways of speaking - new manifestation - new element, possibilities - child prodigies - Laws of Nature, supramental - Logic of the unforeseen - Creative writers, hands of musicians - Prodigious children, men, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So suppose that what I tell you is true, in this sense that there really is a Consciousness and a Will manifesting these combinations, successively, indefinitely, without ever repeating a single one twice; we come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity. And if the universe is new at each moment of eternity, we have to acknowledge that absolutely nothing is impossible; not only that, but that what we call logic is not necessarily true, and that the logic, one could almost say the fantasy of The Creator, is unlimited.
Therefore, if for one reason or otherwhich might perhaps be difficult to expressif for some reason a combination were not followed by the one nearest to it but by another freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, all our external certitudes and all our external logic would instantly break down.
1957-01-09 - God is essentially Delight - God and Nature play at hide-and-seek - Why, and when, are you grave?, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to what Sri Aurobindo says here, the reality of the universe is what is called God or godhead, but essentially it is Delight. The universe is created in Delight and for Delight. But this Delight can exist only in the perfect oneness of the creation with its creator, and Sri Aurobindo describes this oneness as the Possessor that is, The Creator the Possessor being possessed by his creation, a sort of reciprocal possession which is the very essence of the Oneness and the source of all delight.
And it is because of divisionbecause the Possessor no longer possesses and because the possessed no longer possesses the Possessor, division is created and the essential Delight is changed into ignorance, and this ignorance is the cause of all suffering. Ignorance, not in the sense in which it is usually understood, for that is what Sri Aurobindo calls Nescience: that ignorance is a consequence of the other. True ignorance is ignorance of the oneness, the union, the identity. And that is the cause of all suffering.
Ever since division began and creation lost its direct contact with The Creator, ignorance has reigned, and all suffering is its result.
All those who have had the inner experience have had this experience, that the moment one re-establishes the union with the divine source, all suffering disappears. But there has been a very persistent movement, about which I spoke to you last week, which put at the source of creation not this essential divine Delight but desire. This delight of creation, self-manifestation, self-expression there is an entire line of seekers and sages who have considered it not as a delight but as a desire; the whole line of Buddhism is of this kind. And instead of seeing the solution in a Oneness which restores to us the essential Delight of the manifestation and the becoming, they consider that the goal and also the way are a total rejection of all desire to be and a return to annihilation.
1957-04-24 - Perfection, lower and higher, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The higher perfection is spiritual and super-human. The lower perfection is human perfection carried to its maximum limits, and this may be quite independent of all spiritual life, all spiritual aspiration. One can be a genius without having any spiritual aspiration. One can have all the most extraordinary moral qualities without having any spiritual life. And even, usually, those who have a very great power of human realisation are satisfiedmore or less satisfiedwith their condition. They feel they are self-sufficient, that they carry in themselves the source of their realisation and their joy, and it is usually very difficult to make them understand and feel that they are not The Creators of their own creations, whatever they may be. Most of them, with very rare exceptions, if they were told, You are not the originator of this work you are doing, it is a force higher than you and you are only its instrument, they would dislike it very much and they will send you about your business! Therefore, these two perfections are really divergent in ordinary life. It was said in the old yoga that the first condition for doing yoga was to be disgusted with life. But those who have realised this human perfection are very rarely disgusted with life, unless they have met with personal difficulties such as the ingratitude of people around them, the lack of understanding of their genius which was not sufficiently appreciatedso all this disgusts them, but92@ otherwise, so long as they are in their period of success and creation, they are perfectly satisfied. So, as they are satisfiedabove all, self-satisfied they dont need to seek anything else.
It is not essentially true, but this is usually how things happen, and unless there is in this genius a soul which is perfectly conscious of itself and has come to accomplish a specific work on earth, he may very well be born, grow up and die without knowing that there is anything other than this earthly life. And above all it is this, you see, this feeling of having achieved the utmost realisation which gives a satisfaction that keeps one from needing anything else. If they have a soul thats fully conscious of itself and fully conscious of its purpose in the physical world, there could be a vague feeling that all this is pretty hollow, that all these achievements are a little too superficial and that something is lacking; but that comes only to those who are predestined, and after all, in the mass of humanity, there are not very many of them.
1958-05-07 - The secret of Nature, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The universe is an objectivisation of the Supreme, as if He had objectivised himself outside of himself in order to see himself, to live himself, to know himself, and so that there might be an existence and a consciousness capable of recognising him as their origin and uniting consciously with him to manifest him in the becoming. There is no other reason for the universe. The earth is a kind of symbolic crystallisation of universal life, a reduction, a concentration, so that the work of evolution may be easier to do and follow. And if we see the history of the earth, we can understand why the universe has been created. It is the Supreme growing aware of himself in an eternal Becoming; and the goal is the union of the created with The Creator, a union that is conscious, willing and free, in the Manifestation.
That is the secret of Nature. Nature is the executive Force, it is she who does the work.
--
Nature wants the creation to become conscious of being The Creator himself in an objectivisation, that is to say, there is no difference between The Creator and the Creation, and the goal is a conscious and realised union. That is the secret of Nature.
Mother, here Sri Aurobindo writes: the dumb secrecy of her inconscience. Why her inconscience?
1961 05 22?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People are so deeply imbued with the Christian idea of God The Creator the creation on one side and God on the other. When you think about it you reject it, but it has penetrated into the sensations and feelings; so, spontaneously, instinctively, almost subconsciously, you attri bute to God everything you consider to be best and most beautiful and, above all, everything you want to attain, to realise. Naturally, each one changes the content of his God according to his own consciousness, but it is always what he considers to be best. And that is also why instinctively and spontaneously, subconsciously, you are shocked by the idea that God can be things that you do not like, that you do not approve of or do not think best.
I put that rather childishly, on purpose, so that you can understand it properly. But it is like that I am sure, because I observed it in myself for a very long time, because of the subconscious formation of childhood, environment, education, etc. You must be able to press into this body the consciousness of Oneness, the absolute exclusive Oneness of the Divineexclusive in the sense that nothing exists except in this Oneness, even the things we find most repulsive.
1.bsf - Fathom the ocean, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Paul Smith Original Language Punjabi Farid says: Creator is in the creation and creation in The Creator! Why should we then be blaming others when that One is everywhere? [2667.jpg] -- from Anthology of Great Sufi & Mystical Poets of Pakistan, by Paul Smith <
1.bsf - You must fathom the ocean, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language Punjabi Says Farid, you must fathom the ocean; it contains all you need and desire. Why soil your hands searching the little ponds? Says Farid, The Creator is in the creation and the creation in The Creator. Whom shall we blame when He is everywhere? <
1.dd - So priceless is the birth, O brother, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by K. N. Upadhyaya So priceless is the birth, O brother, That in it, the Supreme Lord can be met. The human body is the Door to salvation. If the meeting is not accomplished while alive, If the contact is not made while alive, If the Lord of the universe is not found while alive, Then one is simply drowned. The One who has made this temple of our hearts, He alone dwells in this temple. None else but our Beloved is in our hearts. With thee is thy Friend. Let thyself recognize Him. Look not at a distance. Know Him as thy reflection, O Dadu. God is within all beings. He accompanies all and is close by. Musk is in the musk deer, and yet it goes around smelling grass. The self knows not God, although God is with the self. Being deaf to the Holy Sound of the Master, sadly does he wander. He for whom thou searchest in the world dwells within thyself. Thou knowest Him not, because the veil of 'mine' and 'thine' is there. He dwells within all beings, yet rarely anyone knows Him. He alone who is a devotee of God will know Him. A true Master unites us with God And shows all within the body. Within the body is The Creator, And within the body is Onkar [divinity of the second heaven]. The sky is within the body, and close by Is the earth within the body. Air and light are within the body. So is water contained within the body. Within the body are the Sun and the Moon. And the Bagpipe is played within the body. By rendering service within the heart, See thou the One who is indestructible and boundless, Having no limit either on this end or on that end, sayeth Dadu. After entering within, let one, O Dadu, bolt the doors of the house. Let one, O Dadu, serve the Lord at the Door of Eternity. God is within the self, His worship alone is to be done. Search thou for the Beloved close to the place Wherefrom the Sound emerges, and thou shalt find Him, sayeth Dadu. There is solitude there, and there is luster of Light. One who, turning the attention inward, Brings it within the self, And fixes it on the Radiant Form of the Master, Is indeed wise, O Dadu. Where the self is, there is God; all is filled with Him. Fix thine attention within, O valiant servant. So does Dadu proclaim. Fix thine attention within, and sing always within the self. This mind then dances with ecstasy, and beats with pleasure the rhythm. God is within the self; He is close to the worshipper. But leaving Him aside, men serve external constructions, lamenteth Dadu. This is the true mosque, this is the true temple. So hath the Master shown. The service and worship are performed within. Destroy delusion, O mind, by means of the Name of God and the Word bestowed by the Guru. The mind is then united with the One untouched by karmas. Liquidate thereby thy karmas, O Dadu. If the mind stays with the Name of the Supreme Lord even for a moment, O Dadu, All its karmas will be destroyed then and there, within the twinkling of an eye. The aspirant who fills his pot with drops of Celestial Melody, alone survives. How can he die, O Dadu? He drinks the divine Nectar. The artistic Creator is playing the instrument in perfect harmony. Melody is the essence of the five [elements], and through the self is the Melody expressed, O Dadu. By enabling people to hear the Sound, the Master can awaken them at His will. He may, at His pleasure, speak within them, and merge them in his own form. The knowledge of the Sound Current imparted by the Guru merges one easily into Truth. It carries me to the abode of my Beloved, says Dadu. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Dadu: The Compassionate Mystic, Translated by K. N. Upadhyaya <
1.dd - The Creator Plays His Cosmic Instrument In Perfect Harmony, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.dd - The Creator Plays His Cosmic Instrument In Perfect Harmony
author class:Dadu Dayal
1.fs - Geniality, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
Shows The Creator himself,e'en in the infinite whole.
Clear is the ether, and yet of depth that ne'er can be fathomed;
1.fs - Ode To Joy, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
{Knowst} thou The Creator, world?
Seek above the stars unfurld,
1.fs - Ode To Joy - With Translation, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
Do you suspect The Creator, world?
Find him over the canopy of stars.
--
Can you sense The Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
1.fs - The Agreement, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
If the eye be healthy, it sees from without The Creator;
And if the heart, then within doubtless it mirrors the world.
1.fs - The Artists, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
When The Creator banished from his sight
Frail man to dark mortality's abode,
1.jr - Body of earth, dont talk of earth, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Andrew Harvey Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish Body of earth, don't talk of earth Tell the story of pure mirrors The Creator has given you this splendor-- Why talk of anything else? [1961.jpg] -- from The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi, by Andrew Harvey <
1.jr - Did I Not Say To You, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
vants affairs come into order? I am The Creator without
directions.
Wikipedia - Alakh Niranjan -- Nath Yogi synonym for the Creator
Wikipedia - Bob Kane -- American comic book artist, the creator of Batman
Wikipedia - Boredom (Tyler, the Creator song) -- 2017 song by Tyler, the Creator
Wikipedia - Earfquake -- 2019 single by Tyler, the Creator
Wikipedia - Goblin (album) -- album by Tyler, The Creator
Wikipedia - Joshua Schachter -- American entrepreneur and the creator of Delicious
Wikipedia - Potboiler -- Work of dubious artistic merit, whose purpose was to pay for the creator's daily expenses
Wikipedia - Problem of the Creator of God
Wikipedia - Problem of the creator of God
Wikipedia - See You Again (Tyler, the Creator song) -- 2017 Tyler, the Creator song
Wikipedia - The Creator (diamond) -- Large diamond found in Russia in 2004
Wikipedia - Tyler, the Creator -- American rapper, record producer, fashion designer, and director from California
Tyler, The Creator ::: Born: March 6, 1991; Occupation: Rapper;
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16135902-the-creator
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18269478-adela-arthur-and-the-creator-s-clock
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/186746.The_Creators
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27220736.Shoe_Dog_A_Memoir_by_the_Creator_of_NIKE
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43903834-when-the-creator-moves-me
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/599299.The_Creator_and_the_Cosmos
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8585288-the-boredom-of-the-creators
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Creator_permeates_all_creation
Kheper - Name_of_the_Creator -- 16
Animaniacs (1993 - 1998) - Brought to you by the creators of Tiny Toon Adventures, and under the creative eye of Steven Spielberg, Animaniacs is a variety show following several casts of original characters. It stars the Warner Brothers (and sister) Yakko, Wakko,and Dot, causing chaos for everyone they meet. Originally airing...
Futurama (1999 - 2013) - A comedy from the creators of "The Simpsons". A pizza delivery boy named Fry accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and awakens in the year 3000. He adapts to life in the 31st century and works for his great-great x20 nephew's intergalactic delivery company.
The Wacky World of Tex Avery! (1997 - 1998) - The Wacky World of Tex Avery is a FrenchAmericanCanadian animated comedy television series produced by DIC Entertainment and created by Robby London in 1997. The series was named after Tex Avery, a cartoonist who is known for his work at Warner Bros. and MGM. The creator describes the show as "hom...
Police Squad! (1982 - 1982) - From the creators of Airplane!, the Hot Shots! movies, and Top Secret!, Police Squad! began as the brain-child of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker. The series would later spawn three follow-up movies under the new Naked Gun titles. The series was set up to spoof the Quinn Martin Productio...
Bodger and Badger (1989 - 1999) - Bodger and Badger was a slapstick comedy for young children about Simon Bodger and his mash potato loving pet, Badger. The creator, Andy Cunningham was the real star as he played both Simon and Badger was his puppet. Over the years they moved around a bit as Simon got different jobs, from working as...
Road Rules (1995 - 2007) - MTV series from the creators of "The Real World".
Lost Universe (1997 - 1997) - Animated Sci-fi comedy series from the creator of Slayers, Hajime Kanzaka. Set in the future (and loosely based around the Slayers Universe), a Trouble Contractor named Kain Blueriver takes on missions across the galaxy for the Universal Guardians. He always wears a cape and carries a weapon known a...
You're Under Arrest! (1996 - 2008) - Based on the best-selling manga series by creator Kosuke Fujishima (also the creator of Oh My Goddess), You're Under Arrest follows the exploits of two young policewomen in the Traffic Division of Bokuto Station.
Jupiter Moon (1990 - 1991) - William Smethurst is the creator and producer of TV series Jupiter Moon, a space opera set in the mid-21st century. Launched in 1990 by BSB, the show ran for 150 (30-minute) episodes. After the merger of BSB with Sky, Jupiter Moon was repeated on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1995.
Britt Allcroft's Magic Adventures of Mumfie (1994 - 2002) - From the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends (Britt Allcroft) and the maker of Los Fruittis (D'oCon), this co produced animated show follows the adventures of a young elephant named Mumfie and his friends Scarecrow and Pinkey as they went on adventures and helped their friends.
Color Me a Rainbow (1987 - Current) - a Christian children's show that first aired in 1987 on the American Christian Television System (ACTS), which was a precursor to today's Hallmark Channel. The show was produced by Shepherd & Associates in Lincoln, Nebraska. Linda King was the creator of the show and did the voices for the puppets.h...
Ghost Hound (2007 - 2008) - is an anime television series, created by Production I.G and Masamune Shirow, noted for being the creator of the Ghost in the Shell series.[2] The original concept and design was first developed by Shirow in 1987.[3] It is Production I.G's 20th anniversary project and was first announced at the 2007...
Ginga Hyry Vifam (1983 - 1998) - also known as Galactic Drifter Vifam or Round Vernian Vifam) is a 1983 Mecha anime television series produced by Sunrise. It was officially drafted by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of Mobile Suit Gundam and planned by both Takeyuki Kanda (who also serves as its director) and Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. It a...
Butterbeans Cafe (2018 - Current) - an animated preschool fantasy television series created by Jonny Belt and Robert Scull, the creators of Bubble Guppies,[1] ordered by Nickelodeon. The series follows Butterbean, a fairy who runs a neighborhood caf with her friends. The series involves "creative cooking, a farm-to-table philosophy,...
Big Time Rush (2009 - 2013) - Big Time Rush is an American musical comedy television series that originally aired on Nickelodeon from November 28, 2009, until July 25, 2013. It was created by Scott Fellows (also the creator of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide and Johnny Test and the head writer of The Fairly OddParents)....
Hollyoaks (1995 - Current) - Teen soap made by Phil Redmond, the creator of Grange Hill and Brookside.
The Victory Garden (1975 - 2015) - Created by Russell Morash the creator of "This Old House", The Victory Garden was originally created in 1975 as a response to a tough economy and an increased interest in self-sufficiency. The program showed viewers how to tend to their own garden with an emphasis on making the most out of one's lan...
Beachy & Friends (2021 - Current) - Upcoming animated TV show being developed by the creators of The Beeps and Jelly Jamm. The show stars a beach ball named Beachy as a main character. His best friends Soccery the Soccer ball, Baskety the Basketball, and Exerciser the Exercise Ball. Together they go on adventures.
Tourist Trap(1979) - Directed by David Schmoeller (the creator who brought you the original "Puppet Master"), "Tourist Trap" stars Chuck Connors ("Soylent Green") and Tanya Roberts ("Charlie's Angels" T.V. series). The plot concerns a group of youths who decide to take a summer afternoon drive, only to find themselves s...
Seedpeople(1992) - People-eating plants sown from outer galaxies are turning local yokels into human zombies. Watch this, and you're probably already one yourself! It's hard to believe that the creators of this film hadn't just viewed The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. However, this could pass as pretty good comedy....
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad(1974) - Sinbad and his crew intercept a homunculus carrying a golden tablet. Koura, the creator of the homunculus and practitioner of evil magic, wants the tablet back and pursues Sinbad. Meanwhile Sinbad meets the Vizier who has another part of the interlocking golden map, and they mount a quest across the...
Ready Player One(2018) - When the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
Have Rocket, Will Travel(1959) - The Three Stooges are bumbling janitors at The National Space Foundation..who find out that the creator of the rocket fuel"Dr.Narvig"is in trouble..her fuel is not helping the rocket travel into space and unless she can create a new super fuel..the US government will shut down the program.The boys c...
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part(2019) - Emmet Brickowski attempts to rescue his friends from the Systar System, while dealing with a coming cataclysm known as "Armamageddon". Thanks to the massive theatrical success of the first LEGO movie along with its franchised sequels the creators of the previous films wanted to create a new film tha...
Content Cop ::: TV-MA | 20min | Documentary, Comedy, Crime | TV Series (2015 ) In an effort to bring justice to the YouTube community, former police officer Ian Carter takes on the title of "Content Cop". Using his old police uniform and raw wit, Ian sets out to stop the creators that bring nothing but discord to his online city. Stars: Ian Carter, Calvin Vail, Bryan Le
Little Britain ::: TV-MA | 29min | Comedy | TV Series (20032006) -- Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the creators of this character-comedy sketch show, delight in all that is mad, bad, quirky and generally bonkers about the people and places of Britain. Stars:
Ready Player One (2018) ::: 7.5/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 20min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 29 March 2018 (USA) -- When the creator of a virtual reality called the OASIS dies, he makes a posthumous challenge to all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune and control of his world. Director: Steven Spielberg Writers:
https://bayonetta.fandom.com/wiki/Jubileus,_The_Creator
https://bestmusic.fandom.com/wiki/IGOR_(Tyler,_the_Creator_album)
https://ed.fandom.com/wiki/The_Creators
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_of_the_Creator
https://lalins-curse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Creator
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Birds_of_the_Galaxy:_Gene_Roddenberry_and_the_Creators_of_Trek
https://thenutshack.fandom.com/wiki/The_Creators
Accel World -- -- Sunrise -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Action Game Sci-Fi Romance School -- Accel World Accel World -- Haruyuki Arita is an overweight, bullied middle schooler who finds solace in playing online games. But his life takes a drastic turn one day, when he finds that all his high scores have been topped by Kuroyukihime, the popular vice president of the student council. She then invites him to the student lounge and introduces him to "Brain Burst," a program which allows the users to accelerate their brain waves to the point where time seems to stop. Brain Burst also functions as an augmented reality fighting game, and in order to get more points to accelerate, users must win duels against other players. However, if a user loses all their points, they will also lose access to Brain Burst forever. -- -- Kuroyukihime explains that she chose to show Haruyuki the program because she needs his help. She wants to meet the creator of Brain Burst and uncover the reason of why it was created, but that's easier said than done; to do so, she must defeat the "Six Kings of Pure Color," powerful faction leaders within the game, and reach level 10, the highest level attainable. After the girl helps Haruyuki overcome the bullies that torment him, he vows to help her realize her goal, and so begins the duo's fight to reach the top. -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- 612,411 7.30
Chainsaw Bunny -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Horror Supernatural Thriller -- Chainsaw Bunny Chainsaw Bunny -- Two bunny girls get in trouble..... -- From the creator of CHAINSAW MAID and PUSSYCAT, -- another gory horror clay animation comes!! -- Never ending splatter carnival has begun!! -- ONA - Aug 1, 2018 -- 1,768 4.92
Corrector Yui -- -- Nippon Animation -- 52 eps -- Original -- Sci-Fi Adventure Comedy Magic -- Corrector Yui Corrector Yui -- Yui is an average schoolgirl who lives in a future where all computers are supported by a single global network known as COMNET. Yui is a computer-illiterate girl who after a computer-lab accident is approached by IR, a raccoon looking corrector computer program, which tells her she must save COMNET. She must stop the rogue A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) computer program known as Grosser and his hench-programs from taking over the world. Grosser was originally designed to be that manager of all of COMNET. At first she's very reluctant to play the heroine because of her complete lack of knowledge and ability with computers. To save COMNET she must find and gain the trust of the other seven wayward corrector programs. They must also find the creator or COMNET Professor Inukai, to help stop Grosser for good. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- 12,488 6.82
Gin no Guardian II -- -- Blade, Emon -- 6 eps -- Web manga -- Adventure Fantasy -- Gin no Guardian II Gin no Guardian II -- At Shinryou Private Academy—an expensive school for wealthy students—one would never expect to find the poverty-stricken Suigin Riku. When he is not working on one of his many part-time jobs to pay his tuition, he can often be found playing the RPG game Dungeon Century, where he has cultivated a relationship with an online friend. However, when Dungeon Century shuts down, he finds out that his crush, the kind-hearted Rei Riku, and his online friend are the same person. -- -- But in the aftermath of this revelation, Rei gets kidnapped and taken into Grave Buster, which is a new online game from the creators of Dungeon Century, forcing Suigin to enter the harsh new world of a pay-to-win game in order to save her. Gin no Guardian 2nd Season continues Suigin's quest to rescue Rei, while attempting to solve the mysteries of this strange game. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 46,176 6.58
.hack//Liminality -- -- Bee Train -- 4 eps -- Original -- Game Mystery Sci-Fi -- .hack//Liminality .hack//Liminality -- While playing the newly released MMORPG "The World," Minase Mai and Tomonari Kasumi collapsed in the real world and were sent to the hospital after hearing a mysterious sound. Only Mai had recovered while her friend Kasumi had slipped into a mysterious coma. Mai is later approached by the creator of "The World," Tokuoka Junichiro, who unveils to her that, just like her friend, six other players across the country had also collapsed while playing "The World" and are now in mysterious comas. What exactly is "The World," what is this mysterious sound Mai keeps on hearing, and why are people slipping into comas from this game? Minase, Junichiro and their acquaintances set off to get to the bottom of this problem before any further harm happens. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment -- OVA - Jun 20, 2002 -- 30,626 6.60
.hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu -- -- Bee Train -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy Game Sci-Fi Shounen -- .hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu .hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu -- Winning the legendary characters "Kite" and "Black Rose" from an event held by the creators of the MMORPG "The World," Shugo and his twin sister Rena steps into "The World." Together they completed events and quests, along with their new friends Ouka, Mirelle, Hotaru, and Sanjuro. Soon after, mysterious monsters appeared, and death by these monsters caused players to slip into a coma in the real world. Only Shugo and Rena can solve this problem, but why are they being targeted, and what secrets is the game hiding? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- TV - Jan 9, 2003 -- 61,207 6.59
Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) -- -- OLM -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) -- Sho Fukamachi, a normal teenager accidentally found an alien object called Unit and thus, changed his life forever. The Unit bonded with Sho, resulting in an incredibly powerful life-form called Guyver. With this great power, Sho battles the mysterious Chronos organization and it's Zoanoids, in order to protect his friends and his world. Unknown to Sho, the battle against Chronos will lead to the discovery of the origins of human, their destiny, and the Creators... -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Funimation -- 18,791 7.25
Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi -- -- Studio Kafka -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi -- The story takes place shortly before Cartaphilus took a nap and Chise became an auditor at the academy. -- -- Elias and his friends help Chise prepare for the academy, where in the middle of everyday life, Spriggan visits the mansion on a spooky horse with the words, "The appearance of the ghost hunting association is unusual this time." -- -- Gabriel, an ordinary boy who just moved from London, was bored of his environment of parting with friends, being in an unfamiliar location, and everything else. Sitting by the window and glancing beyond, he spotted a purple smoke and decided to chase after it, looking to escape his boredom. Though it should not, the world of the boy begins to converge with the wizards, who live on the other side behind a thick veil. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- OVA - Sep 10, 2021 -- 18,799 N/A -- -- Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) -- -- OLM -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) Kyoushoku Soukou Guyver (2005) -- Sho Fukamachi, a normal teenager accidentally found an alien object called Unit and thus, changed his life forever. The Unit bonded with Sho, resulting in an incredibly powerful life-form called Guyver. With this great power, Sho battles the mysterious Chronos organization and it's Zoanoids, in order to protect his friends and his world. Unknown to Sho, the battle against Chronos will lead to the discovery of the origins of human, their destiny, and the Creators... -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 18,791 7.25
Majin Bone -- -- Toei Animation -- 52 eps -- Game -- Game -- Majin Bone Majin Bone -- Anime adaptation of Majin Bone, a digital card game project. -- -- Majin, the creator of the Universe, has been resurrected in the present day. Shougo Ryuujin, an ordinary high school student who transforms into the Bone Fighter Dragonbone with the Bone Card in order to save Earth. Together, with the other White Bone warriors take a stand against the Dark Bone, a foe that has appeared from darkness to devastate Earth. However, "could the true enemy be ourselves?" -- -- (Source: ANN) -- TV - Apr 1, 2014 -- 8,833 6.66
Re:Creators -- -- TROYCA -- 22 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Fantasy Mecha -- Re:Creators Re:Creators -- Humans have designed countless worlds—each one born from the unique imagination of its creator. Souta Mizushino is a high school student who aspires to be such a creator by writing and illustrating his own light novel. One day, while watching anime for inspiration, he is briefly transported into a fierce fight scene. When he returns to the real world, he realizes something is amiss: the anime's headstrong heroine, Selesia Yupitilia, has somehow returned with him. -- -- Before long, other fictional characters appear in the world, carrying the hopes and scars of their home. A princely knight, a magical girl, a ruthless brawler, and many others now crowd the streets of Japan. However, the most mysterious one is a woman in full military regalia, dubbed "Gunpuku no Himegimi," who knows far more than she should about the creators' world. Despite this, no one knows her true name or the world she is from. -- -- Meanwhile, Souta and Selesia work together with Meteora Österreich, a calm and composed librarian NPC, to uncover the meaning behind these unnatural events. With powerful forces at play, the once clear line between reality and imagination continues to blur, leading to a fateful meeting between creators and those they created. -- -- 376,319 7.57
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Harem Comedy Romance Ecchi School -- Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata -- Tomoya Aki, an otaku, has been obsessed with collecting anime and light novels for years, attaching himself to various series with captivating stories and characters. Now, he wants to have a chance of providing the same experience for others by creating his own game, but unfortunately, Tomoya cannot do this task by himself. -- -- He successfully recruits childhood friend Eriri Spencer Sawamura to illustrate and literary elitist Utaha Kasumigaoka to write the script for his visual novel, while he directs. Super-group now in hand, Tomoya only needs an inspiration to base his project on, and luckily meets the beautiful, docile Megumi Katou, who he then models his main character after. -- -- Using what knowledge he has, Tomoya creates a new doujin circle with hopes to touch the hearts of those who play their game. What he does not realize, is that to invoke these emotions, the creators have had to experience the same feelings in their own lives. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 475,684 7.52
Tokyo Loop -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Dementia -- Tokyo Loop Tokyo Loop -- A series of 16 "short stories" created by the creator's group Images Forum. The stories are: -- -- Tokyo Strut (Sato Masahiko, Ueta Mio) -- Tokyo Trip (Tanaami Keiichi) -- Fishing Vine (Seike Mika) -- Yuki-chan (Oyama Kei) -- Dog & Bone (Shiriagari Kotobuki) -- Public Convenience (Tabaimo) -- TOKYO (Uda Atsuko) -- Black Fish (Aihara Nobuhiro) -- Unbalance (Ito Takashi) -- Tokyo Girl (Shimao Maho) -- Manipulated Man (Wada Atsushi) -- Nuance (Murata Tomoyasu) -- Hashimoto (Furukawa Taku) -- Funkorogashi (Kuri Yoji) -- Fig (Yamamura Koji) -- 12 O’Clock (Iwai Toshio) -- Movie - Dec 23, 2006 -- 1,558 5.14
Youkaiden Nekome Kozou -- -- - -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Horror Psychological Seinen Supernatural -- Youkaiden Nekome Kozou Youkaiden Nekome Kozou -- (No synopsis yet.) -- TV - Apr 1, 1976 -- 576 N/A -- -- Television -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Horror -- Television Television -- A man with his cat finds himself in a bizarre situation involving a television. A stop motion animation from the creator of Kotatsu Neko. -- ONA - ??? ??, 2004 -- 563 5.49
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna -- -- Gallop -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Game Adventure Shounen -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna -- While riding with Jack Atlas and Crow Hogan, Yuusei Fudou's Stardust Dragon is captured by Paradox, a mysterious Turbo Duelist from the future, during a Turbo Duel and turned into a Sin Monster. With the help of the Crimson Dragon, Yuusei chases after Paradox as he enters a time slip, ending up in the past. During this time, Paradox duels against Jaden Yuki, who is still able to use the powers of Yubel and The Supreme King. However, by this time Paradox had also captured Cyber End Dragon and Rainbow Dragon and overwhelms Jaden. He is saved thanks to Yuusei and the Crimson Dragon. Jaden informs Yuusei of Paradox's true intentions. By stealing various monsters from across time and turning them dark, he plans to kill Maximillion Pegasus, the creator of Duel Monsters, preventing the game from being created and causing the events of all three series to never happen. -- -- Yuusei and Jaden agree to pursue Paradox, which leads them to the past and causes a meeting with the King of Games, Yuugi Mutou. However, by the time Yuusei and Jaden arrive, Paradox had already attacked his time, supposedly killing both Pegasus and Yuugi's grandpa, and had also managed to steal Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon. After explaining everything to Yuugi, he agrees to fight with Yuusei and Jaden against Paradox in the ultimate three-on-one duel to free the trapped monsters and save both the world and time itself before it's too late. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, Flatiron Film Company -- Movie - Jan 23, 2010 -- 38,569 7.13
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna -- -- Gallop -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Game Adventure Shounen -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Movie: Chou Yuugou! Toki wo Koeta Kizuna -- While riding with Jack Atlas and Crow Hogan, Yuusei Fudou's Stardust Dragon is captured by Paradox, a mysterious Turbo Duelist from the future, during a Turbo Duel and turned into a Sin Monster. With the help of the Crimson Dragon, Yuusei chases after Paradox as he enters a time slip, ending up in the past. During this time, Paradox duels against Jaden Yuki, who is still able to use the powers of Yubel and The Supreme King. However, by this time Paradox had also captured Cyber End Dragon and Rainbow Dragon and overwhelms Jaden. He is saved thanks to Yuusei and the Crimson Dragon. Jaden informs Yuusei of Paradox's true intentions. By stealing various monsters from across time and turning them dark, he plans to kill Maximillion Pegasus, the creator of Duel Monsters, preventing the game from being created and causing the events of all three series to never happen. -- -- Yuusei and Jaden agree to pursue Paradox, which leads them to the past and causes a meeting with the King of Games, Yuugi Mutou. However, by the time Yuusei and Jaden arrive, Paradox had already attacked his time, supposedly killing both Pegasus and Yuugi's grandpa, and had also managed to steal Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon. After explaining everything to Yuugi, he agrees to fight with Yuusei and Jaden against Paradox in the ultimate three-on-one duel to free the trapped monsters and save both the world and time itself before it's too late. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- Movie - Jan 23, 2010 -- 38,569 7.13
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_religious_philosopher:_or,_the_right_use_of_contemplating_the_works_of_the_Creator
Bastard (Tyler, the Creator mixtape)
Boredom (Tyler, the Creator song)
Brahma The Creator
Church of the Creator
Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator
Problem of the creator of God
See You Again (Tyler, the Creator song)
She (Tyler, the Creator song)
The Creator (poetry collection)
The Creators (film)
Tyler, the Creator
Tyler, the Creator discography
Tyler, the Creator production discography
Wavy the Creator
Wolf (Tyler, the Creator album)
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