TERMS STARTING WITH
books, and in at least one passage (Zachariah 3:1)
books authored by Enoch. The name Orioc is
books dictated by Ezra. The other 4 “men” were
books dictated by Ezra. The other 4 scribes are
bookseller ::: n. --> One who sells books.
bookselling ::: n. --> The employment of selling books.
bookshelf ::: n. --> A shelf to hold books.
bookshelves ::: pl. --> of Bookshelf
bookshop ::: n. --> A bookseller&
bookstall ::: n. --> A stall or stand where books are sold.
bookstand ::: n. --> A place or stand for the sale of books in the streets; a bookstall.
A stand to hold books for reading or reference.
bookstore ::: n. --> A store where books are kept for sale; -- called in England a bookseller&
books, unless Voltaire had in mind Sammael or
Books, 1962.
Books of account - Theses are the financial records of an entity.
Books of Kiute. See KIU-CHE, BOOK OF
Books of Moses), an angel of the Seal, summoned in
Books of Moses, a power angel of the 5th Seal.
Books of Moses.] In Ozar Midrashim II, 316, as
Books of Moses, p. 139.]
Books of Moses, p. 85.] The cabalistic instructions
Books of Moses.
Books of Moses.\
Books of Moses.]
Books of Occult Philosophy, where the sigil of this
Books of the Bible and in Excluded Books of the New
Books of the Bible.
Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, pp. 204-205.]
Books of the Egyptian Gnostics.]
Books of the Maccabees. Books 1 and 2. (tr.) Sidney
Books of the Saviour. Extracts appended in Pistis
TERMS ANYWHERE
(2) The term experimental psychology is also used in a more restricted sense to designate a special branch of psychology consisting of laboratory studies conducted on normal, human adults as distinguished from such branches as child, abnormal, differential, animal or comparative, social, educational and applied psychology. This restricted sense is employed in the titles of text-books and manuals of "experimental psychology." Included in this field are such topics as sensory phenomena, perception, judgment, memory, learning, reaction-time, motor phenomena, emotional responses, motivation, thinking and reasoning. This identification of experimental psychology with a specific type of content is largely a result of historical accident, the first experimental psychologists were preoccupied with these particular topics.
473L Query "language" An English-like {query language} for the US Air Force {473L} system. [Sammet 1969, p. 665]. ["Headquarters USAF Command and Control System Query Language", Info Sys Sci, Proc 2nd Congress, Spartan Books 1965, pp.57-76]. (1994-10-31)
ABC of the Devil: Handwritten books for the use of magicians and sorcerers.
Abhidhamma (Pali) Abhidhamma [from abhi towards, with intensified meaning + dhamma law, religion, duty from the verbal root dhr to hold fast, preserve, sustain] The supreme dhamma or law as expounded in the third and last portion of the Pali Tipitaka (Sanskrit Tripitaka) or “three baskets” of the canonical books of the Southern School of Buddhism. The Abhidhamma-pitaka, which deals with profound metaphysical themes, is believed to be the source from which the Mahayana and Hinayana got their fundamental doctrines.
Achara (Sanskrit) Ācāra [from ā towards + the verbal root car to approach, proceed, behave] Custom, behavior, practice; also an established rule of conduct, a precept, etc., often used in compound form for names of books dealing with the understanding and application of moral precepts.
Aitareya (Sanskrit) Aitareya [from itara other; also from itarā mother of Aitareya] Name of a Brahmana or literary work attached to the Rig-Veda; also of Mahidasa, author of a Brahmana and an Aranyaka. The Aitareya-Brahmana (or Aitareyaka) contains forty adhyayas (sections) in which the duties of a hotri (priest) are enumerated. The Aitareya-Aranyaka consists of five books or aranyakas, the second and third of which are called the Aitareya-Upanishad (although sometimes the last four sections of the second book alone are so designated).
Alexandrian Library Begun by Ptolemy Soter (367?-283 BC), and zealously pursued by his successor Ptolemy Philadelphus. The two principal libraries were in the Bruchium and the Serapeum; the number of rolls or “books” is variously estimated between 400,000 and 700,000, but these rolls had not the contents of a modern printed volume. The Bruchium was accidentally set on fire when Caesar burnt the fleet in the harbor, but many rolls were rescued. The Bruchium quarter was destroyed by Aurelian in 273 and probably the library with it; and in about 390 Theodosius ordered the destruction of the Serapeum, and its books were pillaged by Christians. The Moslem Caliph ‘Omar is reputed finally to have destroyed the remainder of the library.
Al Kindi, Al Farabi, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were the first great philosophers who made large use of Aristotelian books. Their writings are of truly encyclopedic character and comprise the whole edifice of knowledge in their time. Their Aristotelianism is, however, mainly Neo-Platonism with addition of certain peripatetic notions. Avicenna is more of an Aristotelian than his predecessors. Al Farabi, e.g., held that cognition is ultimately due to an illumination, whereas Avicenna adopted a more Aristotelian theory. While these thinkers had an original philosophy, Averroes (Ibn Roshd) endeavored to clarify the meaning of the Aristotelian texts by extensive and minute commentaries. Translations from these writings first made known to medieval philosophy the non-logical works of the "Philosopher", although there existed, at the same time, some translations made directly from Greek texts.
alluminor ::: n. --> An illuminator of manuscripts and books; a limner.
Although said to have written one thousand books “his great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the ‘Tao-te-King,’ or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only ‘about 5,000 words,’ hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that ‘the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation,’ the earliest going back as far as the year 163 BC, not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time to veil the true Lao-Tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. . . . Tradition affirms that the commentaries to which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane” (SD 1:xxv).
Andrew Tanenbaum "person" Professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1941-) of the {Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam} in The Netherlands. Tanenbaum is famous for his work and books on computer architecture, {operating systems} and {networks}. He wrote the textbook "Computer Networks", Second Edition, Prentice-Hall, 1981, which describes the {International Standards Organisation}, {Open Systems Interconnection} (ISO-OSI) network model. See {Amoeba}, {Mac-1}, {Mic-1}, {Mic-2}, {Micro Assembly Language}, {MINIX}, {MicroProgramming Language}, {standard}. [Home page?] (1996-04-23)
antilegomena ::: n. pl. --> Certain books of the New Testament which were for a time not universally received, but which are now considered canonical. These are the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, and the Revelation. The undisputed books are called the Homologoumena.
apothesis ::: n. --> A place on the south side of the chancel in the primitive churches, furnished with shelves, for books, vestments, etc.
A dressing room connected with a public bath.
Application Configuration Access Protocol "protocol" (ACAP) A {protocol} which enhances {IMAP} by allowing the user to set up {address books}, user options, and other data for universal access. Currently (Feb 1997) no Internet proprietary products have implemented ACAP because the {Internet Engineering Task Force} has not yet approved the final specification. This was expected early in 1997. ["Your E-Mail Is Obsolete", Byte, Feb 1997]. (1997-05-03)
Aranyakas: The “Forest Books” of Hinduism, so called because they were used in teachings in the secrecy of the forest; they are mystical, esoteric meditations on the meaning of ritual lore.
Aryasangha (Sanskrit) Āryasaṃgha Founder of the first Yogacharya school, a direct disciple of Gautama Buddha; also a sage who lived in about the 5th or 6th century, who mixed Tantric worship with the Yogacharya system. The followers of the latter “claimed that he was the same Aryasangha, that had been a follower of Sakyamuni, and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal evidence alone is sufficient to show that the works written by him and translated about the year 600 of our era, works full of Tantra worship, ritualism, and tenets followed now considerably by the ‘red-cap’ sects in Sikhim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot be the same as the lofty system of the early Yogacharya school of pure Buddhism, which is neither northern or southern, but absolutely esoteric. Though none of the genuine Yogacharya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or marketable, yet one finds in the Yogacharya Bhumi Shastra of the pseudo-Aryasangha a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which he may have been initiated. It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and Tantrika magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty” (TG 323).
Asmonean, Hasmonean (Hebrew) “The Asmonean priest-kings promulgated the canon of the Old Testament in contradistinction to the Apocrypha or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews — kabalists. Till John Hyrcanus they were Asideans (Chasidim) and Pharisees (Parsees), but then they became Sadducees or Zadokites — asserters of sacerdotal rule as contradistinguished from rabbinical” (IU 2:135).
As regards the New Testament, the Gospels are esoteric books, in which the teachings of the ancient wisdom are built around the alleged story of the mission of Jesus, a teacher who lived at a somewhat earlier date than that assigned him. The epistles of Paul are the work of one with some claim to the title of an initiate, who speaks of Christ as the logos in man, and apparently knows naught of the life story of Jesus. The Revelation of St. John is a purely symbolic esoteric work, of a Qabbalistic character, curiously enough still retained in the Christian canon.
as sensible as a dictionary "humour" In Lewis Carroll's {Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there (http://www.Germany.EU.net/books/carroll/alice.html)}, in the chapter {The Garden of Live Flowers (http://www.Germany.EU.net/books/carroll/alice_21.html
atheistical ::: a. --> Pertaining to, implying, or containing, atheism; -- applied to things; as, atheistic doctrines, opinions, or books.
Disbelieving the existence of a God; impious; godless; -- applied to persons; as, an atheistic writer.
augural ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to augurs or to augury; betokening; ominous; significant; as, an augural staff; augural books.
Automatic Writing The practice in which a person takes pen and paper, makes his mind blank, and waits for his pen to write by some involuntary impulse. Sometimes the pen is replaced by a mechanical device such as an ouija board. The results vary from purely negative ones, through the stage of illegible scrawls, up to elaborate consecutive messages or even quotations from rare books. The ability of different persons to succeed in this practice varies, a minority being specially apt; and the aptitude can be developed by practice. The usual spiritualistic explanation is that these writings are communications from those “on the other side.” But in every case it is necessary for the automatic writer to resign the control of his own will over his physical and vital-astral body and to surrender these to the use of influences unknown to him.
bookseller ::: n. --> One who sells books.
bookselling ::: n. --> The employment of selling books.
bookshelf ::: n. --> A shelf to hold books.
bookshelves ::: pl. --> of Bookshelf
bookshop ::: n. --> A bookseller&
bookstall ::: n. --> A stall or stand where books are sold.
bookstand ::: n. --> A place or stand for the sale of books in the streets; a bookstall.
A stand to hold books for reading or reference.
bookstore ::: n. --> A store where books are kept for sale; -- called in England a bookseller&
bedagat ::: n. --> The sacred books of the Buddhists in Burmah.
Benoit Mandelbrot "person" /ben'wa man'dl-bro/ Benoit B. Mandelbrot. The {IBM} scientist who wrote several original books on {fractals} and gave his name to the set he was discovered, the {Mandelbrot set} and coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break". (1997-07-02)
bethumb ::: v. t. --> To handle; to wear or soil by handling; as books.
Bhagavata Purana (Sanskrit) Bhāgavata Purāṇa One of the most celebrated and popular of the 18 principal Puranas, especially dedicated to the glorification of Vishnu-Krishna, whose history is given in the tenth book. It consists of 12 books or skandhas, of 18,000 slokas, and is narrated by Suka, the son of Vyasa, to King Parikshit, the grandson of Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers and hero of the Bhagavad-Gita.
bible "publication" The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular language, {operating system} or other complex software system. It is also used to denote one of a small number of such books such as {Knuth} and {K&R}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
bibliographical ::: a. --> Pertaining to bibliography, or the history of books.
bibliography ::: n. --> A history or description of books and manuscripts, with notices of the different editions, the times when they were printed, etc.
bibliolatrist ::: n. --> A worshiper of books; especially, a worshiper of the Bible; a believer in its verbal inspiration.
bibliology ::: n. --> An account of books; book lore; bibliography.
The literature or doctrine of the Bible.
bibliomaniacal ::: a. --> Pertaining to a passion for books; relating to a bibliomaniac.
bibliomaniac ::: n. --> One who has a mania for books. ::: a. --> Relating to a bibliomaniac.
bibliomania ::: n. --> A mania for acquiring books.
bibliopegic ::: a. --> Relating to the binding of books.
bibliopegistic ::: a. --> Pertaining to the art of binding books.
bibliopegy ::: n. --> The art of binding books.
bibliophile ::: n. --> A lover of books.
bibliophilism ::: n. --> Love of books.
bibliophilist ::: n. --> A lover of books.
bibliophobia ::: n. --> A dread of books.
bibliopolar ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the sale of books.
bibliopole ::: n. --> One who sells books.
bibliopolism ::: n. --> The trade or business of selling books.
bibliotaphist ::: n. --> One who hides away books, as in a tomb.
binder ::: n. --> One who binds; as, a binder of sheaves; one whose trade is to bind; as, a binder of books.
Anything that binds, as a fillet, cord, rope, or band; a bandage; -- esp. the principal piece of timber intended to bind together any building.
bindery ::: n. --> A place where books, or other articles, are bound; a bookbinder&
bipontine ::: a. --> Relating to books printed at Deuxponts, or Bipontium (Zweibrucken), in Bavaria.
black art A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area (compare {black magic}). VLSI design and compiler code optimisation were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been written, became merely {heavy wizardry}. The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term "black art" and what it describes less common than formerly. See also {voodoo programming}. [{Jargon File}]
black book ::: --> One of several books of a political character, published at different times and for different purposes; -- so called either from the color of the binding, or from the character of the contents.
A book compiled in the twelfth century, containing a description of the court of exchequer of England, an official statement of the revenues of the crown, etc.
A book containing details of the enormities practiced in the English monasteries and religious houses, compiled by order of
black-letter ::: a. --> Written or printed in black letter; as, a black-letter manuscript or book.
Given to the study of books in black letter; that is, of old books; out of date.
Of or pertaining to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints&
black letter ::: --> The old English or Gothic letter, in which the Early English manuscripts were written, and the first English books were printed. It was conspicuous for its blackness. See Type.
bookbinder ::: n. --> One whose occupation is to bind books.
bookbindery ::: n. --> A bookbinder&
bookbinding ::: n. --> The art, process, or business of binding books.
bookcase ::: n. --> A case with shelves for holding books, esp. one with glazed doors.
bookish ::: a. --> Given to reading; fond of study; better acquainted with books than with men; learned from books.
Characterized by a method of expression generally found in books; formal; labored; pedantic; as, a bookish way of talking; bookish sentences.
bookkeeper ::: n. --> One who keeps accounts; one who has the charge of keeping the books and accounts in an office.
bookkeeping ::: n. --> The art of recording pecuniary or business transactions in a regular and systematic manner, so as to show their relation to each other, and the state of the business in which they occur; the art of keeping accounts. The books commonly used are a daybook, cashbook, journal, and ledger. See Daybook, Cashbook, Journal, and Ledger.
book-learned ::: a. --> Versed in books; having knowledge derived from books.
bookless ::: a. --> Without books; unlearned.
bookmaker ::: n. --> One who writes and publishes books; especially, one who gathers his materials from other books; a compiler.
A betting man who "makes a book." See To make a book, under Book, n.
bookmonger ::: n. --> A dealer in books.
book muslin ::: --> A kind of muslin used for the covers of books.
A kind of thin white muslin for ladies&
Books of Kiute. See KIU-CHE, BOOK OF
book titles "publication" There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant colour of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of these are described in {this dictionary} under their own entries. See {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book}, {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book}, {bible}, {rainbow series}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
bookwork ::: n. --> Work done upon a book or books (as in a printing office), in distinction from newspaper or job work.
Study; application to books.
bookworm ::: n. --> Any larva of a beetle or moth, which is injurious to books. Many species are known.
A student closely attached to books or addicted to study; a reader without appreciation.
bounce 1. (Perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check) An {electronic mail} message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification (a "{bounce message}") to the sender is said to "bounce". 2. To play volleyball. The now-demolished {D. C. Power Lab} building used by the {Stanford AI Lab} in the 1970s had a volleyball court on the front lawn. From 5 PM to 7 PM was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 would come over the intercom the cry: "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!", followed by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; probably from the expression "bouncing the mattress", but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me, Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare {boink}. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users. 5. (VM/CMS programmers) Automatic warm-start of a computer after an error. "I logged on this morning and found it had bounced 7 times during the night" 6. (IBM) To {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-29)
British Library Method "algorithm" {Brute force} searching. According to legends circulating in the 1970s, in the British Library books are searched for by examining each book sequentially in the first shelf, then the next shelf, continuing until the book is found or the entire library has been searched. The term was referred to in a Dutch coursebook, "Inleiding In De Informatica" (Introduction to Informatics) from a course given by C.H.A. Koster and Th.A. Zoethout. This was based on a course given at the TU Berlin. [Reference?] (1999-04-14)
calf ::: n. --> The young of the cow, or of the Bovine family of quadrupeds. Also, the young of some other mammals, as of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and whale.
Leather made of the skin of the calf; especially, a fine, light-colored leather used in bookbinding; as, to bind books in calf.
An awkward or silly boy or young man; any silly person; a dolt.
A small island near a larger; as, the Calf of Man.
canon ::: n. --> A law or rule.
A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
canticle ::: n. --> A song; esp. a little song or hymn.
The Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, one of the books of the Old Testament.
A canto or division of a poem
A psalm, hymn, or passage from the Bible, arranged for chanting in church service.
Carnap's contributions to the study of epistemological and philosophical problems may be characterized as applications of the methods of logical analysis to the languages of everyday life and of science. His books contain applications to the fundamental problems of epistemology, expound the principles of physicalism (q.v.) which was developed by Carnap and Neurath and which offers, amongst others, a basis for a more cautious version of the ideas of older behaviorism and for the construction of one common unified language for all branches of empirical science (see Unity of Science). Main works: Logische Aufblou der Welt; Abriss der Logistik; Logische Syntax der Sprache "Testability and Meaning," Phil. of Sci. (1916). -- C.G.H.
catalogue ::: n. --> A list or enumeration of names, or articles arranged methodically, often in alphabetical order; as, a catalogue of the students of a college, or of books, or of the stars. ::: v. t. --> To make a list or catalogue; to insert in a catalogue.
charta ::: n. --> Material on which instruments, books, etc., are written; parchment or paper.
A charter or deed; a writing by which a grant is made. See Magna Charta.
Chatur-yoni (Sanskrit) Catur-yoni Four wombs; the four modes of birth; the four ways of entering on the path of birth as decided by karma. These four ways as described in ancient books are: 1) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia; 2) birth from an egg, as birds and reptiles; 3) birth from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and 4) by sudden self-transformation, as bodhisattvas and gods (anupapadaka — “parentless”). The anupapadaka birth is brought about by the intrinsic energy and karmic merit of the individual, thus transforming himself into a nobler being.
chronicle ::: n. --> An historical register or account of facts or events disposed in the order of time.
A narrative of events; a history; a record.
The two canonical books of the Old Testament in which immediately follow 2 Kings. ::: v. t.
citation ::: n. --> An official summons or notice given to a person to appear; the paper containing such summons or notice.
The act of citing a passage from a book, or from another person, in his own words; also, the passage or words quoted; quotation.
Enumeration; mention; as, a citation of facts.
A reference to decided cases, or books of authority, to prove a point in law.
collate ::: v. t. --> To compare critically, as books or manuscripts, in order to note the points of agreement or disagreement.
To gather and place in order, as the sheets of a book for binding.
To present and institute in a benefice, when the person presenting is both the patron and the ordinary; -- followed by to.
To bestow or confer.
collator ::: n. --> One who collates manuscripts, books, etc.
One who collates to a benefice.
One who confers any benefit.
collector ::: n. --> One who collects things which are separate; esp., one who makes a business or practice of collecting works of art, objects in natural history, etc.; as, a collector of coins.
A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
An officer appointed and commissioned to collect and receive customs, duties, taxes, or toll.
One authorized to collect debts.
colportage ::: n. --> The distribution of religious books, tracts, etc., by colporteurs.
colporteur ::: n. --> A hawker; specifically, one who travels about selling and distributing religious tracts and books.
compilation ::: n. --> The act or process of compiling or gathering together from various sources.
That which is compiled; especially, a book or document composed of materials gathering from other books or documents.
compiler ::: n. --> One who compiles; esp., one who makes books by compilation.
compile ::: v. t. --> To put together; to construct; to build.
To contain or comprise.
To put together in a new form out of materials already existing; esp., to put together or compose out of materials from other books or documents.
To write; to compose.
Considered as history, the Bible is a patchwork of documents put together at different times, sometimes mere allegory, as in the creation story, or partly allegorical and partly literal, as in the story of the Flood, adapted to serve the purpose of embalming the sacred teachings. It is remarkable that Christians continue to preserve books like Ezekiel — so obviously an esoteric work and so incomprehensible on ordinary doctrinal lines — the Psalms of David, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Job.
cookbook "programming" (From amateur electronics and radio) A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs. One current example is the "{PostScript} Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as the {Blue Book} which has recipes for things like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts. Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up} small programs in unknown languages. This function is analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human languages. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-04)
copybook "programming, library" (Or "copy member", "copy module") A common piece of {source code} designed to be copied into many source programs, used mainly in {IBM} {DOS} {mainframe} programming. In {mainframe} {DOS} (DOS/VS, DOS/{VSE}, etc.), the copybook was stored as a "book" in a {source} library. A library was comprised of "books", prefixed with a letter designating the language, e.g., A.name for Assembler, C.name for Cobol, etc., because {DOS} didn't support multiple libraries, private libraries, or anything. This term is commonly used by {COBOL} programmers but is supported by most {mainframe} languages. The {IBM} {OS} series did not use the term "copybook", instead it referred to such files as "libraries" implemented as "partitioned data sets" or {PDS}. Copybooks are functionally equivalent to {C} and {C++} {include} files. (1997-07-31)
copy ::: n. --> An abundance or plenty of anything.
An imitation, transcript, or reproduction of an original work; as, a copy of a letter, an engraving, a painting, or a statue.
An individual book, or a single set of books containing the works of an author; as, a copy of the Bible; a copy of the works of Addison.
That which is to be imitated, transcribed, or reproduced; a pattern, model, or example; as, his virtues are an excellent copy for
copyright ::: n. --> The right of an author or his assignee, under statute, to print and publish his literary or artistic work, exclusively of all other persons. This right may be had in maps, charts, engravings, plays, and musical compositions, as well as in books. ::: v. t. --> To secure a copyright on.
countingroom ::: v. --> The house or room in which a merchant, trader, or manufacturer keeps his books and transacts business.
count "programming" One of the built-in {aggregate functions} in {relational database} systems, that returns the number of rows in a result. The argument to the function is nearly always "*", e.g. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM books which returns the number of rows in the "books" table. If, instead, we say SELECT COUNT(publisher) FROM books then only rows with a non-{null} value in the "publisher" column will be counted. (2010-09-26)
crayola books "publication" A humorous and/or disparaging term for the {rainbow series} of National Computer Security Center (NCSC) computer security standards. See also {Orange Book}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
cunabula ::: n. pl. --> The earliest abode; original dwelling place; originals; as, the cunabula of the human race.
The extant copies of the first or earliest printed books, or of such as were printed in the 15th century.
Cush (Hebrew) Kūsh Black; the eldest son of Ham, grandson of Noah, and father of Nimrod. Also applied to his descendants, usually translated Ethiopians, and to a region vaguely defined as Ethiopia. An old tradition states that Ham stole seven books out of Noah’s Ark and gave them to Cush; and Mas’udi, the Arabic historian, says that the Nabathaeans were those descendants of Ham who settled under the leadership of Nimrod.
data dictionary "database" A data structure that stores {metadata}, i.e. data about {data}. The term "data dictionary" has several uses. Most generally it is a set of {data descriptions} that can be shared by several applications. Usually it means a {table} in a {database} that stores the names, {field} {types}, length, and other characteristics of the fields in the database tables. An active data dictionary is automatically updated as changes occur in the database. A passive data dictionary must be manually updated. In a {DBMS}, this functionality is performed by the {system catalog}. The data dictionary is a more general software utility used by designers, users, and administrators for {information resource management}. The data dictionary may maintain information on system hardware, software, documentation, users, and other aspects. Data dictionaries are also used to document the database design process itself and can accumulate metadata ready to feed into the system catalog. [Does anybody call them "codebooks"?] (2001-04-24)
DEBUG "software, tool" The bundled {compiler}/{assembler} for {DOS}/{Windows} after {CP/M}. [Did CP/M have "DEBUG"?] ["DOS Power Tools, Techniques, Tricks, and Utilities, PC Magazine, Paul Somerson Executive Editor, Bantam Books, 1988]. (2003-06-17)
deep magic [possibly from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books] An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, especially one neither generally published nor available to hackers at large (compare {black art}); one that could only have been composed by a true {wizard}. Compiler optimisation techniques and many aspects of {OS} design used to be {deep magic}; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are. Compare {heavy wizardry}. Especially found in comments of the form "Deep magic begins here.". Compare {voodoo programming}.
Dell Computer Corporation "company" One of the biggest US manufacturers of {IBM PC} compatibles. "From notebooks to networks", their slogan says. {(http://us.dell.com)}. (1996-05-29)
detur ::: n. --> A present of books given to a meritorious undergraduate student as a prize.
Devachan (Tibetan) bDe-ba-can (de-wa-chen) [from bde-ba happiness + can possessing] The happy land; exoterically, a translation of the Sanskrit sukhavati, the happy Western Realm or Pure Land of the dhyani-buddha Amitabha of East Asian Buddhism. Certain Tibetan books contain glowing descriptions of devachan, such as the Mani Kambum (or Kumbum) and the Odpagmed kyi shing kod. The term was first employed in theosophical literature by the Mahatmas in their letters to A. P. Sinnett.
diatessaron ::: n. --> The interval of a fourth.
A continuous narrative arranged from the first four books of the New Testament.
An electuary compounded of four medicines.
disorderly ::: a. --> Not in order; marked by disorder; disarranged; immethodical; as, the books and papers are in a disorderly state.
Not acting in an orderly way, as the functions of the body or mind.
Not complying with the restraints of order and law; tumultuous; unruly; lawless; turbulent; as, disorderly people; disorderly assemblies.
Offensive to good morals and public decency;
displace ::: v. t. --> To change the place of; to remove from the usual or proper place; to put out of place; to place in another situation; as, the books in the library are all displaced.
To crowd out; to take the place of.
To remove from a state, office, dignity, or employment; to discharge; to depose; as, to displace an officer of the revenue.
To dislodge; to drive away; to banish.
Distributed Data Management "protocol, database" (DDM) An {IBM} {data} {protocol} architecture for data management services across {distributed} systems in an {SNA} environment. DDM provides a common {data management language} for data interchange among different IBM system platforms. Products supporting DDM include {AS/400}, {System/36}, {System/38} and {CICS/DDM}. On the AS/400, DDM controls remote file processing. DDM enables application programs running on one AS/400 system to access data files stored on another system supporting DDM. Similarly, other systems that have DDM can access files in the database of the local AS/400 system. DDM makes it easier to distribute file processing between two or more systems. {OS/400 Distributed Data Management V3R6 Reference (http://as400bks.rochester.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/bookmgr.cmd/BOOKS/QBJALH00/CCONTENTS)}. (1999-04-26)
ditto ::: n. --> The aforesaid thing; the same (as before). Often contracted to do., or to two "turned commas" ("), or small marks. Used in bills, books of account, tables of names, etc., to save repetition. ::: adv. --> As before, or aforesaid; in the same manner; also.
DLUR/DLUS "networking" Dependent Logical Unit Requester/Server. The DLUR function is an {APPN} enhancement for an end node or network node that supports dependent {LUs}. The DLUS function is a product feature of an {interchange node} or a {T5} network node supporting {session services} extensions. {(http://booksrv2.raleigh.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/bookmgr.cmd/BOOKS/DLUR7/)}. (1997-05-08)
Dzyan (Senzar) Closely similar to the Tibetan dzin (learning, knowledge). Although Blavatsky states that dzyan is “a corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyan and Jnana . . . Wisdom, divine knowledge” (TG 107), there is also a Chinese equivalent dan or jan-na, which in “modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch’an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as ‘to reform one’s self by meditation and knowledge,’ a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the ‘Book of Dzyan’ ” (SD 1:xx). This term then is connected directly with the ancient mystery-language called Senzar, with Tibetan and Chinese mystical Buddhism mostly of the Mahayana schools, and thirdly with the Sanskrit dhyana of which indeed it was probably originally a corruption.
ecclesiastes ::: a. --> One of the canonical books of the Old Testament.
Edward Yourdon "person" A {software engineering} consultant, widely known as the developer of the "{Yourdon method}" of structured systems analysis and design, as well as the co-developer of the Coad/Yourdon method of {object-oriented analysis} and design. He is also the editor of three software journals - American Programmer, Guerrilla Programmer, and Application Development Strategies - that analyse software technology trends and products in the United States and several other countries around the world. Ed Yourdon received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from {MIT}, and has done graduate work at MIT and at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He has been appointed an Honorary Professor of {Information Technology} at Universidad CAECE in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has received numerous honors and awards from other universities and professional societies around the world. He has worked in the computer industry for 30 years, including positions with {DEC} and {General Electric}. Earlier in his career, he worked on over 25 different {mainframe} computers, and was involved in a number of pioneering computer projects involving {time-sharing} and {virtual memory}. In 1974, he founded the consulting firm, {Yourdon, Inc.}. He is currently immersed in research in new developments in software engineering, such as object-oriented software development and {system dynamics} modelling. Ed Yourdon is the author of over 200 technical articles; he has also written 19 computer books, including a novel on {computer crime} and a book for the general public entitled Nations At Risk. His most recent books are Object-Oriented Systems Development (1994), Decline and Fall of the American Programmer (1992), Object-Oriented Design (1991), and Object-Oriented Analysis (1990). Several of his books have been translated into Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, French, German, and other languages, and his articles have appeared in virtually all of the major computer journals. He is a regular keynote speaker at major computer conferences around the world, and serves as the conference Chairman for Digital Consulting's SOFTWARE WORLD conference. He was an advisor to Technology Transfer's research project on software industry opportunities in the former Soviet Union, and a member of the expert advisory panel on CASE acquisition for the U.S. Department of Defense. Mr. Yourdon was born on a small planet at the edge of one of the distant red-shifted galaxies. He now lives in the Center of the Universe (New York City) with his wife, three children, and nine Macintosh computers, all of which are linked together through an Appletalk network. (1995-04-16)
Elements: Are simple constituents, in psychology, of sense perceptions such as sweet and green. Elementary complexes are things of experience. (Avenarius.) In logic: individual members of a class. Also refers to Euclid's 13 books. -- H.H.
elzevir ::: a. --> Applied to books or editions (esp. of the Greek New Testament and the classics) printed and published by the Elzevir family at Amsterdam, Leyden, etc., from about 1592 to 1680; also, applied to a round open type introduced by them.
enamor ::: v. t. --> To inflame with love; to charm; to captivate; -- with of, or with, before the person or thing; as, to be enamored with a lady; to be enamored of books or science.
encyclopaedia ::: a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject.
Engels, Frederick: Co-founder of the doctrines of Marxism (see Dialectical materialism) Engels was the life-long friend and collaborator of Karl Marx (q.v.). He was born at Barmen, Germanv, in 1820, the son of a manufacturer. Like Marx, he became interested in communism early in life, developing and applying its doctrines until his death, August 5, 1895. Beside his collaboration with Marx on Die Heilige Familie, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Anti-Dühring and articles for the "New York Tribune" (a selection from which constitutes "Germany: revolution and counter-revolution"), and his editing of Volumes II and III of Capital, published after Marx's death, Engels wrote extensively on various subjects, from "Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)" to military problems, in which field he had received technical training. On the philosophical side of Marxism, Engels speculated on fundamental questions of scientific methodology and dialectical logic in such books as Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dühring. Works like Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy and Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State are likewise regarded as basic texts. The most extensive collection of Engels' works will be found in Marx-Engels "Gesamtausgabe", to which there is still much unpublished material to be added. -- J.M.S.
Enneads [from Greek ennead group of nine] A work of Plotinus (205? - 270) — one of the last and most famous of the Neoplatonic philosophers, and pupil of Ammonius Saccas — published by his disciple Porphyry. Each of its six books contained nine chapters.
Enoch books have been attributed) draw on his own lively imagination? (Certainly the 12-winged
’Esh Metsareph (Hebrew) ’Ēsh Metsārēf [from ’ēsh fire + the verbal root tsāraf to smelt, refine, purify] Fire purifying; one of the books of the so-called Dogmatic Qabbalah, usually called “The Book of the Purifying Fire,” considered by some to be a rare hermetic and alchemical work.
Euclid of Megara identified the good and the One. The many are unreal. Not to be confused with the great geometer who lived at Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.), author of the Elements in 13 books. -- M.F.
exercise, left as an Used to complete a proof in technical books when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or "the rest"] is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humour or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-20)
fan palm ::: --> Any palm tree having fan-shaped or radiate leaves; as the Chamaerops humilis of Southern Europe; the species of Sabal and Thrinax in the West Indies, Florida, etc.; and especially the great talipot tree (Corypha umbraculifera) of Ceylon and Malaya. The leaves of the latter are often eighteen feet long and fourteen wide, and are used for umbrellas, tents, and roofs. When cut up, they are used for books and manuscripts.
first class module "programming" A {module} that is a {first class data object} of the {programming language}, e.g. a {record} containing {functions}. In a {functional language}, it is standard to have first class programs, so program building blocks can have the same status. {Claus Reinke's Virtual Bookshelf (http://informatik.uni-kiel.de/~cr/bib/bookshelf/Modules.html)}. (2004-01-26)
FOAF [{Usenet}] Friend Of A Friend. The source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This term was not originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better recognised on {Usenet} and elsewhere than in mainstream English. [{Jargon File}]
Forest Books: See: Aranyakas.
foxed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Fox ::: a. --> Discolored or stained; -- said of timber, and also of the paper of books or engravings.
Repaired by foxing; as, foxed boots.
foxiness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being foxy, or foxlike; craftiness; shrewdness.
The state of being foxed or discolored, as books; decay; deterioration.
A coarse and sour taste in grapes.
From the hierarchy of compassion, the light-side of nature as contrasted with the matter-side, came these semi-divine manasaputras who incarnated in the quasi-senseless, intellectually dormant human race at about the midpoint of the third root-race of this fourth round. By their own spiritual-intellectual fire and flame they quickened the latent mental fires in infant humanity stimulating the thought principle, just as parents teach a little child to think, quickening its mind, by means of books, by precept, by example, and by words. It is the most simple thing to do and yet a glorious achievement. It shows how inferior beings are protected and guided by higher beings, or dhyani-chohans, just as a child is watched, loved, and guided by its parents. Mind was quickened in mankind by the manasaputras, but there was already latent mind in man — unevoked; it required the coming of the superior developed mind, a part of the latter’s own flame to the wick of the unlighted candle, to set the unlighted candlewick aflame in its turn; but it could not be set aflame unless mind were already latent there.
Ganesa (Sanskrit) Gaṇeśa The Hindu god of wisdom, son of Siva, who lost his human head which was replaced by that of an elephant. As he who removes obstacles, he is invoked at the commencement of any important undertaking, likewise at the beginning of books. In some respects he is thus equivalent to the Egyptian Thoth or Thoth-Hermes, the scribe of the gods. Ganesa is the chief or head of multitudes of subordinate spiritual entities — a necessity if as the god of wisdom he accomplishes his cosmic labors through subordinate hierarchies of intelligent and semi-intelligent beings, acting as their director or guide in forming and guiding nature.
Giuseppe Peano "person, mathematics, logic" (1858-08-27 - 1932-04-20) An Italian mathematician who wrote over 200 books and papers, was a founder of {mathematical logic} and {set theory} and taught at the University of Turin. He contributed to mathematical {analysis}, {logic}, the teaching of {calculus}, {differential equations}, {vector analysis} and the axiomatization of mathematics. The standard {axiomatization} of the {natural numbers} is named {Peano arithmetic} or the {Peano axioms} after him. He also invented the {Peano curve}, an early example of a {fractal}. (2013-03-23)
Grabmann, Martin: (1875-) Is one of the most capable historians of medieval philosophy. Born in Wintershofen (Oberpfalz), he was ordained in 1898. He his taught philosophy and theology at Eichstätt (1906), Vienna (1913), and Munich (1918-). An acknowledged authority on the chronology and authenticity of the works of St. Thomas, he is equally capable in dealing with the thought of St. Augustine, or of many minor writers in philosophy and theology up to the Renaissance, Aus d. Geisteswelt d. Mittelalters (Festg. Grabmann) Münster i. W. 1935, lists more than 200 of his articles and books, published before 1934. Chief works Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methods (1909), Mittelalterliches Geistesleben (1926), Werke des hl. Thomas v. Aq. (1931). -- V.J.B.
grangerism ::: n. --> The practice of illustrating a particular book by engravings collected from other books.
grangerite ::: n. --> One who collects illustrations from various books for the decoration of one book.
grangerize ::: v. t. & i. --> To collect (illustrations from books) for decoration of other books.
Green Book 1. "publication" Informal name for one of the four standard references on {PostScript}. The other three official guides are known as the {Blue Book}, the {Red Book}, and the {White Book}. ["PostScript Language Program Design", Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1988 (ISBN 0-201-14396-8)]. 2. "publication" Informal name for one of the three standard references on {SmallTalk}. Also associated with blue and red books. ["Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice", by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983; QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3)]. 3. "publication" The "X/Open Compatibility Guide", which defines an international standard {Unix} environment that is a proper superset of {POSIX}/SVID. It also includes descriptions of a standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. "publication" The {IEEE} 1003.1 {POSIX} Operating Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book". 5. "publication" Any of the 1992 standards issued by the {ITU-T}'s tenth plenary assembly. These include, among other things, the dreadful {X.400} {electronic mail} standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. 6. {Green Book CD-ROM}. See also {book titles}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
Grhya-sutras: The “House Books” of Hinduism, teaching and expounding the rites for the critical points of life, from birth to death, and the family sacrifices.
guest book "web" The electronic equivalent of the physical notebooks found in some small hotels, in which visitors can write their names, comments and suggestions for the benefit of the proprietors and future visitors or purely for posterity. The electronic version is a form on a {website} into which users can enter similar details for display on the site. (2009-01-15)
hand for books in my own library. Instead, in my then state of pneumatic innocence, I looked
hello, world "programming" The canonical, minimal, first program that a programmer writes in a new {programming language} or {development environment}. The program just prints "hello, world" to {standard output} in order to verify that the programmer can successfully edit, compile and run a simple program before embarking on anything more challenging. Hello, world is the first example program in the {C} programming book, {K&R}, and the tradition has spread from there to pretty much every other language and many of their textbooks. Environments that generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered bad. {Hello, World in over 400 programming languages (http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm)}. (2013-10-27)
He must live in his o^v^ soul beyond the written Truth. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books ; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite.
heptateuch ::: n. --> The first seven books of the Testament.
heterodox ::: a. --> Contrary to, or differing from, some acknowledged standard, as the Bible, the creed of a church, the decree of a council, and the like; not orthodox; heretical; -- said of opinions, doctrines, books, etc., esp. upon theological subjects.
Holding heterodox opinions, or doctrines not orthodox; heretical; -- said of persons. ::: n.
hexateuch ::: n. --> The first six books of the Old Testament.
Hitopadesa (Sanskrit) Hitopadeśa [from hita good, proper + upadeśa counsel, advice] Good counsel; a well-known Sanskrit collection of ethical precepts, allegories, and tales from a larger and older work called the Panchatantra, both books consisting of mingled verse and prose. The verses, mostly proverbs and maxims of practical wisdom, are supported by prose fables in which animals often play the part of human beings.
homologoumena ::: n. pl. --> Those books of the New Testament which were acknowledged as canonical by the early church; -- distinguished from antilegomena.
Homunculi (Latin) Mannikins; in medieval alchemical thought, artificially created little men, little not necessarily in stature but in being incomplete. Paracelsus claims to have made them, and detailed sometimes gruesome accounts of their manufacture, and the result can be found in old books on magic. The principles of earth and water are required to give a body and vitality, the will of the magician is the directive force, and some kind of nature spirit must be imbodied therein, as the ’Ishonim mentioned in the Zohar. But this makes only an animal with human (or other) shape; and to make a complete human being it would be necessary to imitate the act of the manasaputras. Blavatsky anticipates that science may and undoubtedly one day will be able to make homunculi, as the medieval alchemists dreamed of doing.
Horns Much used in the Bible, often as a symbol of might; and the altar in the tabernacle had horns, which were seized as sanctuary by the fugitive suppliant. In the prophetic and apocalyptic books of Christianity and other religions, we find dragons and other monsters with horns, the number of horns possibly having a symbolical reference to races. Its most general sense is as a symbol of natural generative power, whence it is characteristic of several symbolic animals, as the ram, the bull and cow, the goat, etc. It is seen in Greece in Pan, the god of natural generation and procreative fertility; and in Judaism in the goat which, as the scapegoat, stands among other things for the fall into generation, and was thus said to bear away the burden of the people’s sins in early and medieval Europe. Satan or the Devil is represented with horns in a similar sense, for actually he represents the nether aspect of nature, and in popular belief his horns, like his hoofs and tail, are regarded as horrific and bestial attributes. The moon, the oldest and most graphic symbol of productive generation, is said to have horns and the same are seen in the zodiacal Taurus, the sign of the moon’s elevation, while the ram’s horns are seen in Aries — the one representing the passive, the other the active principle in nature.
House Books: See: Grhya-sutras.
http://savitri.in/books/narad-richard-eggenberger/lexicon-of-an-infinite-mind
IBM 704 "computer" A large, scientific computer made by {IBM} and used by the largest commercial, government and educational institutions. The IBM 704 had 36-bit memory words, 15-bit addresses and instructions with one address. A few {index register} instructions had the infamous 15-bit decrement field in addition to the 15-bit address. The 704, and {IBM 709} which had the same basic architecture, represented a substantial step forward from the {IBM 650}'s {magnetic drum} storage as they provided random access at electronic speed to {core storage}, typically 32k words of 36 bits each. [Or did the 704 actually come *before* the 650?] A typical 700 series installation would be in a specially built room of perhaps 1000 to 2000 square feet, with cables running under a raised floor and substantial air conditioning. There might be up to eight {magnetic tape} transports, each about 3 x 3 x 6 feet, on one or two "channels." The 1/2 inch tape had seven tracks and moved at 150 inches per second, giving a read/write speed of 15,000 six bit characters (plus parity) per second. In the centre would be the operator's {console} consisting of cabinets and tables for storage of tapes and boxes of cards; and a {card reader}, a {card punch}, and a {line printer}, each perhaps 4 x 4 x 5 feet in dimension. Small {jobs} could be entered via {punched cards} at the console, but as a rule the user jobs were transferred from cards to {magnetic tape} by {off-line} equipment and only control information was entered at the console (see {SPOOL}). Before each job, the {operating system} was loaded from a read-only system tape (because the system in {core} could have been corrupted by the previous user), and then the user's program, in the form of card images on the input tape, would be run. Program output would be written to another tape (typically on another channel) for printing off-line. Well run installations would transfer the user's cards to tape, run the job, and print the output tape with a turnaround time of one to four hours. The processing unit typically occupied a position symmetric but opposite the operator's console. Physically the largest of the units, it included a glass enclosure a few feet in dimension in which could be seen the "core" about one foot on each side. The 36-bit word could hold two 18-bit addresses called the "Contents of the Address Register" ({CAR}) and the "Contents of the Decrement Register" ({CDR}). On the opposite side of the floor from the tape drives and operator's console would be a desk and bookshelves for the ever-present (24 hours a day) "field engineer" dressed in, you guessed it, a grey flannel suit and tie. The maintenance of the many thousands of {vacuum tubes}, each with limited lifetime, and the cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment of mechanical equipment, was augmented by a constant flow of {bug} reports, change orders to both hardware and software, and hand-holding for worried users. The 704 was oriented toward scientific work and included {floating point} hardware and the first {Fortran} implementation. Its hardware was the basis for the requirement in some programming languages that loops must be executed at least once. The {IBM 705} was the business counterpart of the 704. The 705 was a decimal machine with a circular register which could hold several variables (numbers, values) at the same time. Very few 700 series computers remained in service by 1965, but the {IBM 7090}, using {transistors} but similar in logical structure, remained an important machine until the production of the earliest {integrated circuits}. [Was the 704 scientific, business or general purpose? Difference between 704 and 709?] (1996-01-24)
illiterate ::: a. --> Ignorant of letters or books; unlettered; uninstructed; uneducated; as, an illiterate man, or people.
illumination ::: n. --> The act of illuminating, or supplying with light; the state of being illuminated.
Festive decoration of houses or buildings with lights.
Adornment of books and manuscripts with colored illustrations. See Illuminate, v. t., 3. ::: v. t.
illuminator ::: n. --> One whose occupation is to adorn books, especially manuscripts, with miniatures, borders, etc. See Illuminate, v. t., 3. ::: v. t. --> A condenser or reflector of light in optical apparatus; also, an illuminant.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
Information Innovation A group of companies with offices in Amsterdam and New York which acts as an information filter for the {web}. They analyse what happens in the Web community and organise the Web's information so that it is accessible and efficient to use. Information Innovation provides: "The Management Guide" - a guide for managers in the information age. The Guide consists of 22 parts, each concentrating on a particular technology or issue facing managers. Topics range from {Artificial Intelligence} and Telecommunications to Finance and Marketing. Each part contains references to additional valuable information, including {CD ROMs}, conferences, magazines, articles and books. "The Hypergraphic Matrix" - a "hypergraphic" matrix of 250 graphics discussing the interrelationships between technology, change, business functions and specific industries. "Dictionary" - the largest Internet dictionary on management and technology. "The Delphi Oracle" - a comprehensive guide to the latest management ideas and issues. Over 500 articles and books have been read, analysed, rated and catalogued. "Management Software" - a guide to software which is useful to managers. Both Web software, Internet software and commecial products are included in this guide. "The Web Word" - an information service about the Web. It includes a regular newsletter and databases about Web resources, news, interviews with Web personalities and, of course, the most comprehensive guide to sites. "Web Bibliography" - a guide to the latest Web information printed. Over 150 articles, magazines, market research reports and books are catalogued. "The Power Launch Pad" - our own list of useful sites on the Web. Also includes links to our own lists of special subjects such as Finance, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Technology and so forth. {(http://euro.net/innovation/WelcomeHP.html)}. E-mail: "innovation@euronet.nl". (1994-10-27)
Infrared Data Association "standard, body" (IrDA) A non-profit trade association providing standards to ensure the quality and interoperability of {infrared} (IR) hardware. The association currently has a membership of over 160 companies from around the world, representing computer and telecommunications hardware, software, components and adapters. IrDA typically uses direct infrared i.e. {point-to-point}, {line-of-sight}, one-to-one communications. The standards include: {IrDA Data} ({SIR}, {FIR}, {VFIR}), {IrDA Control}, and {AIR}. Ports built to the above standards can be found in products such as {PDAs}, {Palm} devices, {printers}, desktop adapters, {notebooks}, and {digital cameras}. {(http://irda.org)}. {IrDA Serial Infrared Interface (http://cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/misc/irda.html)}. {Linux-IrDA support (http://cs.uit.no/linux-irda/)}. (1999-10-14)
In his economic and political writings, Lenin extended and developed the doctrines of Marx and Engels especially in their application to a phase of capitalism which emerged fully only after their death -- imperialism. In the same fashion Lenin built upon and further extended the Marxist doctrine of the state in his "State and Revolution", written just before the revolution of 1917. In this work Lenin develops a concept like the dictatorship of the proletariat which Marx treated only briefly and generally, elaborates a distinction like that between socialism and communism, only implicit in Marx's work, and asserts a thesis like the possibility of socialism in one country, towards which Marx was negative in the light of conditions as he knew them. After the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin headed the government until his death on January 21, 1924. In Russian, Lenin's "Collected Works" comprise thirty volumes, with about thirty additional volumes of miscellaneous writings ("Leninskie Sborniki"). The principal English translations are the "Collected Works", to comprise thirty volumes (of which five in eight books have been published to date), the "Selected Works" comprising twelve volumes (for philosophical materials, see especially Volume XI, "Theoretical Principles of Marxism"), and the Little Lenin Library, made up mostly of shorter works, comprising 27 volumes to date. -- J.M.S.
In Roman legend, Amalthea is the Sibyl, the Cumaean, who offered the Sibylline Books to Tarquin.
inset ::: v. t. --> To infix. ::: n. --> That which is inserted or set in; an insertion.
One or more separate leaves inserted in a volume before binding; as: (a) A portion of the printed sheet in certain sizes of books which is cut off before folding, and set into the middle of the
Interactive System Productivity Facility "operating system" (ISPF) Something to do with {IBM}'s {OS/390}. {(http://s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.cmd/BOOKS/ISPDGD02/COVER?SHELF=ISP5BK01)}. [Summary?] (1999-07-14)
Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL) A body of 700 researchers in various aspects of {logic} (symbolic, mathematical, computational, philosophical, etc.) from all over the world. The group's main rôle is as a research and information clearing house. The group also: supports exchange of information about research problems, references and common interest among group members; helps to obtain photocopies of papers; supplies review copies of books through the Journals on which some members are editors; organises exchange visits and workshops; advises on papers for publication; edits and distributes a Newsletter and an electronic Bulletin; keeps an {FTP archive} of papers, abstracts; obtains reductions on group purchases of logic books from publishers. {(http://theory.doc.ic.ac.uk/tfm/igpl.html)}. E-mail: "igpl-request@doc.ic.ac.uk". (1995-02-10)
Internet Worm "networking, security" The November 1988 {worm} perpetrated by {Robert T. Morris}. The worm was a program which took advantage of bugs in the {Sun} {Unix} {sendmail} program, {Vax} programs, and other security loopholes to distribute itself to over 6000 computers on the {Internet}. The worm itself had a bug which made it create many copies of itself on machines it infected, which quickly used up all available processor time on those systems. Some call it "The Great Worm" in a play on Tolkien (compare {elvish}, {elder days}). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anything before or since. (1995-01-12)
iPad "computer" A {tablet computer} announced by {Apple Computer, Inc.} on 2010-01-27 to be released in March 2010. The iPad runs {iPhone OS} 3.2, providing {multi-touch} interaction and {multimedia} processing. Like {Apple}'s {iPhone} and {iPod}, it uses a {virtual keyboard} for text input and runs most {iPhone apps}. It adds the {iBooks} application for reading text in {ePub} format. It has a 1GHz {Apple A4} {SoC} processor, up to 64GB of flash memory, a 250mm LED-backlit colour LCD display ({resolution} 1024x768 pixels) and a 25 {Wh} lithium-polymer battery. {Internet} access will be {Wi-Fi} in early models with {HSDPA} {3G} available soon after using a {micro-SIM}. It weighs 730g. Features it lacks include a camera, the ability to {multitask} and an open developement environment. The iPad is the culmination of a series of attempts by Apple to produce a tablet device, starting with the {Newton MessagePad 100} in 1993 and including collaboration with {Acorn Computers} in developing the {ARM6} processor. {Apple iPad (http://www.apple.com/ipad)}. (2010-01-31)
“It is one of the ‘Books of Hermes,’ and it is referred to and quotations are made from it in the works of a number of ancient and mediaeval philosophical authors. Among these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova’s ‘Rosarium philosoph.’; Francesco Arnolphim’s ‘Lucensis opus de lapide,’ Hermes Trismegistus’ ‘Tractatus de transmutatione metallorum,’ ‘Tabula smaragdina,’ and above all in the treatise of Raymond Lulli, ‘Ab angelis opus divinum de quinta essentia’ ” (IU 1:254n).
Jataka (Sanskrit) Jātaka [from the verbal root jan to be born] A birth story; the 550 Jataka tales form one of the books of the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Buddhist canon. These stories are supposed to have been related by the Buddha and are considered by some to be the accounts of his former lives, and by others to be a group of tales built of occult truth and past experiences of the Buddha and treated in an allegorical way by some of his first and greatest disciples in order to depict a synopsis of the evolutionary history of the human race.
Java Virtual Machine "language, architecture" (JVM) A specification for software which interprets {Java} programs that have been compiled into {byte-codes}, and usually stored in a ".class" file. The JVM {instruction set} is {stack}-oriented, with variable instruction length. Unlike some other instruction sets, the JVM's supports {object-oriented} programming directly by including instructions for object {method} invocation (similar to {subroutine} call in other instruction sets). The JVM itself is written in {C} and so can be {ported} to run on most {platforms}. It needs {thread} support and {I/O} (for {dynamic class loading}). The Java byte-code is independent of the platform. There are also some hardware implementations of the JVM. {Specification (http://javasoft.com/docs/books/vmspec/html/VMSpecTOC.doc.html)}. {Sun's Java chip (http://news.com/News/Item/0,4,9328,00.html)}. [Documentation? Versions?] (2000-01-03)
Job (Hebrew) ’Iyyōb Persecuted, tried; one of the books in the Bible, depicting the story of Job, regarded by Blavatsky as far older than the Pentateuch. She points out that there is no reference to any of the Hebrew patriarchs, that Jehovah is not mentioned in the poem itself, that there is no mention of the Sabbatical institution, and that there is a direct discussion on the worship of the heavenly bodies (prevailing in those days in Arabia). “The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient initiation and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. The neophyte perceives himself deprived of everything he valued, and afflicted with foul disease. His wife appeals to him to adore God and die; there was no more hope for him” (IU 2:494-5). Elihu the hierophant teaches Job, now ready to learn the meaning of his experience, and Job is able to contact his own higher self or inner god.
Joint Test Action Group "architecture, body, electronics, integrated circuit, standard, testing" (JTAG, or "IEEE Standard 1149.1") A {standard} specifying how to control and monitor the pins of compliant devices on a {printed circuit board}. Each device has four JTAG control lines. There is a common reset (TRST) and clock (TCLK). The data line {daisy chains} one device's test data out (TDO) pin to the test data in (TDI) pin on the next device. The {protocol} contains commands to read and set the values of the pins (and, optionally {internal registers}) of devices. This is called "{boundary scanning}". The protocol makes board testing easier as signals that are not visible at the board connector may be read and set. The protocol also allows the testing of equipment, connected to the JTAG port, to identify components on the board (by reading the device identification register) and to control and monitor the device's outputs. JTAG is not used during normal operation of a board. {JTAG Technologies B.V. (http://jtag.com/)}. {Boundary Scan/JTAG Technical Information - Xilinx, Inc. (http://xilinx.com/support/techsup/journals/jtag/)}. {Java API for Boundary Scan FAQs - Xilinx Inc. (http://xilinx.com/products/software/sx/sxfaqs.htm)}. {JTAG Boundary-Scan Test Products - Corelis, Inc. (http://corelis.com/products/scanovrv.html)}. {"Logic analyzers stamping out bugs at the cutting edge", EDN Access, 1997-04-10 (http://ednmag.com/ednmag/reg/1997/041097/08df_02.htm)}. {IEEE 1149.1 Device Architecture - Boundary-Scan Tutorial from ASSET InterTech, Inc. (http://asset-intertech.com/tutorial/arch.htm)}. {"Application-Specific Integrated Circuits", Michael John Sebatian Smith, published Addison-Wesley - Design Automation Cafe (http://dacafe.com/DACafe/EDATools/EDAbooks/ASIC/Book/CH14/CH14.2.htm)}. {Software Debug options on ASIC cores - Embedded Systems Programming Archive (http://embedded.com/97/feat9701.htm)}. {Designing for On-Board Programming Using the IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG) Access Port - Intel (http://developer.intel.com/design/flcomp/applnots/292186.htm)}. {Built-In Self-Test Using Boundary Scan by Texas Instruments - EDTN Network (http://edtn.com/scribe/reference/appnotes/md003e9a.htm)}. (1999-11-15)
Karaim Jews “Jews of the Crimea — who call themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel, i.e., of the Sadducees — reject the Torah and the Pentateuch of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the Psalms — nothing but their own Books of Moses and that they call his one and real Law” (BCW 14:174).
Kempen, Thomas Hemerken van: (1380-1471) Also called Thomas a Kempis, was born at Kempen in Holland, received his early education and instruction in music at the monastery of the Brethren of the Common Life, at Deventer. He attended no university but attained a high degree of spiritual development. His Imitation of Christ is one of the most famous, and most used, books of Catholic spiritual meditation; it has been printed in nearly all languages and is found in innumerable editions. There seems to be no valid reason for questioning his authorship of the work. -- V.J.B.
Khuddaka-patha (Pali) Khuddaka-pāṭha [from khuddaka little one + pāṭha reading, text] A Buddhist scripture given to neophytes upon joining the Samgha (the Buddhist brotherhood); first book in the Khuddaka-Nikaya — a collection of short canonical Buddhist books. This brief text contains some of the most beautiful poems in Buddhist literature, and the reverential feelings evoked by reading it are unquestionably the principal reason for its use. It opens with a profession of faith in the Buddha, in the Doctrine, and in the Order.
Lenin, V. I.: Collected Works. Selected Works. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. State and Revolution. Filosofskie Tetrady (Philosophical Notebooks).
Lenin, V. I.: (Ulianov, Vladimir Ilyich) Lenin is generally regarded as the chief exponent of dialectical materialism (q.v.) after Marx and Engels. He was born April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia, and received the professional training of a lawyer. A Marxist from his student days onward, he lived many years outside of Russia as a political refugee, and read widely in the social sciences and philosophy. In the latter field his "Philosophical Note Books" (as yet untranslated into English) containing detailed critical comments on the works of many leading philosophers, ancient and modern, and in particular on Hegel, indicate his close study of texts. In 1909, Lenin published his best known philosophic work "Materialism and Empirio-Cnticism" which was directed against "a number of writers, would-be Marxists" including Bazarov, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Berman, Helfond, Yushkevich, Suvorov and Valentinov, and especially against a symposium of this group published under the title, "Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism" which in general adopted the "positivistic" position of Mach and Avenanus.
lepisma ::: n. --> A genus of wingless thysanurous insects having an elongated flattened body, covered with shining scales and terminated by seven unequal bristles. A common species (Lepisma saccharina) is found in houses, and often injures books and furniture. Called also shiner, silver witch, silver moth, and furniture bug.
liad ::: n. --> A celebrated Greek epic poem, in twenty-four books, on the destruction of Ilium, the ancient Troy. The Iliad is ascribed to Homer.
librarian ::: n. --> One who has the care or charge of a library.
One who copies manuscript books.
library ::: n. --> A considerable collection of books kept for use, and not as merchandise; as, a private library; a public library.
A building or apartment appropriated for holding such a collection of books.
limner ::: n. --> A painter; an artist
One who paints portraits.
One who illuminates books.
limn ::: v. t. --> To draw or paint; especially, to represent in an artistic way with pencil or brush.
To illumine, as books or parchments, with ornamental figures, letters, or borders.
literature ::: n. --> Learning; acquaintance with letters or books.
The collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing; also, the whole body of literary productions or writings upon a given subject, or in reference to a particular science or branch of knowledge, or of a given country or period; as, the literature of Biblical criticism; the literature of chemistry.
The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style
lover ::: n. --> One who loves; one who is in love; -- usually limited, in the singular, to a person of the male sex.
A friend; one strongly attached to another; one who greatly desires the welfare of any person or thing; as, a lover of his country.
One who has a strong liking for anything, as books, science, or music.
Alt. of Lovery
maccabees ::: n. pl. --> The name given later times to the Asmonaeans, a family of Jewish patriots, who headed a religious revolt in the reign of Antiochus IV., 168-161 B. C., which led to a period of freedom for Israel.
The name of two ancient historical books, which give accounts of Jewish affairs in or about the time of the Maccabean princes, and which are received as canonical books in the Roman Catholic Church, but are included in the Apocrypha by Protestants. Also
Machiavellism: A political principle according to which every act of the state (or statesman) is permissible -- especially with reference to foreign relations -- which might be advantageous for one's own country. The word refers to Niccolo di Bernardo Machiavelli, born May 3, 1469 in Florence, died June 22, 1527. Author of Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses about the first ten books of Titus Livius), Il Principe (The Prince). -- W.E.
Main works: Exposition more geometrico of Descartes' Principles, 1663; Tract. Theol.-Politicus, 1670 (only two books published during Spinoza's lifetime); Ethics, demonstrated in geometrical order, 1677; Political Treatise, 1677; De intellectus. emendatione, 1677 (On the Improvement of the Human Mind). Cf. Vloten and Land, 2 vol. edition of Spinoza's works. Spir, African: (1837-1890) A native of Russia, whose philosophy was influenced by Spinoristic and Kantian traditions. The main thesis of his philosophy is that sensory experience and reasoning are basically contradictory, insofar as the former informs us of constant change, whereas the latter is characterized by the a priori principle of identity. -- R.B.W.
Main works: Le fondemcnt de l'induction, 187; Psychologie et metaphysique, 1885; Etudes sur le syllogisme, 1907; Note sur le pari de Pascal. --L.W. Lamaism: (from Tibetan b La-ma, honorable title of a monk) The religious beliefs and institutions of Tibet, derived from Mahayana Buddhism (q.v.) which was first introduced in the 7th century by the chieftain Sron-tsan-gampo, superimposed on the native Shamaistic Bon religion, resuscitated and mixed with Tantric (q.v.) elements by the mythic Hindu Padmasambhava, and reformed by the Bengalese Atisa in the 11th and Tsong-kha-pa at the turn of the 14th century. The strong admixture of elements of the exorcismal, highly magically charged and priest-ridden original Bon, has given Buddhism a turn away from its philosophic orientation and produced in Lamaism a form that places great emphasis on mantras (q.v.) -- the most famous one being om mani padme hum) -- elaborate ritual, and the worship of subsidiary tutelary deities, high dignitaries, and living incarnations of the Buddha. This worship is institutionalized, with a semblance of the papacy, in the double incarnation of the Bodhisattva (q.v.) in the Dalai-Lama who resides with political powers at the capital Lhasa, and the more spiritual head Tashi-Lama who rules at Tashi-Ihum-po. Contacts with Indian and Chinese traditions have been maintained for centuries and the two canons of Lamaism, the Kan-jur of 108 books and the Tan-jur of 225 books represent many translations as well as original works, some of great philosophical value. -- K.F.L.
man.d.ala ::: circle, orb; any of the ten books of the R mandala . g Veda.
Marcus Aurelius: (121-180 A.D.) The Roman Emperor who as a Stoic endowed chairs in Athens for the four great philosophical schools of the Academy, the Lyceum, The Garden and the Stoa. Aurelius' Stoicism, tempered by his friend Fronto's humanism, held to a rational world-order and providence as well as to a notion of probable truth rather than of the Stoic infallibilism. In the famous 12 books of Meditations, the view is prominent that death was as natural as birth and development was the end of the individual and should elicit the fear of no one. His harsh treatment of the Christians did not coincide with his mild nature which may have reflected the changed character of Stoicism brought on by the decadence of Rome.
Maya(Sanskrit) ::: The word comes from the root ma, meaning "to measure," and by a figure of speech it alsocomes to mean "to effect," "to form," and hence "to limit." There is an English word mete, meaning "tomeasure out," from the same IndoEuropean root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon as the root met, in theGreek as med, and it is found in the Latin also in the same form.Ages ago in the wonderful Brahmanical philosophy maya was understood very differently from what it isnow usually understood to be. As a technical term, maya has come to mean the fabrication by man's mindof ideas derived from interior and exterior impressions, hence the illusory aspect of man's thoughts as heconsiders and tries to interpret and understand life and his surroundings; and thence was derived thesense which it technically bears, "illusion." It does not mean that the exterior world is nonexistent; if itwere, it obviously could not be illusory. It exists, but is not. It is "measured out" or is "limited," or itstands out to the human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we do not see clearly and plainly and in theirreality the vision and the visions which our mind and senses present to the inner life and eye.The familiar illustrations of maya in the Vedanta, which is the highest form that the Brahmanicalteachings have taken and which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such as follows: Aman at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground, and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope isthere, but no serpent. The second illustration is what is called the "horns of the hare." The animal calledthe hare has no horns, but when it also is seen at eventide, its long ears seem to project from its head insuch fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as being a creature with horns. The hare has no horns,but there is then in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns exists there.That is what maya means: not that a thing seen does not exist, but that we are blinded and our mindperverted by our own thoughts and our own imperfections, and do not as yet arrive at the realinterpretation and meaning of the world or of the universe around us. By ascending inwardly, by risingup, by inner aspiration, by an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards or rather inwards towards thatplane where truth abides in fullness.H. P. Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine:Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism -- though it regards the objectiveUniverse and all in it as Maya, temporary illusion -- draws a practical distinction betweencollective illusion, Mahamaya, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objectiverelations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this illusion lasts.The teaching is that maya is thus called from the action of mulaprakriti or root-nature, the coordinateprinciple of that other line of coactive consciousness which we call parabrahman. From the momentwhen manifestation begins, it acts dualistically, that is to say that everything in nature from that pointonwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long and short, high and low, night and day, good andevil, consciousness and nonconsciousness, etc., and that all these things are essentially mayic or illusory-- real while they last, but the lasting is not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of opposites that theself-conscious soul learns truth. It might be said, in conclusion, that another and very convenient way ofconsidering maya is to understand it to mean "limitation," "restriction," and therefore imperfect cognitionand recognition of reality. The imperfect mind does not see perfect truth. It labors under an illusioncorresponding with its own imperfections, under a maya, a limitation. Magical practices are frequentlycalled maya in the ancient Hindu books.
“Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine.
Midrash: Hebrew for interpretation (plural: Midrashim). Midrashim are books interpreting the Holy Scriptures.
missalled ::: with reference to the illumination of manuscripts and books of prayer; i.e. Savitri is likened to a beautifully illuminted book of prayer.
M. Lombard, Peter: (c. 1100-c. 1160) Was the author of the Four Books of Sentences, i.e. a compilation of the opinions of the Fathers and early teachers of the Catholic Church concerning various points in theology. He was born at Lumello in Lombardy, studied at Bologna, Rheims and the School of St. Victor in Paris. He was made Bishop of Paris in 1159. The Libri IV Sententiarum was used as a textbook in Catholic theology for more than two centuries, hence it has been commented by all the great theologians of the 13th and I4th centuries. The Franciscans of Quaracchi have published a critical edition in 2 vols. (Quaracchi, 1916). -- V. J.
More, Paul Elmer: An American literary critic and philosopher (1864-1937), who after teaching at Bryn Mawr and other colleges, edited The Nation for several years before retiring to lecture at Princeton University and write The Greek Tradition, a series of books in which he argues for orthodox Christianity on the basis of the Platonic dualism of mind-body, matter-spirit, God-man. In The Sceptical Approach to Religion he gave his final position, as ethical theism grounded on man's sense of the good and consciousness of purpose, and validated by the Incarnation of God in Christ. -- W.N.P.
Mosaic Books. See PENTATEUCH
Mouse A mighty small {macro} language developed by Peter Grogono in 1975. ["Mouse, A Language for Microcomputers", P. Grogono "grogono@concour.cs.concordia.ca" Petrocelli Books, 1983]. (1994-10-31)
musty ::: n. --> Having the rank, pungent, offencive odor and taste which substances of organic origin acquire during warm, moist weather; foul or sour and fetid; moldy; as, musty corn; musty books.
Spoiled by age; rank; stale.
Dull; heavy; spiritless.
Nabi’ (Hebrew) Nābī’ [from nābā’ to deliver an oracle] A prophet, one inspired to foretell future events; the name given to prophecy in the Bible. One of the “spiritual powers, such as divination, clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and oracles. But while enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly condemned in the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nobia appear as the special gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed Epoptai, the Greek word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated as Nebim [nebi’im] ‘the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom.’ The kabalist distinguishes between the seer and the magician; one is passive, the other active; Nebirah [nabi’] is one who looks into futurity and a clairvoyant; Nebi-poel [nebi’-po‘el], he who possesses magic powers” (IU 1:xxxvii).
Nervous Ether The name given by Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson to a hypothetical fluid or medium regarded by him as intervening between the minute structural elements of the human body and serving as the means of interaction between these elements. Dr. Richardson was a highly honored 19th century English physician, and his views though unorthodox commanded respect. He used the word ether in a way similar to that in which it was used by physicists: if the elements of a body are regarded as separate from one another, a medium of some sort must account for their mutual actions. Such a medium must differ in certain respects from ordinary physical matter, so whether it is a form of matter or of energy is left open. This theory is one of a numerous family — vital fluid, animal magnetism, odic force — a loose generalization covering a great many things, or as a first crude guess. It is inadequate compared with the complex analysis of the bodily structure and functions presented by Hindu books.
nested class "Java" In {Java}, a {class} defined within an enclosing class definition. A {static} nested class has no direct access to the members of its enclosing class whereas a non-static nested class, known as an "inner class", is associated with an instance of the enclosing class and an instance of the inner class has direct access to the members of its enclosing instance. {Java Tutorial (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/nested.html)}. [Other languages?] (2006-11-19)
noddy /nod'ee/ [UK: from the children's books] 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is {hello, world}. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a {hack} sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll just throw together a noddy {awk} script to dump all the first fields." In North America this might be called a {mickey mouse program}. See {toy program}. 3. A simple (hence the name) language to handle text and interaction on the {Memotech} home computer. Has died with the machine. [{Jargon File}]
Nuñez Regüeiro, Manuel: Born in Uruguay, March 21, 1883. Professor of Philosophy at the National University of the Litoral in Argentine. Author of about twenty-five books, among which the following are the most important from a philosophical point of view: Fundamentos de la Anterosofia, 1925; Anterosofia Racional, 1926; De Nuevo Hablo Jesus, 1928; Filosofia Integral, 1932; Del Conocimiento y Progreso de Si Mismo, 1934; Tratado de Metalogica, o Fundamentos de Una Nueva Metodologia, 1936; Suma Contra Una Nueva Edad Media, 1938; Metafisica y Ciencia, 1941; La Honda Inquietud, 1915; Conocimiento y Creencia, 1916. Three fundamental questions and a tenacious effort to answer them run throughout the entire thought of Nuñez Regüeiro, namely the three questions of Kant: What can I know? What must I do? What can I expect? Science as auch does not write finis to anything. We experience in science the same realm of contradictions and inconsistencies which we experience elsewhere. Fundamentally, this chaos is of the nature of dysteleology. At the root of the conflict lies a crisis of values. The problem of doing is above all a problem of valuing. From a point of view of values, life ennobles itself, man lifts himself above the trammels of matter, and the world becomes meaning-full. Is there a possibility for the realization of this ideal? Has this plan ever been tried out? History offers us a living example: The Fact of Jesus. He is the only possible expectation. In him and through him we come to fruition and fulfilment. Nuñez Regüeiro's philosophy is fundamentally religious. -- J.A.F.
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.”
octateuch ::: n. --> A collection of eight books; especially, the first eight books of the Old Testament.
offcut ::: n. --> That which is cut off.
A portion ofthe printed sheet, in certain sizes of books, that is cut off before folding.
Of the books in the New Testament, while the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline Epistles
One 18th century author, Johan Goransson, believes that the Eddas were copied from old Runobocker (books of runes) and that when Christianity first spread its influence in Sweden about two hundred years after Saemund, these ancient writings were systematically destroyed (Sviogota ok Nordmanna Edda xxxi).
One phase of hatha yoga is the pranayama (suppression of the breath), interference with the normal and healthy respiration of the body; a practice which can readily produce tuberculosis of the lungs. It is breathing deeply, healthfully, and as often as common sense suggests, that brings benefits to the body because bringing about a better oxygenation of the blood and therefore a better physical tone. In very rare circumstances only, where a chela has advanced relatively far mentally and spiritually, but has still an unfortunate and heavy physical karma as yet not worked out, it may possibly be proper, under the guidance of a genuine teacher, to use the hatha yoga methods in a limited degree, but only under the teacher’s own eye. For this reason hatha yoga books are occasionally mentioned in theosophical literature — the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, for example, is a hatha yoga scripture, but one of the highest type. But generally, hatha yoga practices are injurious and therefore unwise, for they distract the attention from things of the spirit and direct it to the lower parts of the constitution.
Online Public Access Catalog "library" (OPAC) A computerised system to catalogue and organise materials in a library (the kind that contains books). OPACs have replaced card-based catalogues in many libraries. An OPAC is available to library users (public access). (2000-07-17)
Only four Aranyakas are presently known to exist: the Aitareya (Rig-vedic) forming part of the Aitareya-Brahmana; the Kausitaki (Rig-vedic) whose third and final chapter is the Kanusitaki Upanishad; the Taittiriya, of ten books, belonging to the Yajur-Veda; and the Brihad (Yajur-Veda) which forms a part of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad attached to the Satapatha-Brahmana.
Orange Book "security, standard" A standard from the US Government {National Computer Security Council} (an arm of the U.S. National Security Agency), "Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD, December 1985" which defines criteria for trusted computer products. There are four levels, A, B, C, and D. Each level adds more features and requirements. D is a non-secure system. C1 requires user log-on, but allows {group ID}. C2 requires individual log-on with password and an audit mechanism. (Most {Unix} implementations are roughly C1, and can be upgraded to about C2 without excessive pain). Levels B and A provide mandatory control. Access is based on standard Department of Defense clearances. B1 requires DOD clearance levels. B2 guarantees the path between the user and the security system and provides assurances that the system can be tested and clearances cannot be downgraded. B3 requires that the system is characterised by a mathematical model that must be viable. A1 requires a system characterized by a mathematical model that can be proven. See also {crayola books}, {book titles}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-01-09)
order ::: n. --> Regular arrangement; any methodical or established succession or harmonious relation; method; system
Of material things, like the books in a library.
Of intellectual notions or ideas, like the topics of a discource.
Of periods of time or occurrences, and the like.
Right arrangement; a normal, correct, or fit condition; as, the house is in order; the machinery is out of order.
Padma Purana (Sanskrit) Padma Purāṇa The Lotus-Purana; one of the Hindu Puranas which contains an account of the period when the world was “as a golden lotus (padma).” The scripture, considered to be the second in importance of the 18 principle Puranas, consists of 55,000 slokas, and is divided into five books (khandas) treating of the creation, the earth, heaven (svarga), and patala, while the fifth book is a supplementary section.
Pahlavi (Persian) [from Old Persian parthawa Parthian] Also Pehlevi. The language into which the Zoroastrian archaic sacred books were translated. It was due to this that the Pahlavi literature was preserved, for, other than these religious books, very few works are extant, principally the Minoi-Khiradh and the Bundahish. It is also called Middle Persian, in contradistinction to New Persian and Old Persian, the language of the ancient Persians during the time of Darius the Great which already shows distinct changes from that in which the Avesta was written. Pahlavi was the language of the northeastern people of Iran (Parthians) who ruled over the country soon after the downfall of Achaemenids until 224 AD under the name of Arsacids. For about nine centuries this remained the language of the whole empire. Pahlavi belongs to the Iranian class of the southern division of Aryan languages.
Panchatantra (Sanskrit) Pañcatantra [from pañca five + tantra book] A collection in five books of philosophical and moral instruction often given in the form of dialogs between birds and beasts as well as humans. It was compiled by Vishnusarman about the end of the 5th century and is the original of the better-known Hitopadesa. The source of many familiar stories and doubtless the remote ancestor of Aesop’s Fables. It was translated into Pahlavi by order of Naushirvan in the 6th century; in the 9th century it appeared in Arabic as Kalila o Damna; it was translated into Hebrew, Syriac, Turkish, and Greek. From these, versions were made into all the languages of Europe, and it became familiar in England as Pilpay’s Fables (Fables of Bidpai).
pandect ::: n. --> A treatise which comprehends the whole of any science.
The digest, or abridgment, in fifty books, of the decisions, writings, and opinions of the old Roman jurists, made in the sixth century by direction of the emperor Justinian, and forming the leading compilation of the Roman civil law.
paralipomenon ::: n. pl. --> A title given in the Douay Bible to the Books of Chronicles.
pentateuch ::: n. --> The first five books of the Old Testament, collectively; -- called also the Law of Moses, Book of the Law of Moses, etc.
Persian Philosophy: Persia was a vast empire before the time of Alexander the Great, embracing not only most of the orientnl tribes of Western Asia but also the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Jews and the Egyptians. If we concentrate on the central section of Persia, three philosophic periods may be distinguished Zoroastrianism (including Mithraism and Magianism), Manichaeanism, and medieval Persian thought. Zarathustra (Or. Zoroaster) lived before 600 B.C. and wrote the Avesta, apparently in the Zend language. It is primarily religious, but the teaching that there are two ultimate principles of reality, Ormazd, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness, is of philosophic importance. They are eternally fighting Mitra is the intermediary between Ormazd and man. In the third century A. D., Mani of Ecbatana (in Media) combined this dualism of eternal principles with some of the doctrines of Christianity. His seven books are now known only through second-hand reports of Mohammedan (Abu Faradj Ibn Ishaq, 10th c., and Sharastani, 12th c.) and Christian (St. Ephrem, 4th c., and Bar-Khoni, 7th c.) writers. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) has left several works criticizing Manichaeism, which he knew at first-hand. From the ninth century onward, many of the great Arabic philosophers are of Persian origin. Mention might be made of the epicureanism of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Kayyam, and the remarkable metaphysical system of Avicenna, i.e. Ibn Sina (11th c.), who was born in Persia. -- V.J.B.
Plotinism: The philosophic and religious thought of Plotinus (205-270). His writings were published by Porphyry in six books of nine sections, Enneads, each. All reality consists of a series of emanations, from the One, the eternal source of all being. The first, necessary emanation is that of Nous (mind or intelligence), the second that of Psyche (soul). At the periphery of the universe is found matter. Man belongs partly in the realm of spirit and partly in the sphere of matter.
Poincare, Henri: (1854-1912) French mathematician and mathematical physicist to whom many important technical contributions are due. His thought was occupied by problems on the borderline of physics and philosophy. His views reflect the influence of positivism and seem to be closely related to pngmatism. Poincare is known also for his opposition to the logistic method in the foundations of mathematics, especially as it was advocated by Bertrand i (q.v.) and Louis Couturat, and for his proposed resolution of the logical paradoxes (q.v.) by the prohibition of impredicattve definition (q.v.). Among his books, the more influential are Science and Hypothesis, Science and Method, and Dernieres Pensees. -- R.B.W.
polygraphy ::: n. --> Much writing; writing of many books.
The art of writing in various ciphers, and of deciphering the same.
The art or practice of using a polygraph.
Primeval self-conscious humanity — not savage by any means, however much it may have needed spiritual guidance — was watched over and protected by divine instructors, and among the arts taught by these great beings, architecture had a prominent place: “No man descended from a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas of the third root race, who handed their knowledge from one generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion. . . . It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe which were found ‘Cyclopean in origin’ by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the ‘Sons of God,’ justly called ‘The Builders’ ” (SD 1:208-9n).
printer ::: n. --> One who prints; especially, one who prints books, newspapers, engravings, etc., a compositor; a typesetter; a pressman.
printing-house ::: a place where printing of books, pamphlets, etc. is done.
print ::: v. t. --> To fix or impress, as a stamp, mark, character, idea, etc., into or upon something.
To stamp something in or upon; to make an impression or mark upon by pressure, or as by pressure.
To strike off an impression or impressions of, from type, or from stereotype, electrotype, or engraved plates, or the like; in a wider sense, to do the typesetting, presswork, etc., of (a book or other publication); as, to print books, newspapers, pictures; to print
protocanonical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the first canon, or that which contains the authorized collection of the books of Scripture; -- opposed to deutero-canonical.
purana ::: n. --> One of a class of sacred Hindoo poetical works in the Sanskrit language which treat of the creation, destruction, and renovation of worlds, the genealogy and achievements of gods and heroes, the reigns of the Manus, and the transactions of their descendants. The principal Puranas are eighteen in number, and there are the same number of supplementary books called Upa Puranas.
Pymander [from Greek Poimandres shepherd of men] The logoic divine intelligence, or thought divine; the best known of the surviving portions of the Hermetic books, the writings of Hermes Trismegistus; also a title of Hermes himself. “The Egyptian Prometheus and the personified Nous or divine light, which appears to and instructs Hermes Trismegistus, in a hermetic work called ‘Pymander’ ” (TG 266).
Pythagoreanism: The doctrines (philosophical, mathematical, moral, and religious) of Pythagoras (c. 572-497) and of his school which flourished until about the end of the 4th century B.C. The Pythagorean philosophy was a dualism which sharply distinguished thought and the senses, the soul and the body, the mathematical forms of things and their perceptible appearances. The Pythagoreans supposed that the substances of all things were numbers and that all phenomena were sensuous expressions of mathematical ratios. For them the whole universe was harmony. They made important contributions to mathematics, astronomv, and physics (acoustics) and were the first to formulate the elementary principles and methods of arithmetic and geometry as taught in the first books of Euclid. But the Pythagorean sect was not only a philosophical and mathematical school (cf. K. von Fritz, Pythagorean Politics in Southern Italy, 1941), but also a religious brotherhood and a fellowship for moral reformation. They believed in the immortality and transmigration (see Metempsychosis) of the soul which they defined as the harmony of the body. To restore harmony which was confused by the senses was the goal of their Ethics and Politics. The religious ideas were closely related to those of the Greek mysteries which sought by various rites and abstinences to purify and redeem the soul. The attempt to combine this mysticism with their mathematical philosophy, led the Pythagoreans to the development of an intricate and somewhat fantastic symbolism which collected correspondences between numbers and things and for example identified the antithesis of odd and even with that of form and matter, the number 1 with reason, 2 with the soul, etc. Through their ideas the Pythagoreans had considerable effect on the development of Plato's thought and on the theories of the later Neo-platonists.
quindecemvir ::: n. --> One of a sacerdotal college of fifteen men whose chief duty was to take care of the Sibylline books.
Quindecimviri (Latin) [from quindecim fifteen + viri men] The priests in ancient Rome who had charge of the Sibylline Books. Originally two in number and called duoviri, they later became ten (decemviri), and Sulla increased them to fifteen, Julius Caesar to sixteen, and some of the emperors in later times made further additions. Thus, as being members of a commission or board, or what the Romans called a Collegium, they were State functionaries with definite duties as well as powers.
QX (Meaning "OK", from E.E. Smith SF books) A language for {digital signal processing} of digitised speech, by Richard Gillmann of {SDC}, Santa Monica. QX was part of SDC's {speech recognition} project. (1995-02-09)
rainbow series "publication" Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover colour. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security manuals (see {Orange Book}, {crayola books}); the term has also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set (see {Red Book}, {Green Book}, {Blue Book}, {White Book}). Which books are meant by ""the" rainbow series" unqualified is thus dependent on one's local technical culture. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)
Ramayana: A great epic poem of India, ascribed to Valmiki, describing the doings of Rama and his wife Sita, in about 24,000 verses divided into seven books; the first and the last are believed to be comparatively modern additions, but the date of the original books is probably the third or fourth century B.C.; Rama’s character is described as that of a perfect man, who bears suffering and self-denial with superhuman patience.
reading ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Read ::: n. --> The act of one who reads; perusal; also, printed or written matter to be read.
Study of books; literary scholarship; as, a man of extensive reading.
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal "humour" Back in the good old days - the "Golden Era" of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers - they're so impersonal". (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.) But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with {TRASH-80s}. There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is made clear, it will give these kids something to aspire to -- a role model, a Father Figure. It will also help explain to the employers of Real Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings). LANGUAGES The easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use {Fortran}. Quiche Eaters use {Pascal}. Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of Pascal, gave a talk once at which he was asked how to pronounce his name. He replied, "You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'." One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater. The only parameter passing mechanism endorsed by Real Programmers is call-by-value-return, as implemented in the {IBM 370} {Fortran-G} and H compilers. Real programmers don't need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a {keypunch}, a {Fortran IV} {compiler}, and a beer. Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran. Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran. Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran. Real Programmers do {Artificial Intelligence} programs in Fortran. If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in {assembly language}. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing. STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING The academics in computer science have gotten into the "structured programming" rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or another - clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different computer languages, and create 1000-line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and understand a 200,000-line Fortran program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the Structured Coding in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming: Real Programmers aren't afraid to use {GOTOs}. Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting. Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 {nanoseconds} in the middle of a tight loop. Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious. Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using {assigned GOTOs}. Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Wirth (the above-mentioned Quiche Eater) actually wrote an entire book [2] contending that you could write a program based on data structures, instead of the other way around. As all Real Programmers know, the only useful data structure is the Array. Strings, lists, structures, sets - these are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just as easily without messing up your programing language with all sorts of complications. The worst thing about fancy data types is that you have to declare them, and Real Programming Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name. OPERATING SYSTEMS What kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M. Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do Serious Work on Unix systems: they send jokes around the world on {UUCP}-net and write adventure games and research papers. No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great programmer can write JCL without referring to the manual at all. A truly outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte {core dump} without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.) OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is encouraged. The best way to approach the system is through a keypunch. Some people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken. PROGRAMMING TOOLS What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels, this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever it got destroyed by his program. (Back then, memory was memory - it didn't go away when the power went off. Today, memory either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after they're better forgotten.) Legend has it that {Seymore Cray}, inventor of the Cray I supercomputer and most of Control Data's computers, actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had crashed in the middle of saving some important work. Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone, getting the user to toggle in disk I/O instructions at the front panel, repairing system tables in hex, reading register contents back over the phone. The moral of this story: while a Real Programmer usually includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies. In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a single keypunch. The Real Programmer in this situation has to do his work with a "text editor" program. Most systems supply several text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to pick one that reflects his personal style. Many people believe that the best text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for use on their Alto and Dorado computers [3]. Unfortunately, no Real Programmer would ever use a computer whose operating system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse. Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - {Emacs} and {VI} being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise. It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine. For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary {object code} directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original Fortran code. In many cases, the original source code is no longer available. When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called "job security". Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers: Fortran preprocessors like {MORTRAN} and {RATFOR}. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming. Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps. Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient. Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5]. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead writing accounts-receivable programs in {COBOL}, or sorting {mailing lists} for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!). Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers. Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions. It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies. Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles. Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation - hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter. The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances. As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, however, a black cloud has formed on the Real Programmer horizon. It seems that some highly placed Quiche Eaters at the Defense Department decided that all Defense programs should be written in some grand unified language called "ADA" ((C), DoD). For a while, it seemed that ADA was destined to become a language that went against all the precepts of Real Programming - a language with structure, a language with data types, {strong typing}, and semicolons. In short, a language designed to cripple the creativity of the typical Real Programmer. Fortunately, the language adopted by DoD has enough interesting features to make it approachable -- it's incredibly complex, includes methods for messing with the operating system and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it [6]. (Dijkstra, as I'm sure you know, was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful" - a landmark work in programming methodology, applauded by Pascal programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language. The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing there's enough money in it. There are several Real Programmers building video games at Atari, for example. (But not playing them - a Real Programmer knows how to beat the machine every time: no challenge in that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty million Star Trek fans.) The proportion of Real Programmers in Computer Graphics is somewhat lower than the norm, mostly because nobody has found a use for computer graphics yet. On the other hand, all computer graphics is done in Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he is careful not to express this opinion out loud). Occasionally, the Real Programmer does step out of the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room: At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it. At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper. At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand. At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary." In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time. THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT What sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done. The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are: Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office. Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush. Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages. Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969. Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine. Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions. Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.) The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer - it gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to make things more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks, then finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not only impresses the hell out of his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general: No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night). Real Programmers don't wear neckties. Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes. Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9]. A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire {ASCII} (or EBCDIC) code table. Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee. THE FUTURE What of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their elders. Many of them have never seen a computer with a front panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days can do hex arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are soft - protected from the realities of programming by source level debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly" operating systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers? From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of Pascal programmers the world over. Even more subtle tricks, like adding structured coding constructs to Fortran have failed. Oh sure, some computer vendors have come out with Fortran 77 compilers, but every one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be. Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real Programmer - two different and subtly incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype driver, virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's "structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the Pointer data type is thrown in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
religious ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to religion; concerned with religion; teaching, or setting forth, religion; set apart to religion; as, a religious society; a religious sect; a religious place; religious subjects, books, teachers, houses, wars.
Possessing, or conforming to, religion; pious; godly; as, a religious man, life, behavior, etc.
Scrupulously faithful or exact; strict.
Belonging to a religious order; bound by vows.
Revelation of John or Apocalypse The last book in the New Testament, a specimen of apocalyptic literature, which in Christianity consists of Jewish Christian mystical books of unknown authorship, attributed among others to Enoch, Ezra, and various apostles. John’s Apocalypse is in part based on the Book of Enoch, and is the work of a Jewish Qabbalist who adapted it to Judaean Christianity, and who had a hereditary aversion to the Greek Mysteries. Like apocalyptic literature in general, it takes the form of visions supposed to be seen by the alleged author, and its burden is the struggle between righteousness and evil, ending in the overthrow of the latter and the establishment of the kingdom of Christ. It marks a stage in the gradual adaption of the original esoteric Christianity to the demands of a creedal and worldly religion.
Revelation: The communication to man of the Divine Will. This communication has taken, in the history of religions, almost every conceivable form, e.g., the results of lot casting, oracular declarations, dreams, visions, ecstatic experiences (induced by whatever means, such as intoxicants), books, prophets, unusual characters, revered traditional practices, storms, pestilence, etc. The general conception of revelation has been that the divine communication comes in ways unusual, by means not open to the ordinary channels of investigation.
Revelation: The communication to man of the Divine Will. This communication has taken, in the history of religions, almost every conceivable form, e.g., the results of lot casting, oracular declarations, dreams, visions, ecstatic experiences (induced by whatever means, such as intoxicants), books, prophets, unusual characters, revered traditional practices, storms, pestilence, etc. The general conception of revelation has been that the divine communication comes in ways unusual, by means not open to the ordinary channels of investigation. This, however, is not a necessary corollary, revelation of the Divine Will may well come through ordinary channels, the give-and-take of everyday experience, through reason and reflection and intuitive insight. -- V.F.
reviewer ::: n. --> One who reviews or reexamines; an inspector; one who examines publications critically, and publishes his opinion upon their merits; a professional critic of books.
Rg-veda (Rig-veda) ::: [the Veda of the rks, the most ancient of the sacred books of India, composed of metrical hymns arranged in ten books (mandalas)].
Richard Hamming "person" Professor Richard Wesley Hamming (1915-02-11 - 1998-01-07). An American mathematician known for his work in {information theory} (notably {error detection and correction}), having invented the concepts of {Hamming code}, {Hamming distance}, and {Hamming window}. Richard Hamming received his B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1937, his M.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1939, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1942. In 1945 Hamming joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. In 1946, after World War II, Hamming joined the {Bell Telephone Laboratories} where he worked with both {Shannon} and {John Tukey}. He worked there until 1976 when he accepted a chair of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California. Hamming's fundamental paper on error-detecting and error-correcting codes ("{Hamming codes}") appeared in 1950. His work on the {IBM 650} leading to the development in 1956 of the {L2} programming language. This never displaced the workhorse language {L1} devised by Michael V Wolontis. By 1958 the 650 had been elbowed aside by the 704. Although best known for error-correcting codes, Hamming was primarily a numerical analyst, working on integrating {differential equations} and the {Hamming spectral window} used for smoothing data before {Fourier analysis}. He wrote textbooks, propounded aphorisms ("the purpose of computing is insight, not numbers"), and was a founder of the {ACM} and a proponent of {open-shop} computing ("better to solve the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way."). In 1968 he was made a fellow of the {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers} and awarded the {Turing Prize} from the {Association for Computing Machinery}. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awarded Hamming the Emanuel R Piore Award in 1979 and a medal in 1988. {(http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hamming.html)}. {(http://zapata.seas.smu.edu/~gorsak/hamming.html)}. {(http://webtechniques.com/archives/1998/03/homepage/)}. [Richard Hamming. Coding and Information Theory. Prentice-Hall, 1980. ISBN 0-13-139139-9]. (2003-06-07)
Rom Kernel Manual "publication" (RKM) A series of books or files for developers for the {Amiga} computer, containing information about the {operating system} {kernel} stored in {ROM}. (1996-04-06)
sacrist ::: n. --> A sacristan; also, a person retained in a cathedral to copy out music for the choir, and take care of the books.
sadda ::: n. --> A work in the Persian tongue, being a summary of the Zend-Avesta, or sacred books.
Said to be an abridgment of one of the Books of Thoth by a Platonist of Alexandria, remodeled in the 3rd century after old Greek and Phoenician manuscripts by a Jewish Qabbalist and called the Genesis of Enoch (SD 2:267n); said also to have been disfigured by Christian Qabbalists. Pymander as Hermes is described as the oldest and most spiritual of the logoi of the Western continent.
Saivites (devotees of Siva) recognize 28 agamas as continuing the full doctrine; Saktas list 77 agamas or tantras; Vaishnavas (followers of Vishnu) regard the Pancharatra Agamas as their sacred books; and the Jain agamas as a whole constitute the Jain canon.
samizdat "publication" (Russian, literally "self publishing") The process of disseminating documentation via underground channels. Originally referred to photocopy duplication and distribution of banned books in the former Soviet Union; now refers by obvious extension to any less-than-official promulgation of textual material, especially rare, obsolete, or never-formally-published computer documentation. Samizdat is obviously much easier when one has access to high-{bandwidth} {networks} and high-quality {laser printers}. Strictly, "samizdat" only applies to distribution of needed documents that are otherwise unavailable, and not to duplication of material that is available for sale under {copyright}. See {Lions Book} for a historical example. See also: {hacker ethic}. [{Jargon File}] (2000-03-23)
Satan [from Hebrew śāṭān adversary, opposer from the verbal root śāṭan to lie in wait, oppose, be an adversary; or possibly from the verbal root shut to whip, scourge, run hither and thither on errands; Greek satan, satanas] Adversary; with the definite article (has-satan) the adversary in the Christian sense, as the Devil. This Satan of the exoteric Jewish and Christian books is a mere figment of the monkish theological imagination. From the second possible derivation many eminent Shemitic scholars have held that the Satan of the Book of Job was a good angel arranged by God to try the characters of men in order to help them; and therefore supposedly to be different from the Satan of other books of the Bible. The theosophist would not limit the good angel to the Book of Job alone, but would look upon the adversative or contrary forces of nature as being the means upon which each one tries his will, resolution, and determination to evolve and grow spiritually and intellectually. The Satan of this hypothesis is in a sense our own lower character combined with the lower forces of nature surrounding earth and elsewhere.
satchel ::: n. --> A little sack or bag for carrying papers, books, or small articles of wearing apparel; a hand bag.
Schocken Books, Inc., New York, N. Y., publishers of Tales of the Hasidim by M. Buber.
scholar ::: n. --> One who attends a school; one who learns of a teacher; one under the tuition of a preceptor; a pupil; a disciple; a learner; a student.
One engaged in the pursuits of learning; a learned person; one versed in any branch, or in many branches, of knowledge; a person of high literary or scientific attainments; a savant.
A man of books.
In English universities, an undergraduate who belongs to
scrapbook ::: n. --> A blank book in which extracts cut from books and papers may be pasted and kept.
scripture ::: n. --> Anything written; a writing; a document; an inscription.
The books of the Old and the new Testament, or of either of them; the Bible; -- used by way of eminence or distinction, and chiefly in the plural.
A passage from the Bible;; a text.
selection ::: n. --> The act of selecting, or the state of being selected; choice, by preference.
That which is selected; a collection of things chosen; as, a choice selection of books.
Sentences (Scholastic): Sententiae were originally collections of various propositions and explanations thereof; e.g., the Sententiae divinitatis of Anselm of Laon. Peter Lombardus condensed the main theological and philosophical ideas of his time into the famous Quattuor libri sententiarum which became the textbook for the medieval universities and had to be studied and expounded by everyone aspiring to highei academic honors. The student had to pass the degree of sententiarius, and as such he had to read on the sentences. From these expositions developed the many commentaries on the four books of sentences. Practically every scholar of renown has left such a commentary. Peter's books are divided into "distinctions" which division is conscientiously followed by the commentators. -- R.A.
Sepher (Hebrew) Sēfer Writing, something that is written, a book. In the plural (sĕfārīm), books or writings, the Jewish holy scriptures. In the Sepher Yetsirah, an early Qabbalistic treatise and one of the most important in the Qabbalah, the first verse states that the Lord and King of the universe formed “the universe in thirty-two secret paths of wisdom by means of three Sepharim: [1] Sephar, [2] and Sippur, [3] and Sepher, i.e. through [1] Numbering; [2] Numberer; and [3] Number.” The verbal root from which this word is taken originally meant to make marks — not only to write but also to number or count. Hence the play upon the three words, described as the three Sepharim, has reference to the activities of the Sephiroth in unfolding both intrinsic mathematical and numerical quantities and attributes by means of the spiritual beings forming the Sephiroth and eventuating in the “number” carpentry or structure of the cosmos.
Shu-king (Chinese) Also Shoo King, Shu Ching. Popularly known as the Canon, or Book of History; one of the Four Shu Books compiled by Confucius from documents which were ancient in his day. Blavatsky refers to this work as “China’s primitive Bible” compiled from the Book of Dzyan (SD 1:xliii), remarking that it is full of reminiscences about the fourth root-race and the giants of bygone times (SD 2:280-1).
Sibylline Books: Ancient, mythical and inspired utterances of prophecy consulted in times of calamity. Their destruction led to composite and forged versions.
Sibylline Books: These were allegedly ancient, mythical and inspired utterances of prophecy consulted in times of calamity. Their destruction led to composite and forged versions. The so-called Sibylline Oracles were a group of Jewish and Christian writings dating from the 2nd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D , written in Homeric style, and in imitation of the lost Sibylline Books. They included prophecies of future events, of the fate of eminent persons, of cities and kingdoms. -- V.F.
Sibylline Books The story of the origin of the Sibylline Books of the Romans tells how a mysterious old woman appeared to Tarquinius Superbus, the last of Rome’s seven kings, and offered him nine prophetic books at a certain price; how, when he refused to buy them, she destroyed three and offered him the remaining six at the same price; how he again refused and was offered the last three at the same price; and how he then bought these three, and entrusted them to a college of guardians. From that time on they were consulted by the senate on critical occasions until they were destroyed in the burning of the temple of Jupiter; but they were replaced by other sibylline books collected at different times and from various places.
Sibylline Oracles: A group of Jewish and Christian writings dating from the second century B.C. to the third century A.D., written in Homeric style, and in imitation of the lost Sibylline Books. They included prophecies of future events, of the fate of eminent persons, of cities and kingdoms.
Sibylline Oracles Early Christian ecclesiastical literature written in imitation of the archaic Sibylline Books, containing apparently no small amount of material derived from pagan sources. They mostly belong, as far as is now known, to the 2nd and 3rd centuries and are strongly colored by Jewish and Christian ideas; what is called Book IV of these is a virtual attack on the integrity of the archaic heathen sibyls, the records of which the writers of the Christian Sibylline Oracles nevertheless so closely imitated in many respects.
Siphra’ di-Tseni‘utha’ (Aramaic) Sifrā’ di-Tsĕnī‘ūthā’. “Their counting or telling of the concealed mysteries,” the Book of Secrets or Mysteries; one of the principal books of the Zohar (Light); the secrets or mysteries dealt with are those relating to cosmogony and to the inhabitants of those worlds, thus forming the basis of the Hebrew Qabbalah. The work opens with the statement: “The book of the concealed mystery is the book of the equilibrium of balance,” and proceeds to expound this thesis in Qabbalistic terminology.
skiver ::: n. --> An inferior quality of leather, made of split sheepskin, tanned by immersion in sumac, and dyed. It is used for hat linings, pocketbooks, bookbinding, etc.
The cutting tool or machine used in splitting leather or skins, as sheepskins.
“So the possibility of the sunlit path is not a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the latter over the former.” Letters on Yoga
space 1. "character" The space character, {ASCII} character code 32. Entered by hitting the {space bar}. 2. The set of all possible values of some entity. A space may be simple, like the space of all {binary digits} (0, 1) or complex like the space of all books ever published. The former has only one dimension with two {discrete} values, the latter has many dimensions (author, publisher, date of publication in different countries, weight). (2019-08-07)
SPACEWAR "games" A space-combat simulation game for the {PDP-1} written in 1960-61 by Steve Russell, an employee at {MIT}. SPACEWAR was inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. MIT were wondering what to do with a new {vector video display} so Steve wrote the world's first video game. Steve now lives in California and still writes software for {HC12} {emulators}. SPACEWAR aficionados formed the core of the early hacker culture at {MIT}. Nine years later, a descendant of the game motivated {Ken Thompson} to build, in his spare time on a scavenged {PDP-7}, the {operating system} that became {Unix}. Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialised as one of the first video games; descendants are still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere. ["SPACEWAR" or "Space Travel"?] [{Jargon File}] (2004-07-19)
spoiler 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie. 2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see also {interesting}). Either sense readily forms compounds like "total spoiler", "quasi-spoiler" and even "pseudo-spoiler". By convention, {Usenet} news articles which are spoilers in either sense should contain the word "spoiler" in the Subject: line, or guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via {rot13}, or some combination of these techniques. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)
SQL "language, database, standard" /S Q L/ An industry-standard language for creating, updating and, querying {relational database management systems}. SQL was developed by {IBM} in the 1970s for use in {System R}. It is the {de facto standard} as well as being an {ISO} and {ANSI} {standard}. It is often embedded in general purpose programming languages. The first SQL standard, in 1986, provided basic language constructs for defining and manipulating {tables} of data; a revision in 1989 added language extensions for {referential integrity} and generalised {integrity} {constraints}. Another revision in 1992 provided facilities for {schema} manipulation and {data administration}, as well as substantial enhancements for data definition and data manipulation. Development is currently underway to enhance SQL into a computationally complete language for the definition and management of {persistent}, complex objects. This includes: generalisation and specialisation hierarchies, {multiple inheritance}, user defined {data types}, {triggers} and {assertions}, support for {knowledge based systems}, {recursive query expressions}, and additional data administration tools. It also includes the specification of {abstract data types} (ADTs), object identifiers, {methods}, {inheritance}, {polymorphism}, {encapsulation}, and all of the other facilities normally associated with object data management. The emerging {SQL3} standard is expected to be complete in 1998. According to Allen G. Taylor, SQL does __not__ stand for "Structured Query Language". That, like "SEQUEL" (and its pronunciation /see'kw*l/), was just another unofficial name for a precursor of SQL. However, the IBM SQL Reference manual for DB2 and Craig Mullins's "DB2 Developer's Guide" say SQL __does__ stand for "Structured Query Language". {SQL Standards (http://jcc.com/sql_stnd.html)}. {An SQL parser (ftp://ftp.ora.com/published/oreilly/nutshell/lexyacc/)} is described in "Lex & Yacc", by Levine, Mason & Brown published by O'Reilly. {The 1995 SQL Reunion: People, Projects, and Politics (http://mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/)}. ["A Guide to the SQL Standard", C.J. Date, A-W 1987]. ["SQL for Dummies", Allen G. Taylor, IDG Books Worldwide]. (2005-11-17)
Sri Aurobindo: "So the possibility of the sunlit path is not a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the latter over the former.” *Letters on Yoga
Srotriya (Sanskrit) Śrotriya [from the verbal root śru to hear, listen] A Brahmin who practices the Vedic rites and the sacred knowledge he studies, as distinguished from the Vedavid, the Brahmin who studies them only theoretically; traditionalist, as a Qabbalist in Hebrew though is the theosophical traditionalist of the Jews. It is precisely those who follow the tradition who are among the most eminent and successful disciples of the inner meaning of the sacred teaching in India, as contrasted with the mere bibliolaters, who read with reverence but without desire themselves to practice and follow the teaching and precepts which they study. Thus, books are seen to be great helps, if taken for the purpose for which religious books were originally written, and yet distinct stumbling blocks when they become the mere containers of the revealed faith which cannot be changed. The traditionalist seeks and finds the living reality, whether imbodied in books or not; the bibliolater or book-man is content with what already has been received.
stallman ::: n. --> One who keeps a stall for the sale of merchandise, especially books.
stall ::: v. i. --> A stand; a station; a fixed spot; hence, the stand or place where a horse or an ox kept and fed; the division of a stable, or the compartment, for one horse, ox, or other animal.
A stable; a place for cattle.
A small apartment or shed in which merchandise is exposed for sale; as, a butcher&
stationer ::: a. --> A bookseller or publisher; -- formerly so called from his occupying a stand, or station, in the market place or elsewhere.
One who sells paper, pens, quills, inkstands, pencils, blank books, and other articles used in writing.
stationery ::: n. --> The articles usually sold by stationers, as paper, pens, ink, quills, blank books, etc. ::: a. --> Belonging to, or sold by, a stationer.
steamboating ::: n. --> The occupation or business of running a steamboat, or of transporting merchandise, passengers, etc., by steamboats.
The shearing of a pile of books which are as yet uncovered, or out of boards.
stereotype ::: n. --> A plate forming an exact faximile of a page of type or of an engraving, used in printing books, etc.; specifically, a plate with type-metal face, used for printing.
The art or process of making such plates, or of executing work by means of them. ::: v. t.
stich ::: n. --> A verse, of whatever measure or number of feet.
A line in the Scriptures; specifically (Hebrew Scriptures), one of the rhythmic lines in the poetical books and passages of the Old Treatment, as written in the oldest Hebrew manuscripts and in the Revised Version of the English Bible.
A row, line, or rank of trees.
stichomancy ::: n. --> Divination by lines, or passages of books, taken at hazard.
stichometry ::: n. --> Measurement of books by the number of lines which they contain.
Division of the text of a book into lines; especially, the division of the text of books into lines accommodated to the sense, -- a method of writing manuscripts used before punctuation was adopted.
student ::: n. --> A person engaged in study; one who is devoted to learning; a learner; a pupil; a scholar; especially, one who attends a school, or who seeks knowledge from professional teachers or from books; as, the students of an academy, a college, or a university; a medical student; a hard student.
One who studies or examines in any manner; an attentive and systematic observer; as, a student of human nature, or of physical nature.
studious ::: a. --> Given to study; devoted to the acquisition of knowledge from books; as, a studious scholar.
Given to thought, or to the examination of subjects by contemplation; contemplative.
Earnest in endeavors; aiming sedulously; attentive; observant; diligent; -- usually followed by an infinitive or by of; as, be studious to please; studious to find new friends and allies.
Planned with study; deliberate; studied.
study ::: n. 1. A room furnished with books and intended or equipped for studying or writing. 2. The pursuit of knowledge, as by reading, observation, or research. v. 3. To examine closely; scrutinize. Also fig. studies, studied, studying.
study ::: v. i. --> A setting of the mind or thoughts upon a subject; hence, application of mind to books, arts, or science, or to any subject, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge.
Mental occupation; absorbed or thoughtful attention; meditation; contemplation.
Any particular branch of learning that is studied; any object of attentive consideration.
A building or apartment devoted to study or to literary
Suarezianism is systematic, orderly, easy to teach, it has become the framework of many Catholic text-books in philosophy, particularly of those by Jesuit authors. Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Leibniz and Descartes mention their reading of the Disputations. See: Grab-mann, M., "Die Disp. Metaph. F. Suarez in ihrer methodischen Eigenart und Fortwirkung," in Franz Suarez, S.J., (Innsbruck, 1917). (Pedro Descoqs, S. J., is an outstanding contemporary Suarezian).
Such wise women or initiates are known in the Orient and also among ancient Germanic tribes with their amazing priestesses, without whose counsel and consent war could not be declared, who received deputations, at times dictated alliances and treaties, and were consulted as oracles in matters of state and religion both — Albruna, Ganna, Aurima, Veleda, and others. Such oracular or prophetic power is limited to no people and to no time, or to either sex, for what the sibyls and their Sibylline Oracles were in Greece and Rome the prophets and oracular priests and priestesses were to other countries. As far as Greece is concerned the Pythia or Prophetess of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was a sibyl, but of a somewhat different type, her functions being officially recognized by the Greek States and her responses received in accordance with traditional methods of interpretation. See also SIBYLLINE BOOKS; ORACLES
“Surely there must have been some very good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the high Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged ‘Books of Moses,’ the Penateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud” (SD 1:320-1n) — doubtless because they rejected the literal rendering of the Pentateuch, and in the beginning at least preferred their own interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures.
tally ::: n. --> Originally, a piece of wood on which notches or scores were cut, as the marks of number; later, one of two books, sheets of paper, etc., on which corresponding accounts were kept.
Hence, any account or score kept by notches or marks, whether on wood or paper, or in a book; especially, one kept in duplicate.
One thing made to suit another; a match; a mate.
A notch, mark, or score made on or in a tally; as, to make
Tapasya ::: It may be observed that the usual translation of the word tapasya in English books, "penance", is quite misleading—the idea of penance entered rarely into the austerities practised by Indian ascetics. Nor was mortification of the body the essence even of the most severe and self-afflicting austerities; the aim was rather an overpassing of the hold of the bodily nature on the consciousness or else a supernormal energising of the consciousness and will to gain some spiritual or other object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22 Page: 591
Targum (Hebrew) Targūm [from the verbal root rāgam to arrange, explain, interpret] Interpretation; paraphrases of books of the Old Testament in Chaldee, or especially Aramaic, made at a time when the Aramaic superseded the Hebrew as a spoken language among the Jews, it being then found that the general mass of people were unable to understand the Hebrew scriptures. The date is given as about the 2nd century BC. The introduction of Targums is ascribed to Ezra by the Jews.
testament ::: n. --> A solemn, authentic instrument in writing, by which a person declares his will as to disposal of his estate and effects after his death.
One of the two distinct revelations of God&
Tetrabiblos (Greek for Four Books): An encyclopedia of astrology, said to be the record of the oldest astrological systems. It dates from about 132-160 A.D. In it the author, Claudius Ptolemy, the great Egyptian mathematician, says that it was compiled from “ancient” sources.
TeX "publication" /tekh/ An extremely powerful {macro}-based text formatter written by {Donald Knuth}, very popular in academia, especially in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced {Unix} {troff}, the other favoured formatter, even at many {Unix} installations). The first version of TeX was written in the programming language {SAIL}, to run on a {PDP-10} under Stanford's {WAITS} {operating system}. Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer Programming" (see {Knuth}, also {bible}). In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years. The language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of "The Art of Computer Programming" has yet to appear as of mid-1997. (However, the third edition of volumes I and II have come out). The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such that nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started as a bit of {toolsmithing} on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most. {Guy Steele} happened to be at Stanford during the summer of 1978, when Knuth was developing his first version of TeX. When he returned to {MIT} that fall, he rewrote TeX's {I/O} to run under {ITS}. TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but high-quality software. Knuth offers monetary awards to people who find and report a bug in it: for each bug the award is doubled. (This has not made Knuth poor, however, as there have been very few bugs and in any case a cheque proving that the owner found a bug in TeX is rarely cashed). Though well-written, TeX is so large (and so full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least one bug in every {Pascal} system it has been compiled with. TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural) pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case "TeX" is considered an acceptable {kluge} on {ASCII}-only devices). Fans like to proliferate names from the word "TeX" - such as TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. Several document processing systems are based on TeX, notably {LaTeX} Lamport TeX - incorporates document styles for books, letters, slides, etc., {jadeTeX} uses TeX as a backend for printing from {James' DSSSL Engine}, and {Texinfo}, the {GNU} document processing system. Numerous extensions to TeX exist, among them {BibTeX} for bibliographies (distributed with LaTeX), {PDFTeX} modifies TeX to produce {PDF} and {Omega} extends TeX to use the {Unicode} character set. For some reason, TeX uses its own variant of the {point}, the {TeX point}. See also {Comprehensive TeX Archive Network}. {(ftp://labrea.stanford.edu/tex/)}. E-mail: "tug@tug.org" (TeX User's group, Oregon, USA). (2002-03-11)
The Eden in Genesis is a marvelous fusion of many meanings into one narrative, where the Adams of the various root-races are made into one. Eden was an ancient name for Mesopotamia and adjacent regions; and under that one name are comprised the meanings of an abode of initiates, a sacred land from which races emerged, and a goal of bliss in the future. The Eden of the Hebrew books, which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike have located in Mesopotamia and in the now sandy lands of Persia and Afghanistan, refers also to what was in prehistoric times a great and highly developed center of culture and the civilization which there had its seat, including a number of Mystery schools. When the changing cycles brought about a degeneration and final breakup of this seat of archaic wisdom, it was represented as the loss by the then human Adam — the then race — of the Paradise in which he had dwelt. Edens and Paradises always contain trees; and these, by one interpretation, signify the initiates in the sacred land, and by another they are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom for man himself. In the Qabbalah, Eden is a place of initiation.
The Emperor Augustus consulted in the time of stress not only the Sibylline Books, but also a certain sibyl who dwelt in seclusion near Rome; as Numa, the second of the so-called legendary kings, consulted his consort Egeria, a wise woman who dwelt in seclusion in a forest, on all affairs of state. She is no more legendary than he, and it is upon the institutions he founded and the calendar he placed in order that the religious and civic institutions and the calendar of later Rome were built.
The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Th
refore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or
refusal the combinations of his own nature. These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, gunas, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the result of the interaction of these qualitative powers.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 232-233
“The kabalist is a student of ‘secret science,’ one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabalah, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or ‘magic.’ History catches glimpses of famous kabalists ever since the eleventh century. The Mediaeval ages, and even our own times, have had an enormous number of the most learned and intellectual men who were students of the Kabala . . . The most famous among the former were Paracelsus, Henry Khunrath, Jacob Bohmen, Robert Fludd, the two Van Helmonts, the Abbot John Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Nicolao Cusani, Jerome Carden, Pope Sixtus IV., and such Christian scholars as Raymond Lully, Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola, Guillaume Postel, the great John Reuchlin, Dr. Henry More, Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan), the erudite Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, Christian Knorr (Baron) von Rosenroth; then Sir Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Lord Bacon, Spinosa, etc., etc., the list being almost inexhaustible. As remarked by Mr. Isaac Myer, in his Qabbalah [p. 170], the ideas of the Kabalists have largely influenced European literature. ‘Upon the practical Qabbalah, the Abbe de Villars (nephew of de Montfaucon) in 1670, published his celebrated satirical novel, “The Count de Gabalis,” upon which Pope based his “Rape of the Lock.” Qabbalism ran through the Mediaeval poems, the “Romance of the Rose,” and permeates the writings of Dante.’ No two of them, however, agreed upon the origin of the Kabala, the Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah, etc. Some show it as coming from the Biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, and even Seth; others from Egypt, others again from Chaldea. The system is certainly very old; but like all the rest of systems, whether religious or philosophical, the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians. Whatever its source, its substratum is at any rate identical with that of all the other systems from the Book of the Dead down to the later Gnostics” (TG 167-8).
The Macedonian rulers had established here one of the most famous centers of learning known to history including a museum and a library with its famous collections of books; and the injury done to this center of learning and philosophy by various Roman potentates and Moslem invaders was a disaster for ensuing ages.
"The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge," says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita*
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâdrtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyadastîtivâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heartof man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
There are four Vedas: the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda, and Atharva-Veda, this last commonly supposed to be of later date than the former three. The Laws of Manu always speaks of the three Vedas. The Rig-Veda is the original work, the Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda in their mantric portions are different arrangements of its hymns for special purposes. The Vedas are divided into two parts, the Mantra and Brahmana. The Mantra part is composed of suktas (hymns in verse); the Brahmana part consists of liturgical, ritualistic, exegetical, and mystic treatises in prose. The Mantra or verse portion is considered more ancient than the prose works; and the books in which the hymns are collected are called sanhitas (collections). More or less closely connected with the Brahmanans (and in a few exceptional cases with the Mantra part) are two classes of treatises in prose and verse called Aranyaka and Upanishad. The Vedic writings are again divided into two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former called the karma-kanda (the section of works) and the latter the jnana-kanda (section of wisdom).
There are two recensions of the Talmud: 1) that of Palestine called the Jerusalem Talmud although the work was prepared by the pupils of Rabbi Yohanan ben ’El‘azar in the school of Tiberias situated some 45 miles north of Jerusalem: it was entitled Talmud of the Benei Me-‘arba’ (of the Sons of the West) by early writers; 2) that of Babylon composed principally in the 5th century from old oral courses by Rabbi ’Ashshei bar Sinai, headmaster of the Academy at Sura’ and completed in the 6th century by Rabbi Yosei. These works are not the religious or natural philosophy of the Jews, but oral traditions and discussion of the rabbis upon these legends. Christian Orientalists have given most attention to the Palestinian recension, although the Babylonian is preferred by the rabbis who call it the Shas — i.e., Shishshah Sedarim — six books ordered or arranged. The Babylonian is four times as large as the Jerusalem.
The reason the occultist of all ages looks askance at the tantric practices, or the Tantras dealing largely with the saktis, is because these tantric books and practices are almost wholly occupied in relations and correlations both in nature and in man of the saktis in their lower aspect. The kundalini, for instance, is likewise born in the buddhi in man, but descending through the human constitution has its pranic or psychovital physical representations in the various chakras or vital centers of the human frame, and thus the kundalini is an example of sakti or of its fluidic effluxes in the lower portions of the human constitution.
These auxiliary books, so casually appended to the text as we now have it, are considered by Qabbalists to be the chief contribution of the Zohar. The following form the bulk of the Zoharic writings outside of the commentary itself, as found in present editions, though in one or two editions a few additional fragments of minor importance are included:
The smritis were a system of oral teaching, passing from one generation of recipients to the succeeding generation, as was the case with the Brahmanical books before they were imbodied in manuscript. The Smartava-Brahmanas are, for this reason, considered by many to be esoterically superior to the Srauta-Brahmanas. In its widest application, the smritis include the Vedangas, the Sutras, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the Dharma-sastras, especially the works of Manu, Yajnavalkya, and other inspired lawgivers, and the ethical writing or Niti-sastras; whereas the typical example of the sruti are the Vedas themselves considered as revelations.
the three Enoch books, a veritable treasure-trove! Enoch I or the Book of Enoch (also called the
"The Vedas are the oldest holy books of India, perhaps the oldest of such works in the world. They are the foundation of the Hindu religion. The hymns they contain, written in an old form of Sanskrit, are said to have been ‘revealed" to the Rishis and subsequently were transmitted orally from generation to generation. They continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana (Veda Vyasa). It is not known when they were committed to writing. The Vedas are four in number: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. In reality the Rig-Veda is the Veda; many of its hymns occur with a different arrangement in the other three Vedas. According to some scholars, each Veda is divided into four parts: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanisad. But generally the term ‘Veda" is reserved for the Samhita, the metrical hymns. (Dow)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
“The Vedas are the oldest holy books of India, perhaps the oldest of such works in the world. They are the foundation of the Hindu religion. The hymns they contain, written in an old form of Sanskrit, are said to have been ‘revealed’ to the Rishis and subsequently were transmitted orally from generation to generation. They continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana (Veda Vyasa). It is not known when they were committed to writing. The Vedas are four in number: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. In reality the Rig-Veda is the Veda; many of its hymns occur with a different arrangement in the other three Vedas. According to somescholars, each Veda is divided into four parts: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanisad. But generally the term ‘Veda’ is reserved for the Samhita, the metrical hymns. (Dow)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
think ::: v. t. --> To seem or appear; -- used chiefly in the expressions methinketh or methinks, and methought.
To employ any of the intellectual powers except that of simple perception through the senses; to exercise the higher intellectual faculties.
To call anything to mind; to remember; as, I would have sent the books, but I did not think of it.
To reflect upon any subject; to muse; to meditate; to
“This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest ‘spirit’ of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his ‘irrational soul,’ or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
Th. Skolem, Sur la portee du theoreme de Löwenheim-Skolem, Les Entretiens de Zurich sur les Fondements et la Methode des Sciences Mathematiques, Zurich 1941, pp. 25-52. Lucretius, Carus: (98-54 B.C.) Noted Roman poet, author of the famous didactic poem De Natura Rerum, in six books, which forms an interesting exposition of the philosophy of Epicureanism. -- M..F.
tiger team (US military jargon) 1. Originally, a team whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g. leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defence installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next morning for a "security review" and finds the sign, note, etc. and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the {patch} entry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or special {firefighting} group called in to look at a problem. A subset of tiger teams are professional {crackers}, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly "secure" communication channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense. [{Jargon File}]
T. L. Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, translated from the text of Heiberg, with introduction and commentary, 3 vols., Cambridge, England, 1908. Gerbert of Aurillac: (Pope Sylvester II, died 1003) Was one of the greatest scholars of the 10th century. He studied at Aurillac with Odo of Cluny, learned something of Arabian science during three years spent in Spain. He taught at the school of Rheims, became Abbot of Bobbio (982), Archbishop of Rheims (991), Archbishop of Ravenna (998), Pope in 999. A master of the seven liberal aits, he excelled in his knowledge of the quadrivium, i.e. logic, math., astron. and music. His works, the most important of which are on mathematics, are printed in PL 139, 57-338. -- V.J.B.
transcription ::: n. --> The act or process of transcribing, or copying; as, corruptions creep into books by repeated transcriptions.
A copy; a transcript.
An arrangement of a composition for some other instrument or voice than that for which it was originally written, as the translating of a song, a vocal or instrumental quartet, or even an orchestral work, into a piece for the piano; an adaptation; an arrangement; -- a name applied by modern composers for the piano to a
treeware "jargon" /tree'weir/ Printouts, books, {documentation}, and other information media made from pulped dead trees by a {tree-killer}. [{Jargon File}] (1999-01-15)
Trishna(Sanskrit) ::: The meaning of this word is "thirst" or "longing," but it is a technical term imbodying the ideathat it is this "thirst" for the things which the human ego formerly knew, and which it wills and desires toknow again -- things familiar and akin to it from past experiences -- which draws the intermediate natureor human ego of man back again to incarnation in earth-life. It is attracted anew to what is to it old andfamiliar worlds and scenes; it thirsts for the manifested life comprising them, for the things which itformerly made akin to itself; and thus is it attracted back to those spheres which it left at some precedingperiod of its evolutionary journey through them, when death overtook it. Its attraction to return to earth isnaught but an operation of a law of nature. Here the intermediate nature or human ego sowed the seeds ofthought and of action in past lives, and here therefore must it of necessity reap their fruits. It cannot reapwhere it has not sown, as is obvious enough. It never goes whither it is not attracted or drawn.After death has released the intermediate nature, and during long ages has given to it its period of blissand rest and psychical recuperation -- much as a quiet and reposeful night's sleep is to the tired physicalbody -- then, just as a man reawakens by degrees, so does this intermediate nature or human ego bydegrees recede or awaken from that state of rest and bliss called devachan. And the seeds of thoughts, theseeds of actions which it had done in former lives, are now laid by in the fabric of itself -- seeds whosenatural energy is still unexpended and unexhausted -- and inhere in that inner psychical fabric, for theyhave nowhere else in which to inhere, since the man produced them there and they are a part of him.These seeds of former thoughts and acts, of former emotions, desires, loves, hates, yearnings, andaspirations, each one of such begins to make itself felt as an urge earthwards, towards the spheres andplanes in which they are native, and where they naturally grow and expand and develop.In this our present life, all of us are setting in motion causes in thought and in action which will bring usback to this earth in the distant future. We shall then reap the harvest of the seeds of thought and actionthat we are in this present life planting in the fields of our human nature.In the Pali books of the Orient this word is called tanha.
unbalanced ::: a. --> Not balanced; not in equipoise; having no counterpoise, or having insufficient counterpoise.
Not adjusted; not settled; not brought to an equality of debt and credit; as, an unbalanced account; unbalanced books.
Being, or being thrown, out of equilibrium; hence, disordered or deranged in sense; unsteady; unsound; as, an unbalanced mind.
uncut ::: a. --> Not cut; not separated or divided by cutting or otherwise; -- said especially of books, periodicals, and the like, when the leaves have not been separated by trimming in binding.
Not ground, or otherwise cut, into a certain shape; as, an uncut diamond.
Until the mid-twentieth century, the principal extant Gnostic writings were quotes in surviving attacks against the Gnostics made by early Christian writers, the Pistis Sophia and “two Books of Jeu,” and the Neoplatonic Corpus Hermeticum (Hermes Trimegistos, Divine Pymander, etc.). With the discovery of the Nag-Hammadi scrolls, many more Gnostic writings have come to light and scholars are gaining a wider understanding of both Christian and non-Christian Gnosticism.
useful ::: a. --> Full of use, advantage, or profit; producing, or having power to produce, good; serviceable for any end or object; helpful toward advancing any purpose; beneficial; profitable; advantageous; as, vessels and instruments useful in a family; books useful for improvement; useful knowledge; useful arts.
uzema ::: n. --> A Burman measure of twelve miles. V () V, the twenty-second letter of the English alphabet, is a vocal consonant. V and U are only varieties of the same character, U being the cursive form, while V is better adapted for engraving, as in stone. The two letters were formerly used indiscriminately, and till a comparatively recent date words containing them were often classed together in dictionaries and other books of reference (see U). The letter V is from the Latin alphabet, where it was used both as a
vedaisca vedyah ::: that which is known by all the books of Knowledge. [Gita 15.15]
Veda, plural Vedas: (Skr. knowledge) Collectively the ancient voluminous, sacred literature of India (in bulk prior to 1000 B.C.), composed of Rigveda (hymns to gods), Samaveda (priests' chants), Yajurveda (sacrificial formulae), and Atharvaveda (magical chants), which among theosophic speculations contain the first philosophic insights. Generally recognized as an authority even in philosophy, extended and supplemented later by sutras (q.v.) and various accessory textbooks on grammar, astronomy, medicine, etc., called Vedangas ("members of the Veda") and the philosophical treatises, such as the Upanishads (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
vellum ::: n. --> A fine kind of parchment, usually made from calfskin, and rendered clear and white, -- used as for writing upon, and for binding books.
virus ::: v. i. --> Contagious or poisonous matter, as of specific ulcers, the bite of snakes, etc.; -- applied to organic poisons.
The special contagion, inappreciable to the senses and acting in exceedingly minute quantities, by which a disease is introduced into the organism and maintained there.
Fig.: Any morbid corrupting quality in intellectual or moral conditions; something that poisons the mind or the soul; as, the virus of obscene books.
Vishnu Purana (Sanskrit) Viṣṇu Purāṇa One of the most celebrated of the 18 principal Puranas, conforming more than any other to the definition of pancha-lakshana (five distinguishing marks) assigned as being the character of a complete Purana by Amara-Simha, an ancient Sanskrit lexicographer. It consists of six books: the first treats of the creation of the universe from cosmic prakriti, and the peopling of the world by the prajapatis or spiritual ancestors; the second book gives a list of kings with many geographical and astronomical details; the third treats of the Vedas and caste; the fourth continues the chronicle of dynasties; the fifth gives the life of Krishna; and the sixth book describes the dissolution of the world, and the future re-issuing of the world after pralaya.
Visual BASIC "language" (VB) A popular {event-driven} {visual programming} system from {Microsoft Corporation} for {Microsoft Windows}. VB is good for developing Windows interfaces, it invokes fragments of {BASIC} code when the user performs certain operations on graphical objects on-screen. It is widely used for in-house {application program} development and for prototyping. It can also be used to create {ActiveX} and {COM} components. Version 1 was released in 1991 [by Microsoft?]. {(http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/)}. {History (http://iessoft.com/scripts/vbhistry.asp)}. {Strollo Software (http://op.net/~jstrollo/vblinks.html)}. {Books (http://wrox.com/Consumer/Default.asp?Category=Visual+Basic)}. (1999-11-26)
volume ::: 1. A book or something likened to it. 2. One of a number of books forming a related set or series.
voucher ::: n. --> One who vouches, or gives witness or full attestation, to anything.
A book, paper, or document which serves to vouch the truth of accounts, or to confirm and establish facts of any kind; also, any acquittance or receipt showing the payment of a debt; as, the merchant&
whatnot ::: n. --> A kind of stand, or piece of furniture, having shelves for books, ornaments, etc.; an etagere. html{color:
which, by altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This has been assigned by scholars to Fu-Hsi (30th century BC). The first extant commentary on it is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BC, and his son. There have been many explanations offered regarding this work, called by many the Qabbalah of China: some see in it only a system of divination, a lunar calendar, phallic worship, or again the vocabulary of a tribe whose very existence had to be postulated for this purpose. Both Taoists and Confucianists regard the I Ching as the holiest of books; Confucius declared that he would like to give another 50 years of his life to its study, while the only Chinese commentator who is said to have understood it was Chu Hsi (1130-1200).
While the Romans produced critics and skeptics who attempted to throw doubt on the nature and reliability of these Sibylline Oracles, the greatest men of the Roman State held them in reverence, and they were most carefully guarded through the centuries of Roman history as being among the most important and sacred treasures of the royal, republican, and imperial archives. The Sibylline Oracles or Books were consulted on every occasion of important crisis which confronted the Roman State, and it would appear from existing records that when so consulted, the results following always accrued to the benefit and prosperity of the government and people.
Yetzirah: According to Kabalistic teachings, the world of angels, formed from emanations of the Briah (q.v.). Also called Yetziratic World. Yetzirah is also the title of the most occult of Kabbalistic books (Sepher Yetzirah).
Yoga(Sanskrit) ::: Literally "union," "conjunction," etc. In India it is the technical name for one of the sixDarsanas or schools of philosophy, and its foundation is ascribed to the sage Patanjali. The name Yogaitself describes the objective of this school, the attaining of union or at-one-ness with the divine-spiritualessence within a man. The yoga practices when properly understood through the instructions of genuineteachers -- who, by the way, never announce themselves as public lecturers or through books oradvertisements -- are supposed to induce certain ecstatic states leading to a clear perception of universaltruths, and the highest of these states is called samadhi.There are a number of minor forms of yoga practice and training such as the karma yoga, hatha yoga,bhakti yoga, raja yoga, jnana yoga, etc. Similar religious aspirations or practices likewise exist inOccidental countries, as, for instance, what is called salvation by works, somewhat equivalent to theHindu karma yoga or, again, salvation by faith -- or love, somewhat similar to the Hindu bhakti yoga;while both Orient and Occident have, each one, its various forms of ascetic practices which may begrouped under the term hatha yoga.No system of yoga should ever be practiced unless under the direct teaching of one who knows thedangers of meddling with the psychomental apparatus of the human constitution, for dangers lurk atevery step, and the meddler in these things is likely to bring disaster upon himself, both in matters ofhealth and as regards sane mental equilibrium. The higher branches of yoga, however, such as the rajayoga and jnana yoga, implying strict spiritual and intellectual discipline combined with a fervid love forall beings, are perfectly safe. It is, however, the ascetic practices, etc., and the teachings that go withthem, wherein lies the danger to the unwary, and they should be carefully avoided.
Yourdon, Inc. "company" The company founded in 1974 by {Edward Yourdon} to provide educational, publishing, and consulting services in state-of-the-art software engineering technology. Over the next 12 years, the company grew to a staff of over 150 people, with offices throughout North America and Europe. As CEO of the company, Yourdon oversaw an operation that trained over 250,000 people around the world; the company was sold in 1986 and eventually became part of {CGI}, the French software company that is now part of {IBM}. The publishing division, Yourdon Press (now part of Prentice Hall), has produced over 150 technical computer books on a wide range of software engineering topics; many of these "classics" are used as standard university computer science textbooks. (1995-04-16)
Zend, Zand (Pahlavi) Zantay (Avestan) [from the verbal root zan cognition, knowledge cf Old Persian dan] Commentary, interpretation, explanation; in the Occident, Zend refers to a language in which the Avesta is written, but modern Parsi scholars and older Pahlavi books speak of the language and writing as Avesta. Blavatsky links Zend with Zensar or Senzar, the mystery-language of the initiates.
Zohar, Sepher haz-Zohar (Hebrew) Zohar, Sēfer Hazzohar [from the verbal root zāhar light, to be bright, to shine] Book of the light; the principal work or compendium of the Qabbalists, forming with the Book of Creation (Sepher Yetsirah) the main canon of the Qabbalah. It is written largely in Chaldean interspersed with Hebrew, and is in the main a running commentary on the Pentateuch. Interwoven are a number of highly significant sections or books scattered apparently at random through the volumes: sometimes incorporated as parallel columns to the text, at other times as separate portions.
KEYS (10k)
10 Sri Ramakrishna
9 Robert Heinlein
8 The Mother
5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
5 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Terence James Stannus Gray
4 Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Robert Anton Wilson
3 Mortimer J Adler
3 Mark Twain
3 Joseph Campbell
2 Vivekananda
2 Thich Nhat Hanh
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2 Saint Padre Pio
2 Robert Burton
2 Robert Adams
2 Ray Bradbury
2 Ramesh Balsekar
2 Marcus Aurelius
2 Manly P Hall
2 Jeffrey J Kripal
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Georg C Lichtenberg
2 Franz Kafka
1 Zen saying.
1 Zen proverb
1 Zen Fi
1 Yeonmi Park
1 write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope
1 Winston Churchill
1 Wayne Dyer
1 Voltaire
1 Virginia Woolf
1 Upanishad
1 Thomas Ehrlich
1 Thomas Carlyle
1 Thomas A Kempis
1 The Mother
1 Taigu Ryokan
1 Sylvia Plath
1 Sydney Smith
1 SWAMI PREMANANDA
1 Sufi saying
1 Stubb in Herman Melville
1 Stephen King
1 Stephen Brust
1 Sri Ramakrishna?
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Sir Francis Bacon
1 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1 Simone Weil
1 Simone de Beauvoir
1 Seneca
1 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
1 Saint Ephrem the Syrian
1 Robert A. Johnson
1 Reverend Chad Ripperger
1 Rene Descartes
1 reading :::
50 Philosophy Classics: List of Books Covered:
1. Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition (1958)
2. Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)
3. AJ Ayer - Language
1 Ram Dass [Richard Alpert]
1 Ramakrishna
1 R A Fisher
1 Patrick Rothfuss
1 Owen Barfield
1 Oscar Wilde
1 Nikola Tesla
1 Nicola Yoon
1 Neil Gaiman
1 Mortimer J. Adler
1 Montaigne
1 Michael Murphy
1 Meng Tse. VII. II. III. 1
1 Matt Mercer
1 MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
1 Marianne Williamson
1 M Alan Kazlev
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 Ludwig Feuerbach
1 Laura Whitcomb
1 Jorge Luis Borges
1 Jonathan Swift
1 John Green
1 John Cowper Powys
1 Jetsun Milarepa
1 Jay Kristoff
1 James V. Schall
1 James Allen
1 Isaac Asimov
1 Henry David Thoreau
1 Heinrich Heine
1 Haruki Murakami
1 Gogol
1 Frank Zappa
1 Frank Visser
1 Frank Herbert
1 Ezra Pound
1 Étienne de La Boétie
1 Ernest Cline
1 E.M. Forster
1 Elon Musk
1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1 Editors of Discovery Magazine
1 Dr Robert A Hatch
1 Desiderius Erasmus
1 C S Lewis
1 collab summer & fall 2011
1 - Chuck Klosterman
1 Charles Haddon Spurgeon
1 Charles Dickens
1 Bulleh Shah
1 Buckminister Fuller
1 Arthur Schopenhauer
1 Anthony Burgess
1 Andrei Tarkovsky
1 Anatole France
1 Alice Hoffman
1 Albert Einstein
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Saint Teresa of Avila
1 Maimonides
1 Leonardo da Vinci
1 Kabir
1 Epictetus
1 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
1 A Edward Newton
1 Abraham Lincoln
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
32 Anonymous
19 John Green
16 Neil Gaiman
15 Thomas Jefferson
14 Stephen King
12 Heinrich Heine
10 Thomas Carlyle
9 Ray Bradbury
9 J K Rowling
9 Cassandra Clare
8 Victor Hugo
8 Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 Mason Cooley
7 Mark Twain
7 Haruki Murakami
6 Terry Pratchett
6 Morrissey
6 Marcus Aurelius
6 Louisa May Alcott
6 Khaled Hosseini
1:So many books, so little time.
~ Frank Zappa,#KEYS
2:Of all things, I liked books best. ~ Nikola Tesla, #KEYS
3:Books are a uniquely portable magic.
~ Stephen King,#KEYS
4:Books may well be the only true magic. ~ Alice Hoffman, #KEYS
5:All I have learned, I learned from books. ~ Abraham Lincoln #KEYS
6:Never memorize what you can look up in books. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
7:When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books. ~ John Green, #KEYS
8:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
9:Throw away thy books. No longer distract thyself. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS
10:A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey." ~ Sufi saying, #KEYS
11:Books are the mirrors of the soul. ~ Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts, #KEYS
12:Books are the training weights of the mind. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
13:Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS
14:The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle #KEYS
15:Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. ~ Heinrich Heine #KEYS
16:All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS
17:All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedius.
~ Anatole France,#KEYS
18:Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." ~ Mark Twain, #KEYS
19:No furniture is so charming as books. ~ Sydney Smith , A memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith #KEYS
20:It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. ~ Winston Churchill, #KEYS
21:A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, #KEYS
22:The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
~ Oscar Wilde,#KEYS
23:The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
24:If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson #KEYS
25:My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water. ~ Mark Twain, Notebook #KEYS
26:Through the study of books one seeks God; by meditation one finds him. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
27:When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough ~ Zen proverb, #KEYS
28:My fondness for good books was my salvation. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #KEYS
29:There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight ~ Ezra Pound #KEYS
30:The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS
31:The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself, within yourself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
32:No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning #KEYS
33:The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
~ Rene Descartes,#KEYS
34:When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, (16th cent.), #KEYS
35:As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #KEYS
36:I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
~ Haruki Murakami,#KEYS
37:The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity...
~ A Edward Newton,#KEYS
38:Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear #KEYS
39:If the Self be found in books it would have been already realized. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
40:What should I read at present?
Sri Aurobindo's books.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
41:Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden #KEYS
42:I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
43:All this has been revealed to Me. I do not know much about what your books say.
~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
44:The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. ~ Ray Bradbury, #KEYS
45:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
46:It is no use reading books of guidance if one is not determined to live what they teach. Blessings ~ The Mother, #KEYS
47:Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience. ~ Thomas Ehrlich, #KEYS
48:The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself in yourself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
49:Library terror - that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of available books... ~ Owen Barfield, Night Operation, #KEYS
50:Sacred scriptures all point the way to God. Once you know the way, what is the use of books? ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
51:The Facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren't afraid to be honest ~ Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, #KEYS
52:There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. ~ Charles Dickens, #KEYS
53:In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer J. Adler, #KEYS
54:You can read sacred books and yet be far away from the Divine; and you can read the most stupid productions and be in touch with the Divine. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
55:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
~ Sri Ramakrishna, [T5],#KEYS
56:To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
57:It would be better not to have books than to believe all that is found in them. ~ Meng Tse. VII. II. III. 1, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
58:Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your mattress, / And you shall sleep restful nights ~ Saint Ephrem the Syrian, #KEYS
59:A teacher never falls short of the wisdom of life, Divine Wisdom, which is superior to the wisdom taught in books. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
60:The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it out for yourself, in yourself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 16-3-45, #KEYS
61:What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #KEYS
62:According to Aldous Huxley, some of the books on his shelves glowed with a special energy or living power. They were alive, and they were beautiful. ~ Jeffrey J Kripal, #KEYS
63:Which of Sri Aurobindo's books should I start with?
The Life Divine.
My blessings.
11 March 1941 ~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
64:That which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing. ~ Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, #KEYS
65:In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them. ~ Mark Twain #KEYS
66:When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind. ~ Montaigne, Les Essais #KEYS
67:When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much." ~ Zen saying., #KEYS
68:Take care that the reading of numerous writers and books of all kinds does not confuse and trouble thy reason. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
69:To believe that you can end decades of tyranny of the ego by reading lots of books is like believing that you can satisfy your appetite by reading lots of menus. ~ Zen Fi , #KEYS
70:It is always the same question: have you really read all those books? My answer is always the same: a library is a sign of desire, not of accomplishment. ~ Jeffrey J Kripal, #KEYS
71:Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune Books, #KEYS
72:As for reading books on Vedanta, you may go on reading any number of them. They can only tell you, 'Realise the Self within you'. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day with Bhagavan, #KEYS
73:In Persian books it is written that within the flesh are the bones, within the bones are the marrow, and within them all is Prema. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
74:Hearing of wisdom from a teacher makes a greater impression than the mere reading of books, but seeing makes the greatest impression. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
75:l that the seeker can find is his own absence." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
76:It is by suffering and troubles that it is given us to acquire little portions of that wisdom which is not learned in books. ~ Gogol, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
77:Merely reading holy books will not make one religious. One must practice the virtues taught in books in order to acquire the love of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
78:Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ~ Voltaire #KEYS
79:However much one may have studied books, it is all futile unless one has love and devotion for God, unless one has the desire to realize Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
80:Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. ~ Stubb in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, #KEYS
81:Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. ~ Maimonides, #KEYS
82:I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
83:I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves. ~ E.M. Forster #KEYS
84:The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us. I can see it in you, sure as I see it in me. ~ Jay Kristoff, Nevernight, #KEYS
85:If a man could write a book on Ethics that was really a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all other books in the world. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'A Lecture on Ethics' (1929), #KEYS
86:Not mere theory; actualize it - there has been enough talk and writing. Put the books aside and let your actions speak. This is what the lives of the Master and Swamiji stand for. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
87:I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself. ~ C S Lewis, quoted by Roger Lancelyn Green, #KEYS
88:The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles begin." ~ Robert A. Johnson, (b.1921) an American Jungian analyst and author. His books have sold more than 2.5 million copies, Wikipedia., #KEYS
89:Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
90:The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, color-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. He should also be about my age. ~ Anthony Burgess, #KEYS
91:We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, (b. 1926) a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, published more than 100 books, including more than 40 in English, Wikipedia., #KEYS
92:Strange and terrible books were drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from secure places of storage; and diagrams and formulae were copied with feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
93:The old law not only had five loaves, that is, the five books of Moses, but also two fishes, that is, the Psalms and the prophets ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In 1 John 6, lect. 1)., #KEYS
94:Art and love are the same thing: It's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you." ~ - Chuck Klosterman, (born 1972) American author and essayist, author of eleven books, including two novels, Wikipedia., #KEYS
95:To live in the Supreme Truth, if only for a minute, is worth more than writing or reading hundreds of books on the methods or processes by which to find it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
96:Having studied books, the sage uniquely consecrated to knowledge and wisdom, should leave books completely aside as a man who wants the rice abandons the husk. ~ Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
97:When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, (b. 1926) a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, published more than 100 books, including more than 40 in English, Wikipedia., #KEYS
98:Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, #KEYS
99:When you stop searching and you calm down and you put your books away, and you confront yourself and see what you are all about, that will bring about bliss faster than anything you can ever imagine or ever do. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
100:The resolution of every duality is nameless… For no non-duality can be a thing or an object." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
101:Awakening cannot take place as long as the idea persists that one is a seeker." ~ Ramesh Balsekar, (1917 - 2009) disciple of the late Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a renowned Advaita master, Balsekar wrote more than 20 books, Wikipedia., #KEYS
102:The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." ~ Saint Padre Pio, #KEYS
103:Liberation is liberation from the idea of liberation. There is no one to be bound, no one to be free." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
104:We who debate things and write books, we make progress as we write. Every day we learn, we explore as we dictate our books. We knock on God's door as we speak. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 162C.15, #KEYS
105:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
106:Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying." ~ Ram Dass [Richard Alpert], (b. 1931), American spiritual teacher, former academic and clinical psychologist, and author of many books, including the seminal 1971 book :"Be Here Now", Wikipedia, #KEYS
107:Consciousness is all there is, and whatever appears to happens is merely a movement of consciousness… Consciousness is where God resides." ~ Ramesh Balsekar, (1917 - 2009), a disciple of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, wrote more than 20 books, Wikipedia., #KEYS
108:Do you know my attitude? Books, scriptures, and things like that only point out the way to reach God. After finding the way, what more need is there of books and scriptures? Then comes the time for action. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
109:... maintains that, along with Aurobindo's Life Divine, Heidegger's Being and Time, and Whitehead's Process and Reality, Wilber's Sex Ecology Spirituality [SES] is 'one of the four great books of this [twentieth] century'
~ Michael Murphy, Integral, 2004.,#KEYS
110:Therefore when you try to learn more knowledge and you read more books, all you're doing is adding on to the garbage pail. Of course most of you realize, the highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
111:For though I have with me good men, devout brethren, faithful friends, holy books, beautiful treatises, sweet songs and hymns, all these help and please but little when I am abandoned by grace and left to my poverty. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
112:If you're not happy with what you have, then why would you want more." ~ Wayne Dyer, (1940-2015), an American self-help author and a motivational speaker. His first book, "Your Erroneous Zones", (1976), is one of the best-selling books of all time, Wikipedia., #KEYS
113:It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied but by subjects - what he has said on the Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on education, on self-perfection, on supermind, etc., etc.
~ The Mother, On Education, 205,#KEYS
114:For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?" ~ James Allen, (1864 - 1912) British philosopher, wrote inspirational books and poetry, pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, "As a Man Thinketh," Wikipedia., #KEYS
115:The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.
~ R A Fisher,#KEYS
116:All books will tell you the same truth, perhaps in slightly different ways. Instead of wasting time reading book after book why not realize for yourself what was obvious from the very first book. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, From the Mounth Path, #KEYS
117:A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
118:The explicable requires the inexplicable. Experience requires the nonexperienceable. The obvious requires the mystical." ~ Buckminister Fuller, (1895 - 1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist, published more than 30 books, Wikipedia, #KEYS
119:When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious." ~ Marianne Williamson, (b. 1952), an American spiritual teacher, author, and lecturer. She has published 12 books, including four New York Times number one bestsellers, Wikipedia., #KEYS
120:When you kick a man when he is down — do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick — if you think you deserve it." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
121:An improvisation :::
For hours, since I sat facing you, you have stayed mute.
Your meaning, ampler than words, addresses itself to me.
Cases removed, books lie open, scattered by the bedside.
Beyond the bamboo screen, a shower falls on a plum tree. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
122:All Nature will be transfigured to them and the book of knowledge he open. They will not need to have recourse to books in order to know; their own thought will have become their book and will contain an infinite knowledge. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
123:Satsang and spiritual books have the power to turn our minds towards good thoughts. That alone, however, will not enable us to go forward with steady steps. To rid our minds of all the dirt, and to progress towards the ultimate goal, we have to take refuge in a Guru ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
124:Yes, yes; you've read thousands of books but you've never tried to read your own self; you rush into your temples, into your mosques, but you have never tried to enter your own heart; futile are all your battles with the devil for you have never tried to fight your own desires. ~ Bulleh Shah, #KEYS
125:You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world. ~ Ray Bradbury, #KEYS
126:It is useful that many persons should write many books, differing in style but not in faith, concerning even the same questions, that the matter itself may reach the greatest number — some in one way, some in another. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
127:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy enabled him to fulfill his obligations with many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, The Theologians,#KEYS
128:May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art ~ write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. ~ Neil Gaiman, #KEYS
129:May the sacred page be a book for you, so that you may hear, may the globe of the earth be a book for you so that you may see; in these books only those who know letters read these things; in the whole world, even the fool can read. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, On the Psalms 45.7, #KEYS
130:May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
~ Neil Gaiman,#KEYS
131:To understand any one sacred book completely it is necessary to understand all other sacred books. In spite of human prejudice to the contrary, there is but one religion and one truth and all the great faiths of the world are parts or fragments of the Anscient Wisdom.
~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter 1973,#KEYS
132:I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited. ~ Sylvia Plath, #KEYS
133:Some people read books in order to find God. Yet there is great book, the very appearance of created things. Look above you; look below you! Note it; read it! God, whom you wish to find, never wrote that book with ink. He set before your eyes the things He had made. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
134:I read [in certain Platonic books] that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God (Jn 1.13). But that the Word was made flesh and lived among us (Jn 1.14) I did not read there. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 13.9.14, #KEYS
135:Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
136:If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It's the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #KEYS
137:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths?,#KEYS
138:Hindu almanachs contain predictions about the annual rains foretelling how many centimetres will fall in the country; but by pressing the book which is so full of predictions of rain, you will extract not a drop of water. So also many good words are to be found in pious books, but the mere reading of them does not give spirituality. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
139:Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. ~ Sir Francis Bacon, The Essays, #KEYS
140:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
141:Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life. ~ Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything #KEYS
142:When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
143:Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against
your own neck
You won't find me in the mosque
or the sadhus temple.
You wont find me in holy books
or behind the lips of priests.
Nor in eating nothing but vegetables
You will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says : Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.... ~ Kabir,#KEYS
144:Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective store? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
145:The soul of each man contains the potential divinity. Our aim must be to make apparent this divinity within us by subduing our inner and outer nature. Attain to him by works or by adoration, by physical mastery, by philosophy, by one, by several or by all of these methods and be free. That is the whole of religion. Doctrines, dogmas, rituals, books, temples, forms are only secondary details. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
146:In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life. - Ken Wilber ~ Frank Visser, Ken Wilber Thought as Passion, Foreward, #KEYS
147:I often think . . . that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses, nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton, or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine, and Pascal. ~ James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing, #KEYS
148:To read great books does not mean one becomes 'bookish'; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.
~ John Cowper Powys,#KEYS
149: uh i didn't so that was a funny story i ended up in the er and then like they were saying you're malnouished because i didn't have time to eat. i forgot to eat. so even when i was sleeping i would turn on the like a ted talks or npr so i can like listen my brain still kept working and even when i was sleeping i would put the books behind my pillow so the like knowledge really going to me i was obsessed i was crazy you were obsessed with yeah i was i was completely obsessed with the learning ~ Yeonmi Park, #KEYS
150:Help yourself during this troubled period by reading holy books. This reading provides excellent food for the soul and conduces to great progress along the path of perfection. By no means is it inferior to what we obtain through prayer and holy meditation. In prayer and meditation it is ourselves who speak to the Lord, while in holy reading it is God who speaks to us. Before beginning to read, raise your mind to the Lord and implore Him to guide your mind Himself, to speak to your heart and move your will. ~ Saint Padre Pio, #KEYS
151:MESSAGES FOR CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS (Suggested programme for a study group)
1. Prayer (Sri Aurobindo, Mother - grant us your help in our endeavour to understand your teaching.)
2. Reading of Sri Aurobindo's book.
3. A moment of silence.
4. One question can be put by whoever wants to put a question on what has been read.
5. Answer to the question.
6. No general discussion. This is not the meeting of a group but simply a class for studying Sri Aurobindo's books. 31 October 1942
~ The Mother,#KEYS
152:Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.
. . .
We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books" - join in the cry.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,#KEYS
153:I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground. If what you're doing seems like play, you are in it. But you can't play with my toys, you have to have your own. Your life should have yielded some. Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain. In my case, I have books I like to read that don't lead anywhere. One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment ~ Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, #KEYS
154:How many nights have you remained awake repeating science and poring over books, and have denied yourself sleep. I do not know what the purpose of it was. If it was attaining worldly ends and securing its vanities, and acquiring its dignities, and surpassing your contemporaries, and such like, woe to you and again woe; but if your purpose in it was the vitalizing of the Law of the Prophet, and the training of your character, and breaking the soul commanding to evil, then blessed are you and again blessed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
155:If a man but once tastes the joy of God, his desire to argue takes wing. The bee, realizing the joy of sipping honey, doesn't buzz about any more. What will vou achieve by quoting from books? The pundits recite verses and do nothing else.
What will you gain by merely repeating 'siddhi'? You will not be intoxicated even by gargling with a solution of siddhi. It must go into your stomach; not until then will you be intoxicated. One cannot comprehend what I am saying unless one prays to God in solitude, all by oneself, with a longing heart. ~ Sri Ramakrishna?,#KEYS
156:Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. ~ Étienne de La Boétie #KEYS
157:Money, after all, is an abstract artifact, like language - merely symbolized by the paper or coin or whatever. If you can fully grasp its abstractedness, especially in the computer age, it becomes quite clear that no group can monopolize this abstraction, except through a series of swindle. If the usurers had been bolder, they might have monopolized language as well as currency, and people would be saying we can't write more books because we don't have enough words, the way they now say we can't build starships, because we don't have enough money. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
158:Elon Musks Reading List
J. E. Gordon - Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down
Walter Isaacson - Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Walter Isaacson - Einstein: His Life and Universe
Nick Bostrom - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Erik M. Conway & Naomi Oreskes - Merchants of Doubt
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Peter Thiel - Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy
~ Elon Musk, CNBC,#KEYS
159:Reading is merely a substitute for one's own thoughts. A man allows his thoughts to be put into leading-strings.
Further, many books serve only to show how many wrong paths there are, and how widely a man may stray if he allows himself to be led by them. But he who is guided by his genius, that is to say, he who thinks for himself, who thinks voluntarily and rightly, possesses the compass wherewith to find the right course. A man, therefore, should only read when the source of his own thoughts stagnates; which is often the case with the best of minds. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,#KEYS
160:The library smells like old books - a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.
~ Laura Whitcomb,#KEYS
161:Arguably, the best advice for a serious student is to read a few hundred carefully selected books. An orgy of reading 30 or 40 first-rate books in a month ranks at the top of the usual list of human pleasures. If you wish, as an undergraduate, you could do it. You have time and energy, and with luck, you have the curiosity and courage to risk a month or two. Read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Voltaire, Berkeley, Hegel, Marx, and Kanetz. Or you could just play Frisbee on the Plaza of the Americas. Life is choice and there is much to learn. Not making a choice is a choice. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #KEYS
162:I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
~ Franz Kafka,#KEYS
163:What Brahman is cannot be described in words. Somebody once said that everything in the world has been made impure, like food that has touched the tongue, and that Brahman alone remains undefiled. The meaning is this: All scriptures and holy books — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and so forth — may be said to have been defiled because their contents have been uttered by the tongues of men; but what Brahman is no tongue has yet been able to describe. Therefore Brahman is still undefiled. One cannot describe in words the joy of play and communion with Satchidananda. He alone knows, who has realized it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
164:How to open to the Mother? The following are the means:
(1) To remember You constantly or from time to time--
Good.
(2) By taking Your name through Japa [mantra; repeating the Mother's name]--
Helpful.
(3) With the help of meditation--
More difficult if one has not the habit of meditation.
(4) By conversation about You with those who love and respect You--
Risky because, when talking, often some nonsense or at least some useless things can be said.
(5) By reading Your books--
Good.
(6) By spending time in thoughts of You--
Very good.
(7) By sincere prayers--
Good. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
165:the soul's seemingly magical influence :::
If you have within you a psychic being sufficiently awake to watch over you, to prepare your path, it can draw towards you things which help you, draw people, books, circumstances, all sorts of little coincidences which come to you as though brought by some benevolent will and give you an indication, a help, a support to take decisions and turn you in the right direction. But once you have taken this decision, once you have decided to find the truth of your being, once you start sincerely on the road, everything seems to conspire to help you to advance,
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
166:All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool. ~ Stephen Brust, #KEYS
167:The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn't speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #KEYS
168:MATT: Okay. You spiral upward and upward and upward, climbing an extremely long period of time.
Your legs begin to ache a little bit. Then another floor opens up. It appears the tower is now divided into two chambers. From the bottom floor up, it's now two sides to a tower and you're on the right side. The hallway curves around the outer edge of the tower. On the opposite side, you can see the staircase continues upward. The interior of this chamber appears to be an incredible arcane laboratory, occupying the center space of the tower inside. You see six overlapping circles of dulled runes and glyphs that encompass the entire 30-foot walkway between here and the stairs. Shelves and tables of countless glass tubes and metallic vices lay out across tables, organized in a near-OCD pattern. Tomes and books line the inner chamber walls. What do you guys do? ~ Matt Mercer, Critical Role,#KEYS
169:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS
170:People have to start educating themselves more in the faith. It is not enough just to go to mass anymore. You can't do that... We don't live at a time in which one can spiritually survive and be intellectually not very good. Maybe a few older ladies who have the extraordinary graces can get away with it. But modernism is such a toxic heresy that [you need] a lot of educational background--which you should work on anyway, because everybody has an obligation to continue educating themselves according to their state in life... They need to be reading more. They can listen to interviews and podcasts, that's fine. But at some point you've got to encounter the books. You've got to start reading them and educating yourself and getting a deeper understanding of the faith so that when you hear the nonsense from the secular media, [and even] from members of the magisterium now, you can keep your focus. ~ Reverend Chad Ripperger, transcribed from interview with Taylor Marshall, #KEYS
171:reading :::
50 Philosophy Classics: List of Books Covered:
1. Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition (1958)
2. Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)
3. AJ Ayer - Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
4. Julian Baggini - The Ego Trick (2011)
5. Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
6. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1952)
7. Jeremy Bentham - Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
8. Henri Bergson - Creative Evolution (1911)
9. David Bohm - Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
10. Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power (2002)
11. Cicero - On Duties (44 BC)
12. Confucius - Analects (5th century BC)
13. Rene Descartes - Meditations (1641)
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Fate (1860)
15. Epicurus - Letters (3rd century BC)
16. Michel Foucault - The Order of Things (1966)
17. Harry Frankfurt - On Bullshit (2005)
18. Sam Harris - Free Will (2012)
19. GWF Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit (1803)
20. Martin Heidegger - Being and Time (1927)
21. Heraclitus - Fragments#KEYS
172:[E]very man hath liberty to write, but few ability. Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers, that either write for vain-glory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put out trifles, rubbish and trash. Among so many thousand Authors you shall scarce find one by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse; by which he is rather infected than any way perfected...
What a catalogue of new books this year, all his age (I say) have our Frankfurt Marts, our domestic Marts, brought out. Twice a year we stretch out wits out and set them to sale; after great toil we attain nothing...What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast Chaos and confusion of Books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number-one of the many-I do not deny it... ~ Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy,#KEYS
173:Worldly affairs are all deceptive;
So I seek the truth Divine.
Excitements and distractions are illusions;
So I meditate on the non-dual Truth.
Companions and servants are deceptive;
So I remain in solitude.
Money and possessions are also deceptive;
So if I have them, I give them away.
Things in the outer world are all illusion;
The Inner Mind is that which I observe.
Wandering thoughts are all deceptive;
So I only tread the path of wisdom.
Deceptive are the teachings of expedient truth;
The final truth is that on which I meditate.
Books written in black ink are all misleading;
I only meditate on the pith-instructions of the whispered lineage.
Words and sayings, too, are but illusion;
At ease, I rest my mind in the effortless state.
Birth and death are both illusions;
I observe but the truth of no-arising.
The common mind is in every way misleading;
And so I practice how to animate awareness.
The Mind-holding Practice
is misleading and deceptive;
And so I rest in the realm of reality. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
174:
An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin
Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science
Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body
The Mother - Mother's Agenda
Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution
T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body
Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy
Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper,#KEYS
175:People think of education as something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, it's a rite of passage. You're finished with school. You're no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that's kid's stuff. Now you're an adult, you don't do that sort of thing any more.
You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there's no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.
What's exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it. ~ Isaac Asimov, Carl Freedman - Conversations with Isaac Asimov-University Press of Mississippi (2005).pdf,#KEYS
176:... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. ~ Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels, #KEYS
177:science reading list :::
1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie
3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687)
4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632)
5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)
6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.)
7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543)
8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916)
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947)
11. The Double Helix by James D. Watson (1968)
12. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger (1944)
13. The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan (1973)
14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson (1971)
15. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)
18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1985)
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard P Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands (1963)
21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey et al. (1948)
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)
23. Under a Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (1943)
24. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665)
25. Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)
~ Editors of Discovery Magazine, Website,#KEYS
178:I know some individuals who make this their daily practice: starting at the beginning and reading a canto or half a canto every day till they reach the end and then starting at the beginning again, and in that way they have gone through the whole of Savitri many times. When this is done in groups there's really no doubt that by this going through the whole soundbody of the epic from beginning to end aloud, there must be built up a very strong force field of vibrations. It is definitely of benefit to the people who participate in it. But again I would say that the effect or benefit of this sacrifice will be richer to the extent that the reading is done with understanding and above all with soul surrender. It shouldn't become a mere ritual.
Sri Aurobindo's mantric lines, repeated one after the other, will always have their power; but the power will be much greater if the mind can participate, and the will and the heart.
I have also heard of some groups who select one line that seems to have a particular mantric power and then within the group they chant that line many, many times. They concentrate on that one special line, and try to take its vibrations deep into themselves. Again I am sure that this is very beneficial to those who practice it.
In that way the words enter very deeply into the consciousness. There they resonate and do their work, and perhaps not just the surface meaning but the deeper meaning and the deeper vibrations may reveal their full depth to those who undertake this exercise if it is done with self-dedication, with a true aspiration to internalise the heart of the meaning, not just as a mere repetition.
At another end of the spectrum of possible approaches to Savitri, we can say there would be the aesthetic approach, the approach of enjoying it for its poetic beauty. I met a gentleman a couple of months ago, who told me, "We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, but it is so difficult to understand his books. We tried with The Life Divine, we tried with The Synthesis of Yoga but we found them so difficult. ~ collab summer & fall 2011,#KEYS
179:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, - some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, - it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, - if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, - sabdabrahmativartate - beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, - srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
180:An old man of sixty began practising Yoga by reading your books. Eventually he developed signs of insanity. His son describes his condition and asks for advice. I am sending his letter.
As for the letter, I suppose you will have to tell the writer that his father committed a mistake when he took up Yoga without a Guru—for the mental idea about a Guru cannot take the place of the actual living influence. This Yoga especially, as I have written in my books, needs the help of the Guru and cannot be done without it. The condition into which his father got was a breakdown, not a state of siddhi. He passed out of the normal mental consciousness into a contact with some intermediate zone of consciousness (not the spiritual) where one can be subjected to all sorts of voices, suggestions, ideas, so-called aspirations which are not genuine. I have warned against the dangers of this intermediate zone in one of my books. The sadhak can avoid entering into this zone—if he enters, he has to look with indifference on all these things and observe them without lending any credence, by so doing he can safely pass into the true spiritual light. If he takes them all as true or real without discrimination, he is likely to land himself in a great mental confusion and, if there is in addition a lesion or weakness of the brain—the latter is quite possible in one who has been subject to apoplexy—it may have serious consequences and even lead to a disturbance of the reason. If there is ambition, or other motive of the kind mixed up in the spiritual seeking, it may lead to a fall in the Yoga and the growth of an exaggerated egoism or megalomania—of this there are several symptoms in the utterances of his father during the crisis. In fact one cannot or ought not to plunge into the experiences of this sadhana without a fairly long period of preparation and purification (unless one has already a great spiritual strength and elevation). Sri Aurobindo himself does not care to accept many into his path and rejects many more than he accepts. It would be well if he can get his father to pursue the sadhana no farther—for what he is doing is not really Sri Aurobindo's Yoga but something he has constructed in his own mind and once there has been an upset of this kind the wisest course is discontinuance.
21 April 1937
~ Sri Aurobindo, LOHATA, The Guru,#KEYS
181:The general characteristics and attributions of these Grades are indicated by their correspondences on the Tree of Life, as may be studied in detail in the Book 777.
Student. -- His business is to acquire a general intellectual knowledge of all systems of attainment, as declared in the prescribed books. (See curriculum in Appendix I.) {231}
Probationer. -- His principal business is to begin such practices as he my prefer, and to write a careful record of the same for one year.
Neophyte. -- Has to acquire perfect control of the Astral Plane.
Zelator. -- His main work is to achieve complete success in Asana and Pranayama. He also begins to study the formula of the Rosy Cross.
Practicus. -- Is expected to complete his intellectual training, and in particular to study the Qabalah.
Philosophus. -- Is expected to complete his moral training. He is tested in Devotion to the Order.
Dominus Liminis. -- Is expected to show mastery of Pratyahara and Dharana.
Adeptus (without). -- is expected to perform the Great Work and to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
Adeptus (within). -- Is admitted to the practice of the formula of the Rosy Cross on entering the College of the Holy Ghost.
Adeptus (Major). -- Obtains a general mastery of practical Magick, though without comprehension.
Adeptus (Exemptus). -- Completes in perfection all these matters. He then either ("a") becomes a Brother of the Left Hand Path or, ("b") is stripped of all his attainments and of himself as well, even of his Holy Guardian Angel, and becomes a babe of the Abyss, who, having transcended the Reason, does nothing but grow in the womb of its mother. It then finds itself a
Magister Templi. -- (Master of the Temple): whose functions are fully described in Liber 418, as is this whole initiation from Adeptus Exemptus. See also "Aha!". His principal business is to tend his "garden" of disciples, and to obtain a perfect understanding of the Universe. He is a Master of Samadhi. {232}
Magus. -- Attains to wisdom, declares his law (See Liber I, vel Magi) and is a Master of all Magick in its greatest and highest sense.
Ipsissimus. -- Is beyond all this and beyond all comprehension of those of lower degrees. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
182:Countless books on divination, astrology, medicine and other subjects
Describe ways to read signs. They do add to your learning,
But they generate new thoughts and your stable attention breaks up.
Cut down on this kind of knowledge - that's my sincere advice.
You stop arranging your usual living space,
But make everything just right for your retreat.
This makes little sense and just wastes time.
Forget all this - that's my sincere advice.
You make an effort at practice and become a good and knowledgeable person.
You may even master some particular capabilities.
But whatever you attach to will tie you up.
Be unbiased and know how to let things be - that's my sincere advice.
You may think awakened activity means to subdue skeptics
By using sorcery, directing or warding off hail or lightning, for example.
But to burn the minds of others will lead you to lower states.
Keep a low profile - that's my sincere advice.
Maybe you collect a lot of important writings,
Major texts, personal instructions, private notes, whatever.
If you haven't practiced, books won't help you when you die.
Look at the mind - that's my sincere advice.
When you focus on practice, to compare understandings and experience,
Write books or poetry, to compose songs about your experience
Are all expressions of your creativity. But they just give rise to thinking.
Keep yourself free from intellectualization - that's my sincere advice.
In these difficult times you may feel that it is helpful
To be sharp and critical with aggressive people around you.
This approach will just be a source of distress and confusion for you.
Speak calmly - that's my sincere advice.
Intending to be helpful and without personal investment,
You tell your friends what is really wrong with them.
You may have been honest but your words gnaw at their heart.
Speak pleasantly - that's my sincere advice.
You engage in discussions, defending your views and refuting others'
Thinking that you are clarifying the teachings.
But this just gives rise to emotional posturing.
Keep quiet - that's my sincere advice.
You feel that you are being loyal
By being partial to your teacher, lineage or philosophical tradition.
Boosting yourself and putting down others just causes hard feelings.
Have nothing to do with all this - that's my sincere advice.
~ Longchenpa, excerpts from 30 Pieces of Sincere Advice
,#KEYS
183:Who could have thought that this tanned young man with gentle, dreamy eyes, long wavy hair parted in the middle and falling to the neck, clad in a common coarse Ahmedabad dhoti, a close-fitting Indian jacket, and old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, and whose face was slightly marked with smallpox, was no other than Mister Aurobindo Ghose, living treasure of French, Latin and Greek?" Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk," his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea. We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit, which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit, for not only did he learn Sanskrit, but a few years later he discovered the lost meaning of the Veda. ~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure of Consciousness, #KEYS
184:reading :::
50 Spiritual Classics: List of Books Covered:
Muhammad Asad - The Road To Mecca (1954)
St Augustine - Confessions (400)
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
Black Elk Black - Elk Speaks (1932)
Richard Maurice Bucke - Cosmic Consciousness (1901)
Fritjof Capra - The Tao of Physics (1976)
Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan (1972)
GK Chesterton - St Francis of Assisi (1922)
Pema Chodron - The Places That Scare You (2001)
Chuang Tzu - The Book of Chuang Tzu (4th century BCE)
Ram Dass - Be Here Now (1971)
Epictetus - Enchiridion (1st century)
Mohandas Gandhi - An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1927)
Al-Ghazzali - The Alchemy of Happiness (1097)
Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet (1923)
GI Gurdjieff - Meetings With Remarkable Men (1960)
Dag Hammarskjold - Markings (1963)
Abraham Joshua Heschel - The Sabbath (1951)
Hermann Hesse - Siddartha (1922)
Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception (1954)
William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Carl Gustav Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1955)
Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe (1436)
J Krishnamurti - Think On These Things (1964)
CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942)
Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964)
Daniel C Matt - The Essential Kabbalah (1994)
Dan Millman - The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (1989)
W Somerset Maugham - The Razor's Edge (1944)
Thich Nhat Hanh - The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)
Michael Newton - Journey of Souls (1994)
John O'Donohue - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (1998)
Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
James Redfield - The Celestine Prophecy (1994)
Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements (1997)
Helen Schucman & William Thetford - A Course in Miracles (1976)
Idries Shah - The Way of the Sufi (1968)
Starhawk - The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979)
Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1970)
Emanuel Swedenborg - Heaven and Hell (1758)
Teresa of Avila - Interior Castle (1570)
Mother Teresa - A Simple Path (1994)
Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now (1998)
Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (1973)
Neale Donald Walsch - Conversations With God (1998)
Rick Warren - The Purpose-Driven Life (2002)
Simone Weil - Waiting For God (1979)
Ken Wilber - A Theory of Everything (2000)
Paramahansa Yogananda - Autobiography of a Yogi (1974)
Gary Zukav - The Seat of the Soul (1990)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Spirital Classics (2017 Edition),#KEYS
185:How can one awaken his Yoga-shakti?
It depends on this: when one thinks that it is the most important thing in his life. That's all.
Some people sit in meditation, concentrate on the base of the vertebral column and want it very much to awake, but that's not enough. It is when truly it becomes the most important thing in one's life, when all the rest seems to have lost all taste, all interest, all importance, when one feels within that one is born for this, that one is here upon earth for this, and that it is the only thing that truly counts, then that's enough.
One can concentrate on the different centres; but sometimes one concentrates for so long, with so much effort, and has no result. And then one day something shakes you, you feel that you are going to lose your footing, you have to cling on to something; then you cling within yourself to the idea of union with the Divine, the idea of the divine Presence, the idea of the transformation of the consciousness, and you aspire, you want, you try to organise your feelings, movements, impulses around this. And it comes.
Some people have recommended all kinds of methods; probably these were methods which had succeeded in their case; but to tell the truth, one must find one's own method, it is only after having done the thing that one knows how it should be done, not before.
If one knows it beforehand, one makes a mental construction and risks greatly living in his mental construction, which is an illusion; because when the mind builds certain conditions and then they are realised, there are many chances of there being mostly pure mental construction which is not the experience itself but its image. So for all these truly spiritual experiences I think it is wiser to have them before knowing them. If one knows them, one imitates them, one doesn't have them, one imagines oneself having them; whereas if one knows nothing - how things are and how they ought to happen, what should happen and how it will come about - if one knows nothing about all this, then by keeping very still and making a kind of inner sorting out within one's being, one can suddenly have the experience, and then later knows what one has had. It is over, and one knows how it has to be done when one has done it - afterwards. Like that it is sure.
One may obviously make use of his imagination, imagine the Kundalini and try to pull it upwards. But one can also tell himself tales like this. I have had so many instances of people who described their experiences to me exactly as they are described in books, knowing all the words and putting down all the details, and then I asked them just a little question like that, casually: that if they had had the experience they should have known or felt a certain thing, and as this was not in the books, they could not answer.~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 211-212,#KEYS
186:reading :::
50 Psychology Classics: List of Books Covered:
Alfred Adler - Understanding Human Nature (1927)
Gordon Allport - The Nature of Prejudice (1954)
Albert Bandura - Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997)
Gavin Becker - The Gift of Fear (1997)
Eric Berne - Games People Play (1964)
Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type (1980)
Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain (2006)
David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980)
Susan Cain - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (2012)
Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity (1997)
Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006)
Albert Ellis & Robert Harper - (1961) A Guide To Rational Living(1961)
Milton Erickson - My Voice Will Go With You (1982) by Sidney Rosen
Eric Erikson - Young Man Luther (1958)
Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality (1947)
Viktor Frankl - The Will to Meaning (1969)
Anna Freud - The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936)
Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams (1901)
Howard Gardner - Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983)
Daniel Gilbert - Stumbling on Happiness (2006)
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005)
Daniel Goleman - Emotional Intelligence at Work (1998)
John M Gottman - The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work (1999)
Temple Grandin - The Autistic Brain: Helping Different Kinds of Minds Succeed (2013)
Harry Harlow - The Nature of Love (1958)
Thomas A Harris - I'm OK - You're OK (1967)
Eric Hoffer - The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951)
Karen Horney - Our Inner Conflicts (1945)
William James - Principles of Psychology (1890)
Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1953)
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
Alfred Kinsey - Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)
RD Laing - The Divided Self (1959)
Abraham Maslow - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1970)
Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority (1974)
Walter Mischel - The Marshmallow Test (2014)
Leonard Mlodinow - Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (2012)
IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes (1927)
Fritz Perls - Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951)
Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child (1966)
Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002)
VS Ramachandran - Phantoms in the Brain (1998)
Carl Rogers - On Becoming a Person (1961)
Oliver Sacks - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1970)
Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2004)
Martin Seligman - Authentic Happiness (2002)
BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity (1953)
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen - Difficult Conversations (2000)
William Styron - Darkness Visible (1990)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Psychology Classics,#KEYS
187:At it's narrowest (although this is a common and perhaps the official position; need to find ref in What is Enlightenment) "integral", "turquois" (Spiral Dynamics), and "second tier" (ditto) are all synonms, and in turn are equivalent to Wilber IV / AQAL/Wilber V "Post-metaphysical" AQAL. This is the position that "Integral = Ken Wilber". It constitutes a new philosophical school or meme-set, in the tradition of charismatic spiritual teachers of all ages, in which an articulate, brilliant, and popular figure would arise, and gather a following around him- or her-self. After the teacher passes on, their teaching remains through books and organisations dedicated to perpetuating that teaching; although without the brilliant light of the Founder, things generally become pretty stultifying, and there is often little or no original development. Even so, the books themselves continue to inspire, and many people benefit greatly from these tecahings, and can contact the original Light of the founders to be inspired by them on the subtle planes. Some late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century examples of such teachers, known and less well-known, are Blavatsky, Theon, Steiner, Aurobindo, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Alice Bailey, Carl Jung, Ann Ree Colton, and now Ken Wilber. Also, many popular gurus belong in this category. It could plausibly be suggested that the founders of the great world religions started out no different, but their teaching really caught on n a big way.
...
At its broadest then, the Integral Community includes not only Wilber but those he cites as his influences and hold universal and evolutionary views or teachings, as well as those who, while influenced by him also differ somewhat, and even those like Arthur M Young that Wilber has apparently never heard of. Nevertheless, all share a common, evolutionary, "theory of everything" position, and, whilst they may differ on many details and even on many major points, taken together they could be considered a wave front for a new paradigm, a memetic revolution. I use the term Daimon of the Integral Movement to refer to the spiritual being or personality of light that is behind and working through this broader movement.
Now, this doesn't mean that this daimon is necessarily a negative entity. I see a lot of promise, a lot of potential, in the Integral Approach. From what I feel at the moment, the Integral Deva is a force and power of good.
But, as with any new spiritual or evolutionary development, there is duality, in that there are forces that hinder and oppose and distort, as well as forces that help and aid in the evolution and ultimate divinisation of the Earth and the cosmos. Thus even where a guru does give in the dark side (as very often happens with many gurus today) there still remains an element of Mixed Light that remains (one finds this ambiguity with Sai Baba, with Da Free John, and with Rajneesh); and we find this same ambiguity with the Integral Community regarding what seems to me a certain offputting devotional attitude towards Wilber himself. The light will find its way, regardless. However, an Intregral Movement that is caught up in worship of and obedience to an authority figure, will not be able to achieve what a movement unfettered by such shackles could. ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, Wilber, Integral,#KEYS
188:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,#KEYS
189:64 Arts
1. Geet vidya: art of singing.
2. Vadya vidya: art of playing on musical instruments.
3. Nritya vidya: art of dancing.
4. Natya vidya: art of theatricals.
5. Alekhya vidya: art of painting.
6. Viseshakacchedya vidya: art of painting the face and body with color
7. Tandulakusumabalivikara: art of preparing offerings from rice and flowers.
8. Pushpastarana: art of making a covering of flowers for a bed.
9. Dasanavasanangaraga: art of applying preparations for cleansing the teeth, cloths and painting the body.
10. Manibhumikakarma: art of making the groundwork of jewels.
11. Aayyaracana: art of covering the bed.
12. Udakavadya: art of playing on music in water.
13. Udakaghata: art of splashing with water.
14. Citrayoga: art of practically applying an admixture of colors.
15. Malyagrathanavikalpa: art of designing a preparation of wreaths.
16. Sekharapidayojana: art of practically setting the coronet on the head.
17. Nepathyayoga: art of practically dressing in the tiring room.
18. Karnapatrabhanga: art of decorating the tragus of the ear.
19. Sugandhayukti: art of practical application of aromatics.
20. Bhushanayojana: art of applying or setting ornaments.
21. Aindrajala: art of juggling.
22. Kaucumara: a kind of art.
23. Hastalaghava: art of sleight of hand.
24. Citrasakapupabhakshyavikarakriya: art of preparing varieties of delicious food.
25. Panakarasaragasavayojana: art of practically preparing palatable drinks and tinging draughts with red color.
26. Sucivayakarma: art of needleworks and weaving.
27. Sutrakrida: art of playing with thread.
28. Vinadamurakavadya: art of playing on lute and small drum.
29. Prahelika: art of making and solving riddles.
30. Durvacakayoga: art of practicing language difficult to be answered by others.
31. Pustakavacana: art of reciting books.
32. Natikakhyayikadarsana: art of enacting short plays and anecdotes.
33. Kavyasamasyapurana: art of solving enigmatic verses.
34. Pattikavetrabanavikalpa: art of designing preparation of shield, cane and arrows.
35. Tarkukarma: art of spinning by spindle.
36. Takshana: art of carpentry.
37. Vastuvidya: art of engineering.
38. Raupyaratnapariksha: art of testing silver and jewels.
39. Dhatuvada: art of metallurgy.
40. Maniraga jnana: art of tinging jewels.
41. Akara jnana: art of mineralogy.
42. Vrikshayurvedayoga: art of practicing medicine or medical treatment, by herbs.
43. Meshakukkutalavakayuddhavidhi: art of knowing the mode of fighting of lambs, cocks and birds.
44. Sukasarikapralapana: art of maintaining or knowing conversation between male and female cockatoos.
45. Utsadana: art of healing or cleaning a person with perfumes.
46. Kesamarjanakausala: art of combing hair.
47. Aksharamushtikakathana: art of talking with fingers.
48. Dharanamatrika: art of the use of amulets.
49. Desabhashajnana: art of knowing provincial dialects.
50. Nirmitijnana: art of knowing prediction by heavenly voice.
51. Yantramatrika: art of mechanics.
52. Mlecchitakutarkavikalpa: art of fabricating barbarous or foreign sophistry.
53. Samvacya: art of conversation.
54. Manasi kavyakriya: art of composing verse
55. Kriyavikalpa: art of designing a literary work or a medical remedy.
56. Chalitakayoga: art of practicing as a builder of shrines called after him.
57. Abhidhanakoshacchandojnana: art of the use of lexicography and meters.
58. Vastragopana: art of concealment of cloths.
59. Dyutavisesha: art of knowing specific gambling.
60. Akarshakrida: art of playing with dice or magnet.
61. Balakakridanaka: art of using children's toys.
62. Vainayiki vidya: art of enforcing discipline.
63. Vaijayiki vidya: art of gaining victory.
64. Vaitaliki vidya: art of awakening master with music at dawn.
~ Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, Sexual Secrets,#KEYS
190:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
191:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#KEYS
192:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
193:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
194:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
195:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Books are a narcotic. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 2:Books have their destinies. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 3:Books are packaged dreams. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 4:Books and marriage go ill together. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 5:I am a product [... of] endless books. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 6:Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 7:Books are the mirrors of the soul. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 8:great books are the ones we need ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 9:We cannot learn men from books. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 10:I guess there are never enough books. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 11:Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 12:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 13:We read books to find out who we are. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 14:My books are friends that never fail me. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 15:Books are the curse of the human race. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 16:Books succeed; and lives fail. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 17:Good books are for consideration after, too. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 18:The books are balanced in heaven, not here. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 19:Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 20:Pouring out liquor is like burning books. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 21:Books are a triviality. Life alone is great. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 22:Books are men of higher stature. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 23:Books are sepulchres of thought. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 24:No trilogy should have more than four books. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 25:He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 26:I don't like to read books. They muss up my mind. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 27:We need the books that affect us like a disaster ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 28:Books are not men and yet they stay alive. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 29:In books lies the soul fo the whole past time. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 30:My chest of books divide amongst my friends& 31:Visit many good books, but live in the Bible. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 32:Books without the knowledge of life are useless. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 33:Only in books do we learn what’s really going on. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 34:Good books don't give up all their secrets at once. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 35:I like to read books. I like to listen to music. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 36:In those days, there was no money to buy books. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 37:I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 38:Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 39:Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 40:By and large books are mankind's best invention. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 41:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 42:Of writing many books there is no end. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 43:Nights without work I spend with whisky and books. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 44:I have always come to life after coming to books. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 45:People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 46:We read many books, because we cannot know enough people. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 47:He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 48:We never tire of the friendships we form with books. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 49:A collection of books is the best of all universities. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 50:I don't have change I'd have to give you nine more books ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 51:I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 52:Books showed me that there were other ways to live a life. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 53:The world is not in your books and maps, it's out there. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 54:Having books published is very destructive to writing. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 55:It's not an accident that successful people read more books. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 56:Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 57:One Book is enough, but a thousand books is not too many! ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 58:Rest, nature, books, music... such is my idea of happiness. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 59:Soon, books will read you while you are reading them. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 60:Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books! ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 61:I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 62:What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 63:Books have always a secret influence on the understanding. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 64:Existence has overpowered Books. Today I slew a Mushroom. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 65:Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 66:The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 67:Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 68:The true university of these days is a collection of books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 69:An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 70:Books became my world because the world I was in was very hard. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 71:Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 72:It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 73:It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 74:Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 75:If you're smarter than me, you shouldn't be reading my books. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 76:Be careful about reading health books for you may die of a misprint. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 77:Had Twitter been invented earlier, my books would have been shorter. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 78:Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one's own castle. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 79:The best books... are those that tell you what you know already. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 80:There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 81:The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 82:There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 83:All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 84:He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 85:That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 86:Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 87:Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 88:I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 89:With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 90:Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 91:I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 92:Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 93:I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 94:Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 95:Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 96:I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 97:It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 98:The best leaders are the most dedicated learners. Read great books daily. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 99:We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 100:Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 101:I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 102:The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul& 103:There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 104:Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 105:What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 106:I do not call it religion so long as it is confined to books and dogmas. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 107:I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 108:The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 109:A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 110:I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can't lift it. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 111:I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 112:My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 113:The bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 114:This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 115:Why do you want to read others' books when there is the book of yourself? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 116:In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 117:My life has been greatly influenced by many books which I have never read. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 118:Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 119:I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 120:For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 121:I go on many thrilling adventures and wondrous, profound escapades through books. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 122:Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 123:No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 124:The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 125:How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings! ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 126:There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island... ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 127:The information I most want is in books not yet written by people not yet born. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 128:The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 129:Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 130:If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 131:I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 132:Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 133:You have read thousands of books of knowledge, have you ever tried to read your ownself. ~ bulleh-shah, @wisdomtrove 134:I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 135:If they won't write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 136:When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 137:Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 138:I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 139:I really got into Osho's books. I have always loved his books. They were top notch. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 140:There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 141:Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 142:Books are like brothers. I am an only child. Gatsby [is] my imaginary eldest brother. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 143:Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 144:It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 145:Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading& 146:When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 147:Books and movies inspire me, but I do my best to keep my stories as original as possible. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 148:I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 149:Anthologists are lazy fellows who like to spend a quiet evening at home raiding good books. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 150:I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 151:Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 152:Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 153:All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 154:I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 155:I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 156:It was not very wonderful that Catherine . . . should prefer cricket, base ball . . . to books. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 157:More books have resulted from somebody's need to write than from anybody's need to read. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 158:No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 159:Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 160:Reading books everyone died, none became any wise. One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise. ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 161:Whatever we put out, it's coming back to us. The universe keeps a perfect set of books. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 162:He who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass that is loaded with books. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 163:I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 164:The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 165:The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 166:Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 167:At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 168:At the same time, I went through college, received a Ph.D. and started to teach. I wrote books. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 169:Collections of books and other documents, either printed or electronic, are a form of congregation. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 170:I know not how it is, but during a voyage I collect books as a ship does barnacles. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 171:Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 172:Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?" ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 173:My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 174:Some books makes me want to go adventuring, others feel that they have saved me the trouble. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 175:Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 176:Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 177:... I will not allow books to prove any thing." "But how shall we prove any thing?" "We never shall. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 178:May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 179:Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 180:Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 181:The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 182:Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 183:To get to where you want to be in the next 5 years, you are either reading the right books or you're not ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 184:Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 185:Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 186:England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 187:Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 188:Books simply help you to see what is already within your self. That's what enlightenment is all about. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 189:Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 190:I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 191:In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 192:One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 193:Perhaps they were right in putting love into books, . . . Perhaps it could not live anywhere else. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 194:His books are exciting and powerful and ‚Äî if I may filch the word from the booksy ones ‚Äî pulsing. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 195:Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 196:Read the Bible and inspirational books for a purpose. Ask for divine guidance. Search for the light. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 197:Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 198:Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 199:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 200:This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 201:All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 202:It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 203:This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 204:Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 205:Have books happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 206:My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 207:Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 208:Rough board shelves hold a number of books, without which some of the evenings would be long indeed. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 209:Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 210:I like that you can open up any one of my books anywhere and immediately be lost. I just love them so much. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 211:After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 212:I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 213:Setting is a major aspect in writing all of my books, both in terms of natural and cultural environments. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 214:There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 215:I'm not being disrespectful of the medium; it's just not as important as the work that I actually do [books]. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 216:The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 217:With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks, you've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 218:It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 219:Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 220:If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 221:So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 222:I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 223:JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will live forever ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 224:Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside". ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 225:I always thought happiness was a choice and I always chose things that made me happy, and books were one of those. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 226:My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 227:My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 228:A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 229:If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 230:The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 231:To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 232:Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 233:I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 234:Our minds are shaped by the books we read. Our characters, by the people we meet. Our spirits by the love we give. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 235:Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 236:If AIG had tried to unwind their derivatives books. I don't know. It would have hit every institution in the world. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 237:Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 238:You really ought to read more books - you know, those things that look like blocks but come apart on one side. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 239:Books ought to have good endings.How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after? ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 240:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.”11 likesLike ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 241:There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 242:A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 243:Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 244:You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 245:The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 246:There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 247:Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 248:What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 249:I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 250:Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 251:There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 252:True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 253:Education is the beginning of transformation. Dedicate yourself to daily learning via books/audios/seminars and coaching. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 254:In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 255:I still read quite a few printed books, but if something is available in digital format I do not print it before I read it. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 256:I think that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 257:The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 258:The time comes in life when we have read enough. It's time to stop reading. It's time to lay down the books and write. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 259:Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 260:Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 261:Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 262:Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 263:One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 264:If you want to live a top shelf life then you need to stand on the books you have read. Never stop learning, never stop growing. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 265:If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 266:I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else’s. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 267:we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 268:The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 269:I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 270:Prayer is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. How to get things from God occupies most [books]. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 271:The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 272:Books are easy to find and easy to buy. A paperback these days only costs six or seven dollars. You can borrow that from your kids! ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 273:I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now& 274:I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 275:What shall we do with... the Jews?... I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings... are to be taken from them. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 276:As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove 277:I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 278:The difference between where you are today and where you'll be five years from now will be found in the quality of books you've read. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 279:Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 280:Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 281:Shakespeare was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of the books to read nature; he looked inward, and found her there. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 282:Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is enough happiness in life without having to go to books for it. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 283:In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 284:You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 285:When I was crossing into Gaza, I was asked at the checkpost whether I was carrying any weapons. I replied: Oh yes, my prayer books. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 286:All the creativity books in the world aren't going to help you if you're unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 287:Get away from all books and forms and let your soul see its Self. "We are deluded and maddened by books", Shri Krishna declares. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 288:I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 289:If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum. Arthur S. Eddington ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 290:It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 291:. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . . ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 292:I enjoy going back and forth between plays and novels. It`s like having a wife and a mistress. Books are the wife; plays, the mistress. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 293:I read over a hundred books a year and have done so since I was fifteen years old, and every book I've read has taught me something. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 294:Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 295:Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 296:The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 297:I think economics, content, and the ability to interact with content in new and different ways are what will drive the adoption of e-books. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 298:I've never watched any of the adaptations of my books. I've never wanted to, and there's absolutely no chance of me doing so in the future. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 299:Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 300:A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 301:Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 302:A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 303:Jerry: “You’re on a desert island, you can bring five books. Which five do you take?” George: “I gotta read five books?” Seinfeld TV show ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 304:The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 305:You can predict a person?s future and divine his bank balance if you know two things: the books he reads, the people he associates with. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 306:Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, fifty books per year, and will guarantee your success. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 307:Scriptures: The sacred books of our holy religion as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 308:There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 309:Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 310:He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 311:I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 312:And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 313:Books are only made so that they may point the way to a higher life; but no good results unless the path is trodden with unflinching steps! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 314:I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 315:I read books and talked to people. I mean that's kind of how one learns anything. There's lots of great books out there & lots of smart people. ~ elon-musk, @wisdomtrove 316:It matters not the subject taught, nor all the books on all the shelves, What matters most, yes most of all, is what the teachers are themselves. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 317:Those who are socially inclined will find a new power to help humanity through the lessons of books written by noble and gifted people. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 318:We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 319:What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses like they're trophies. What do you need it for after you read it? ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 320:What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses—like they’re trophies. What do you need it for after you read it? ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 321:Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 322:Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 323:I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 324:The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 325:What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects& 326:Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 327:And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 328:For myself, well, Alan Watts once asked me what spiritual practice I followed. I told him, ‘I underline books.’ It’s all in how you approach it. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 329:I don't mind saying, you know, that I don't take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 330:What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 331:If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 332:When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 333:Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 334:Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 335:Chico: "Here's the book, it's a dollar" Groucho: "Here's a ten, and shoot the change." Chico: "I don't have change I'd have to give you nine more books. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 336:How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an inch in diameter contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1,000 books of 600 pages each? ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 337:I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 338:It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 339:That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 340:The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 341:And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 342:I'm sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 343:Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples, or churches or books, are only the supports, the help of his spiritual childhood. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 344:The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building power. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 345:The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 346:I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it? ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 347:The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 348:When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 349:Books, Manuals, Directives, Regulations. The geometries that circumscribe your working life draw norrower and norrower until nothing fits inside them anymore. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 350:I am never indifferent, and never pretend to be, to what people say or think of my books. They are my children, and I like to have them liked. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 351:I want the public as well as libraries and schools to enjoy unlimited access to public-domain books. This means no charges for these kind of texts themselves. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 352:There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 353:We never had books in the house. Not any book in our house. Not a Bible, not anything. So, I would go the library from a very young age and get the books out. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 354:Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 355:Books tap the wisdom of our species - the greatest minds, the best teachers - from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 356:A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books - Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 357:If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 358:She liked to sit on the front porch in the afternoons and read books she'd checked out from the library. Aside from coffee, reading was her only indulgence. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 359:The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 360:Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 361:If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 362:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 363:It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 364:We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 365:Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly should still be new. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 366:I don't really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I've read them, so most of the books I've read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 367:I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 368:Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 369:All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 370:No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 371:Try to read books about meditation, but not so many different viewpoints that they get confusing. There is no best way. It's just what works for you at the time. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 372:I was drawn to be very solitary as a scholar. I lived a very quiet life, aloof, with my books, with my walks in nature, meditating, and of course with my teacher. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 373:True religion comes not front the teaching of men or the reading of books; it is the awakening of the spirit within us, consequent upon pure and heroic action. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 374:For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 375:I don't want people to think that they can attain realization simply by listening to others or by reading books. They must practice what they read and hear. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 376:I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 377:I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 378:Some people, of course, say they're practicing tantra. There are a lot of books on tantric sexual practice in local bookstores. These are usually pretty silly books. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 379:One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove 380:. . . provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 381:There are three types of men in the world. One type learns from books. One type learns from observations. And one type just has to urinate on the electric fence himself. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 382:When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 383:Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 384:Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi. ~ oprah-winfrey, @wisdomtrove 385:I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 386:It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 387:I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brain... & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 388:How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 389:In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 390:The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 391:Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 392:I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 393:By making the place and the people and the feelings real, by the time someone closes the cover of one of my books, they have, hopefully, felt all of the emotions of life. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 394:Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate; they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 395:I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 396:We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 397:When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 398:Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 399:In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 400:The Bible is actually a library of books-some long, some short- written over hundreds of years by many authors. Behind each one, however, was [the] Author: the Spirit of God. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 401:The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, and so are you. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 402:There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 403:Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 404:This would be... a book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 405:The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 406:I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 407:It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo & 408:There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see I think that is enough to say about them. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 409:There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 410:A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 411:Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 412:If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 413:I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge which comes to others through their eyes and their ears. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 414:We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 415:Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 416:I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 417:If you take all the marketing books in the world and distill them, the key to marketing is hope. People buy hope, the hope that you will help them solve a problem or achieve a goal. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 418:Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 419:We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 420:I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do ‚Äî so much have I enjoyed it. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 421:I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations . ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 422:Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 423:Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 424:The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces! ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 425:Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 426:You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don‚Äôt open them. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 427:Books are the true metempsychosis,& 428:We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 429:it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 430:Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 431:What you do off the job plays a major role in how far you go on the job. How many good books, do you read each year? How often do you attend workshops? Who do you spend must of your time with? ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 432:If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for 10 years, "without hard labour," and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful! ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 433:You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 434:Thus Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Joyce partly spoil their books for women readers by their display of self-conscious virility; and Mr. Hemingway, but much less violently, follows suit. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 435:Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation! ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 436:You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 437:All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 438:For the purpose of my life, I don't ask the question. First of all, I believe. I think the Five Books of Moses are inspired. Call it divine. I don't know. But I would certainly call it inspired. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 439:What I'm saying in my books boils down to this: Mine religion for what is good and avoid what is deleterious. Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 440:All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 441:The death of the music business was insane, but audio recordings have been around now for maybe 120 years. Books have been around for, what, nine centuries? So they're more entrenched than music. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 442:I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 443:Individuals somehow are led to find my books at times that are important to them. The mail that I get very, very often will say, "I was at a difficult time in my life, and someone gave me a copy." ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 444:Q: What is the value of spiritual books? M: They help in dispelling ignorance. They are useful in the beginning, but become a hindrance in the end. One must know when to discard them. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 445:Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned& 446:I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 447:I think my weakness as a writer is a limited imagination, and I think my strength is a talent for reflecting the world, or sort of curating things out of the world and putting them into books. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 448:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 449:Let's face it.., our current [immigration control] system is like a busy intersection without a traffic cop: sure there are laws on the books, but absent enforcement, there are too many accidents. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 450:Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 451:In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 452:Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 453:Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 454:In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 455:It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 456:The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 457:Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 458:If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it can know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 459:I would like [the working man] to give me back books and newspapers and theories. And I would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and rich, original spontaneity and fullness of life. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 460:Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 461:If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 462:A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 463:Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn't return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 464:I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 465:What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 466:Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies - what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news? ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 467:A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 468:Make use of all free time at the office and elsewhere for chanting your mantra or reading spiritual books. Avoid indulging in unnecessary gossip and try to talk about spiritual subjects with others. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 469:The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 470:Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do‚ not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 471:Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 472:Ninety percent of the childre’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 473:Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 474:MP3 players and flash memory devices are good for data storage and playback of music and digital talking books, but they offer little or nothing in the way of visual presentation of information and communication. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 475:The books people are writing today, they're too long. You get a little bit of plot, and then pages and pages of Creative Writing. They teach classes in how to do this. They should teach classes in how to stop! ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 476:The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 477:Stretching [and] yoga [are] very helpful. All of these things - they really do help. Good food and a lot of sleep. And reading - reading good books. Sometimes movies - although a lot of the movies are difficult. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 478:I believe that the devil has destroyed many good books of the church, as, aforetime, he killed and crushed many holy persons, the memory of whom has now passed away; but the Bible he was fain to leave subsisting. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 479:I read a fair amount [of science fiction], and you know it was certainly inspirational. I have to pinch myself to think that we might be able to make some of [what I've read in science fiction books] come true. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 480:We cannot give our children what we don't have. Where we are on our journey of living and loving with our whole hearts is a much stronger indicator of parenting success than anything we can learn from how-to books. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 481:Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 482:Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 483:It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 484:I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 485:I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls ... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 486:Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 487:I have read in books that we are called & 488:Success is deeply rooted in time and place. You may have the drive to read tons of books on biology. But if there are no books on biology in your library, and the library is never open, your drive is meaningless. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 489:If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 490:Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 491:I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 492:Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject ... they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 493:We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 494:Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‚Äòpatches of Godlight‚Äô in the woods of our experience. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 495:Mark Zuckerberg will be a hero to many young entrepreneurs 20 years from now. Bill Gates will be a hero to others, and they will look to those [people] like I read books when I was in my teens about Rockefeller or Carnegie. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 496: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 497:The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 498:If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 499:I have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics. . . . Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 500:One of the underlying things I like to do in books, is just say, stop and look at this for a moment. Not that you've got to believe that Jesus was real, or not to believe in God, but the belief that it isn't just happenstance. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I believe in books. ~ Carole Maso, #NFDB
2:I like Books... ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
3:i love erotic books. ~ Marilyn Lee, #NFDB
4:Worthy books ~ Philip James Bailey, #NFDB
5:Books are a narcotic. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
6:Books are my weakness. ~ Dan Stevens, #NFDB
7:BOOKS CHANGE LIVES. ~ Grace Burrowes, #NFDB
8:books=comfort ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan, #NFDB
9:Books have their destinies. ~ Horace, #NFDB
10:Good authour Good books ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
11:My books are so tame! ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
12:Books can be misleading ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
13:I am not a fan of books. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
14:She’s read many books. ~ Kate Elliott, #NFDB
15:Books, Cats, Life is Good. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
16:Books. Cats. Life is good. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
17:how can you read books? ~ M lanie Watt, #NFDB
18:Study nature not books ~ Louis Agassiz, #NFDB
19:I am no fan of books. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
20:I don't read books much. ~ LeBron James, #NFDB
21:I don't reread my books. ~ Graham Swift, #NFDB
22:My books were my friends. ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB
23:Books are packaged dreams. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
24:Books can be misleading... ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
25:BOOKS… "The Loom of Language ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
26:Books which are no books. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
27:Download A Sample of Books ~ Marie Force, #NFDB
28:I'm obsessed with books. ~ David Sylvian, #NFDB
29:Books are truer than movies. ~ Adam Levin, #NFDB
30:Books, Cats, Life is Good. ~ Edward Gorey, #NFDB
31:Books. Cats. Life is Good. ~ Edward Gorey, #NFDB
32:Books do furnish a room. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
33:Books make the soul float. ~ Alan Bradley, #NFDB
34:Often books speak of books. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
35:share books and other digital ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
36:used to write her books. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
37:Books belong to their readers ~ John Green, #NFDB
38:Books keep stupidity at bay. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
39:Home is where your books are. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
40:I am a beau only in my books. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
41:I love comic books. I just do. ~ Megan Fox, #NFDB
42:I read three books a week. ~ Emma Donoghue, #NFDB
43:You can go anywhere in books ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
44:A life without books is unlivable ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
45:Books are absent teachers. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
46:Books belong to their readers. ~ John Green, #NFDB
47:Books dont need batteries ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
48:Books equaled permanence ~ Emily Wing Smith, #NFDB
49:Books exceed authors' lifespan. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
50:Drink deeply from good books. ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
51:Few books today are forgivable. ~ R D Laing, #NFDB
52:i really like reading books ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
53:Love is only found in books ~ Ellen Hopkins, #NFDB
54:My books are my confessions. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
55:tastes in books, movies, ~ Jessica Gadziala, #NFDB
56:books make sense of life. ~ Ravi Subramanian, #NFDB
57:Books wind into the heart. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
58:Home is where your books are. ~ Kerstin Gier, #NFDB
59:I buy way too many books. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
60:I read books, not minds, Guido. ~ Donna Leon, #NFDB
61:I read books to read myself. ~ Sven Birkerts, #NFDB
62:Love's bigger than rule books. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
63:NEVER USE HIGHLITER IN MY BOOKS ~ John Green, #NFDB
64:So many books, so little time. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
65:we became the books we read. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
66:We become the books we read. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
67:Why do you love books so much? ~ Robin Sloan, #NFDB
68:You can't ever have my books. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
69:Books and marriage go ill together. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
70:Books are absent teachers. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #NFDB
71:Books are cold but safe friends ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
72:Books don't need batteries. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
73:Great books conserve time. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
74:I can't live without books ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
75:I collect books, a lot of books. ~ Kate Spade, #NFDB
76:I found my voice in books. ~ James Earl Jones, #NFDB
77:Laws die. Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
78:Sad stories make good books ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
79:All books are investments (p.134) ~ Monica Ali, #NFDB
80:Books are cold but safe friends. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
81:Books are cold but sure friends. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
82:Books are the best messages and gifts. ~ Disha, #NFDB
83:Books can be a love-struck wonder! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
84:Books make you feel things hard. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
85:e-books "smell like burned fuel ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
86:I cannot live without books ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
87:I like big books and I cannot lie. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
88:I read books. I know who I am. ~ Daniel Orozco, #NFDB
89:May we always find truth in books, ~ Ilie Ruby, #NFDB
90:Only the nonreader fears books. ~ Richard Peck, #NFDB
91:Only your friends steal your books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
92:OUR BOOKS ARE FRIENDS FOR LIFE ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
93:reading of many books is distraction. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
94:Sad stories make good books, ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
95:Sad stories make good books. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
96:Very little happens in my books. ~ Peter Mayle, #NFDB
97:All good books are honest books. ~ Ronald Malfi, #NFDB
98:Books are dead men talking. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
99:Books don't harm kids; they arm them. ~ Mem Fox, #NFDB
100:Books + friendship = book club ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
101:Books taught me how to think. ~ Candace Fleming, #NFDB
102:good books doing good thingsTM ~ Sulari Gentill, #NFDB
103:Great Books of the Western World. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
104:I can not live without books ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
105:I cannot live without books. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
106:I feel I've got 10 books in me. ~ Robert Hunter, #NFDB
107:I love to listen to books on tape. ~ Angel Haze, #NFDB
108:I wanted to live among books. ~ Alberto Manguel, #NFDB
109:So many books, so little time.
~ Frank Zappa,#NFDB
110:Some people read books for fun. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
111:This. That. Those. All the books. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
112:To read too many books is harmful. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
113:You can't eat books, sweetheart. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
114:a nerd is known by the books he read ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
115:Banned books always smell suspicious ~ Juan Mars, #NFDB
116:Books always speak of other books. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
117:Books are humanity in print. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
118:Books are like my one and only joy. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
119:Books were his Achilles heel. She ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
120:Forget movies - I'd rather choose books! ~ Disha, #NFDB
121:I can not live without books. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
122:I discovered books and read forever ~ John Adams, #NFDB
123:I don't even hate books anymore. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
124:It is uphill work writing books ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
125:I would always want printed books. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
126:Most books are bought by women. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
127:multitude of books is a great evil ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
128:My books are about killing God. ~ Philip Pullman, #NFDB
129:Of all things I liked books best. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
130:spell books and broomsticks? Might ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
131:A fellow can’t live on books, ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
132:Authors do not own books, readers do ~ John Green, #NFDB
133:Books are a habit-forming drug. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
134:Books were a dependable pleasure. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
135:Do I read her books? Of course. ~ Debbie Reynolds, #NFDB
136:I am a beau in nothing but my books. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
137:I am a product [...of] endless books. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
138:I am the worst judge of my books. ~ John Banville, #NFDB
139:I cannot live without books... ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
140:I love the books by Brenda Minton ~ Brenda Minton, #NFDB
141:I've read all the books but one ~ Kathleen Raine, #NFDB
142:Laws die, but Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
143:My love of books was all that saved me. ~ Robin S, #NFDB
144:Nothin’s real scary except in books. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
145:Of all things, I liked books best. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
146:Time is a river, and books are boats. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
147:Tony Abbott's books are so amazing! ~ Tony Abbott, #NFDB
148:Too many books. Too few centuries. ~ Jay Kristoff, #NFDB
149:Vanishing into books, I felt held. ~ Akhil Sharma, #NFDB
150:Who would chew up a bunch of books? ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
151:A man will be known by his books. ~ William Martin, #NFDB
152:A mind possessed by unmade books. ~ Michael Faudet, #NFDB
153:Books are a uniquely portable magic ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
154:Books are like tweets, except longer. ~ John Green, #NFDB
155:books=comfort To me anyway. ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan, #NFDB
156:Books should never be disrespected. ~ Anyta Sunday, #NFDB
157:Books, the children of the brain. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
158:Facebook page likes don't read books. ~ N M Silber, #NFDB
159:I'd like to sell a lot of books. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
160:I even love the smell of books. ~ Adriana Trigiani, #NFDB
161:I sometimes read books on my iPad. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
162:I will say I am the sum of my books. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
163:Life is too short to read bad books. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
164:Love of books is the best of all. ~ Jackie Kennedy, #NFDB
165:nothing furnishes a room like books ~ Terry Fallis, #NFDB
166:Of all things, I liked books best. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
167:Open books, not legs. Blow minds, not guys ~ Drake, #NFDB
168:People perish. Books are immortal. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
169:Read much, but not many books! ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
170:Read much, but not many books. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
171:Read two old books for every new one. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
172:Sigh. Books. I missed them ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
173:All books are either dreams or swords. ~ Amy Lowell, #NFDB
174:All of my books come from pain. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
175:A multitude of books distracts the mind. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
176:A true lover of books knows no time. ~ Rosie Alison, #NFDB
177:Books are a languid pleasure. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
178:Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
179:Books are for ugly people. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson, #NFDB
180:Books are the mirrors of the soul. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
181:Books have a world all their own ~ Madeline Hunter, #NFDB
182:Good books are the warehouses of ideas. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
183:great books are the ones we need ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
184:If you love your girl? Buy her books. ~ Kylie Scott, #NFDB
185:I grew up kissing books and bread, ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
186:I grew up kissing books and bread. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
187:I mainly buy books in my free time. ~ Wesley Snipes, #NFDB
188:long gaps between sequels to books. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
189:Some books are lies frae end to end. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
190:We cannot learn men from books. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
191:Years teach us more than books. ~ Berthold Auerbach, #NFDB
192:You can never have enough books, ~ Christina Farley, #NFDB
193:Always wanted to be with his books. ~ Brandy Colbert, #NFDB
194:Books are immortal sons defying their sires. ~ Plato, #NFDB
195:Books are keys that open many doors. ~ James Rollins, #NFDB
196:Books are the liberated spirits of men. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
197:Books were a closed book to Moist. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
198:Get stewed:Books are a load of crap. ~ Philip Larkin, #NFDB
199:Happily ever after, like in the books, ~ Cathy Glass, #NFDB
200:Home is where the books are ~ Richard Francis Burton, #NFDB
201:I cannot live without books . . . ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
202:I cannot live without my books" - ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
203:I like BIG BOOKS
and I cannot lie! ~ Jos N Harris,#NFDB
204:My alma mater was books, a good library. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
205:...nothin’s real scary except in books. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
206:Of all things I liked books the best. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
207:Read books. They are good for us. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
208:So far it's 43 books in 25 years. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
209:Songs are more powerful than books. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
210:The peace of great books be for you, ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
211:always busy because of interesting books ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
212:Books about suicide make lousy gifts. ~ Wilfrid Sheed, #NFDB
213:Books are immortal sons deifying their sires. ~ Plato, #NFDB
214:Books were escape. Books were freedom. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
215:Books will always be there for you. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
216:Boredom is why God invented books. ~ Julie Schumacher, #NFDB
217:Comic books are a big passion of mine. ~ Taran Killam, #NFDB
218:Dreams, books, are each a world. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
219:God makes trees, he doesn't write books. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
220:I am a machine condemned to devour books. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
221:I cry in movies a lot, and over books. ~ Hayley Mills, #NFDB
222:I don't read books, I write them. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
223:I don't take drugs, I take books. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann, #NFDB
224:I get a warm feeling among my books. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
225:I have my books and poetry to protect me ~ Paul Simon, #NFDB
226:I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. ~ S E Hinton, #NFDB
227:I often reread books I have written ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
228:I tried to make sense of the Four Books, ~ Yunus Emre, #NFDB
229:Man's books are but man's alphabet, ~ Joaquin Miller, #NFDB
230:my hunger for books was constant. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
231:Nobody steals books but your friends. ~ Roger Zelazny, #NFDB
232:Stupid people should never read books. ~ Andrew Smith, #NFDB
233:The proper study of mankind is books. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
234:There are too many books in the world. ~ Ian McDonald, #NFDB
235:there will be books written about Harry ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
236:The soul that feeds on books alone - ~ Joaquin Miller, #NFDB
237:Through books she could see the world. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
238:A man's books are very much himself. ~ Ford Madox Ford, #NFDB
239:AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD ~ John Elder Robison, #NFDB
240:Being poor is only romantic in books. ~ Sidney Sheldon, #NFDB
241:books always trumped everything else. ~ Mariah Stewart, #NFDB
242:Books are a staircase to unknown worlds. ~ Jason Ellis, #NFDB
243:Books are a uniquely portable magic.
~ Stephen King,#NFDB
244:Books are cold, but sure friends indeed. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
245:Books are like eggs -- best when fresh. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
246:Books are often far more than just books. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
247:Books are solitudes in which we meet. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
248:Books are the ammunition of life. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
249:Books can be nicer than life sometimes. ~ Vera Brosgol, #NFDB
250:Books cannot be killed by fire. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
251:Books may well be the only true magic. ~ Alice Hoffman, #NFDB
252:Books?" Ridley looked disgusted. "Carry? ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
253:...books were better than travel. ~ Pseudonymous Bosch, #NFDB
254:But books don't happen by accident. ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
255:Films are for Fridays, books are forever. ~ Piyush Jha, #NFDB
256:I guess there are never enough books. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
257:My books are just pure escapism for kids. ~ Dav Pilkey, #NFDB
258:One must always be careful of books. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
259:Read much, but not too many books. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
260:What can books of men that wive ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
261:Why do all your friends talk like books? ~ Pamela Dean, #NFDB
262:Why sleep when there are books to read. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
263:A. Lamott, Bird by Bird (Anchor Books, 1994 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
264:And millions of books,” said Annie. ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
265:Are you the man who reads phone books? ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
266:A wall of books is a wall of windows. ~ Leon Wieseltier, #NFDB
267:Books are the mile markers of my life. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
268:Books are the training weights of the mind. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
269:Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
270:Books: our unfailing companions ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
271:Books were my pass to personal freedom. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
272:Children's books are by nature partisan. ~ Eric Walters, #NFDB
273:I am self-educated from genre books. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
274:I don’t pick the books. I pick the wine. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
275:I have always found peace among books. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
276:I love books, they're in my blood. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
277:I love comic books and I love anime. ~ Samuel L Jackson, #NFDB
278:I'm a dyslexic person, so I avoid books. ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB
279:I'm not a character in any of my books. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
280:I will not allow books to prove anything. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
281:Life is too short to be reading shitty books. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
282:Man's books are but a climbing stair, ~ Joaquin Miller, #NFDB
283:My mistake was in ever opening the books. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
284:One life just not enough to read the books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
285:People die, but books never die. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
286:You can learn investing by reading books. ~ Bill Ackman, #NFDB
287:You can’t ever have my books,” she said. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
288:You should always make time for books ~ Phaedra Patrick, #NFDB
289:Americans like fat books and thin women. ~ Russell Baker, #NFDB
290:As long as we have books, we are not alone. ~ Laura Bush, #NFDB
291:Books are the training weights of the mind. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
292:Books were safer than other people anyway. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
293:Films are always different from books. ~ William Kircher, #NFDB
294:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
295:I have my books and my poetry to protect me ~ Paul Simon, #NFDB
296:I like trees, they will someday be books. ~ Nick Pageant, #NFDB
297:I love comic books and always did as a kid. ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB
298:My chest of books divide amongst my friends ~ John Keats, #NFDB
299:My love of books was all that saved me. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
300:She was the books she read in the library. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
301:The love I knew was from books.. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer, #NFDB
302:The multitude of books is making us ignorant. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
303:The real war will never get in the books. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
304:The Somme Peter Hart PEGASUS BOOKS NEW YORK ~ Peter Hart, #NFDB
305:We read books to find out who we are. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
306:What a glut of books! Who can read them? ~ Robert Burton, #NFDB
307:When I didn't have friends, I had books. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
308:Without books, I would certainly die. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
309:A house is not a home without books and cats. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
310:All these books are published in Heaven. ~ Allen Ginsberg, #NFDB
311:a lot of books to read but time is limited ~ Kohta Hirano, #NFDB
312:A small number of choice books are sufficient. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
313:At least let us have healthy books. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
314:Books are like a gateway to real life. ~ Jessica Sorensen, #NFDB
315:Books crowbar the world open for you. ~ Katherine Rundell, #NFDB
316:Books speak plain when counselors blanch. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
317:Books were a lot less messy than orgasms. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
318:Computers don't kill books; people do. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
319:He fed his spirit with the bread of books ~ Edwin Markham, #NFDB
320:Hobbies are for people who don't read books ~ Lissa Evans, #NFDB
321:I can't imagine living without books. ~ Christina Meldrum, #NFDB
322:I don't really read books. Wish I did. ~ Rebecca Ferguson, #NFDB
323:I have a lot of books I want to write. ~ Douglas Brinkley, #NFDB
324:I have friends who read my books in Greek. ~ Brian Lumley, #NFDB
325:I have my books and my poetry to protect me. ~ Paul Simon, #NFDB
326:I only want power so I can get books. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
327:Like mold on books, grow myths on history. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
328:My books are friends that never fail me. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
329:My books have all generated controversy. ~ Helen Fielding, #NFDB
330:My chest of books divide amongst my friends. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
331:ONE WITH YOU Coming soon from Berkley Books! ~ Sylvia Day, #NFDB
332:Sad stories make good books,” she said. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
333:They defy gravity, as good books should. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
334:Through books she could see the world. Not ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
335:To start with, look at all the books. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
336:We profit little by books we do not enjoy. ~ John Lubbock, #NFDB
337:You can never, never have too many books ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
338:You're a big help, Mr. I Read So Many Books. ~ Laura Ruby, #NFDB
339:All books are merely delayed dust. ~ George Elliott Clarke, #NFDB
340:Any idea is true if it sells the books. ~ Charles P Pierce, #NFDB
341:Books and minds only work when they're open. ~ James Dewar, #NFDB
342:Books are for nothing but to inspire ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
343:Books are not life, only its ashes. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar, #NFDB
344:Books are the curse of the human race. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
345:Books crow-bar the world open for you. ~ Katherine Rundell, #NFDB
346:Books lay on the floor in literary dunes. ~ Chris Columbus, #NFDB
347:Books may be temporary; dicks are forever. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
348:Do you ever read any of the books you burn? ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
349:Hobbies are for people who don’t read books, ~ Lissa Evans, #NFDB
350:I cannot sit and think; books think for me. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
351:I learn more from books than from people ~ William Sleator, #NFDB
352:lesbian and bisexaul books are the best :) ~ Susan Gabriel, #NFDB
353:Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction. ~ James Frey, #NFDB
354:My books --"
"I'll get you more books ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
355:My chest of books divide amongst my friends-- ~ John Keats, #NFDB
356:Our minds are shaped by the books we read. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
357:She consumed books like a whale eats krill. ~ Alan Bradley, #NFDB
358:Some books were written for a single person. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
359:That's important to me, to recommend books. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
360:The abundance of books is distraction ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
361:The point of books was to combat loneliness ~ David Lipsky, #NFDB
362:The problem with books is that they end. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
363:What a blessing it is to love books. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim, #NFDB
364:You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
365:All I have learned, I learned from books. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
366:A man is known by the books he reads. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
367:And books -- she swallows like dumplings. ~ Sholom Aleichem, #NFDB
368:As always, one of her books was next to her. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
369:Before Isabel could read, she loved books. ~ Alexis M Smith, #NFDB
370:Books are not seldom talismans and spells. ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
371:Books are written by the alone for the alone. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
372:Books succeed; and lives fail. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
373:Books were safer than other people anyway. My ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
374:Comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups. ~ Stan Lee, #NFDB
375:Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
376:Food. Drink. Sleep. Books. They are all drugs. ~ Fay Weldon, #NFDB
377:Good books are for consideration after, too. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
378:I grew up in a house with very few books. ~ Ken Livingstone, #NFDB
379:I hardly ever look at my published books. ~ Michael Longley, #NFDB
380:I like books that make me laugh, not cry. ~ Meredith Schorr, #NFDB
381:I like home. It’s warm and there are books. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
382:I love coloring books. I keep some by my bed. ~ Karen Black, #NFDB
383:I love lying here with you, under the books. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
384:I prefer the skyline
of a shelf of books. ~ Jim Harrison,#NFDB
385:It is my belief that books are living things. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
386:I've always had a soft spot for comic books. ~ Nicolas Cage, #NFDB
387:I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
388:My only books were women's looks. ~ Natalie Clifford Barney, #NFDB
389:Of course. You get everything from books. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
390:O, let my books be then the eloquence ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
391:Outside books, we avoid colorful characters. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
392:People experience books so very differently. ~ Amy Neftzger, #NFDB
393:People need books like zombies need brains. ~ Patricia Bray, #NFDB
394:Reading books everyone died, none became any wise. ~ Kabir, #NFDB
395:Read iron books!
"To signs" (1913) ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky,#NFDB
396:Requirement ruins even the best of books. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
397:set goals like “clothes today, books tomorrow. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
398:Sleep is good,” he said. “And books are better. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
399:Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
400:The Library is a wilderness of books. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
401:The wise man reads both books and life itself. ~ Lin Yutang, #NFDB
402:Unpacking books is a revelatory activity. ~ Alberto Manguel, #NFDB
403:Waiting rooms were made for books—of course! ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
404:Well I've written four beauty books as well. ~ Joan Collins, #NFDB
405:We turn to books to prove that we exist. ~ Sassafras Lowrey, #NFDB
406:You need help, and that's what books are for. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
407:a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
408:Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
409:Books are reason to get up in the morning. ~ Nina Sankovitch, #NFDB
410:Books are the most tolerant of friends. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
411:books have always been my solace and my friend. ~ E S Carter, #NFDB
412:Books have souls and some of them tear us apart. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
413:Books make dangerous devils out of women. ~ Yxta Maya Murray, #NFDB
414:Books must be wind and pull the curtains. ~ N z m Hikmet Ran, #NFDB
415:Books worth reading are worth re-reading. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
416:Closure is for jars, books, and closet doors. ~ James Sallis, #NFDB
417:I didn't see a lot of comic books growing up. ~ Henry Cavill, #NFDB
418:I don’t have any hobbies. Books are my life. ~ Kylie Gilmore, #NFDB
419:I have read many books, but the Bible reads me. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
420:I love art almost as much as I love books. ~ Erika L S nchez, #NFDB
421:I never buy magazines, I never even buy books. ~ Marc Newson, #NFDB
422:In Western Civilization, our elders are books. ~ Gary Snyder, #NFDB
423:I've written books on advertising-cheque books. ~ Alan Sugar, #NFDB
424:I will read four or five books at the same time. ~ Teri Polo, #NFDB
425:One of the most popular children’s books ever’ – ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
426:Pouring out liquor is like burning books. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
427:So you're a reader of books - and people? ~ Heather Barbieri, #NFDB
428:The virtue of books is to be readable. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
429:Too many people write books as a calling card. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
430:Why buy books when you can read them online ~ Matthew Reilly, #NFDB
431:With books we stand on the shoulders of giants. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
432:Women are books, and men the readers be. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
433:Yes, I don't read books for entertainment. ~ Elizabeth Olsen, #NFDB
434:an expert who’s read over four thousand books. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
435:Books are a triviality. Life alone is great. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
436:Books are men of higher stature. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
437:Books are sepulchres of thought. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
438:Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
439:Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI. ~ Meg Wolitzer, #NFDB
440:Even bad books are books and therefore sacred. ~ G nter Grass, #NFDB
441:Even bad books are books and therefore sacred. ~ Gunter Grass, #NFDB
442:Her self, then, was represented in her books. ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
443:History books are being re-written all the time ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
444:I really try to focus on my books and readers. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
445:I spent my life in the library reading books. ~ Michael Caine, #NFDB
446:I think books can give rise to empowerment. ~ Ilyasah Shabazz, #NFDB
447:It’s the loneliest people who love books the most. ~ Etaf Rum, #NFDB
448:I want my books sold on airport bookstalls. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
449:I will try to write books until I drop dead. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
450:May books and nature be their early joy! ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
451:My books, at any rate, deserved to be burned. ~ Alfred Doblin, #NFDB
452:My fondness for good books was my salvation. ~ Teresa of vila, #NFDB
453:nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
454:Of course I loved books more than people. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
455:Reading too many books makes you believe in magic ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
456:She understood that books could be magical. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
457:Then he got more books. He saved all the books. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
458:There's more learning than is taught in books. ~ Lady Gregory, #NFDB
459:When a writer dies, he becomes his books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
460:You are a shelf of books without the pages. ~ Gabrielle Aplin, #NFDB
461:You can cover a great deal of country in books. ~ Andrew Lang, #NFDB
462:You can't ban books, people will find them ~ Nawal El Saadawi, #NFDB
463:You have to bring books to explain your work. ~ Kehinde Wiley, #NFDB
464:Books follow morals, and not morals books. ~ Theophile Gautier, #NFDB
465:Books mean more than people to me anyway. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
466:Books will speak plain when counselors blanch. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
467:Borrowed books and umbrellas are seldom returned ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
468:But everything of value about me is in my books. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
469:Certain books come to meet me, as do people. ~ Elizabeth Bowen, #NFDB
470:Even prisoners can escape if they have books. ~ Michelle Moran, #NFDB
471:Having rule books isn’t always a good thing. ~ Anthony William, #NFDB
472:He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
473:her dearest friends are characters in books. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
474:...her dearest friends are characters in books. ~ Sarah J Maas, #NFDB
475:I'd never have written the big books in London. ~ Jilly Cooper, #NFDB
476:I don't like to read books. They muss up my mind. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
477:I don't read books, but I have friends who do. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
478:I hoard books. They are people who do not leave. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
479:I like to play football, read some books, study. ~ Andrew Luck, #NFDB
480:I love to get books, because I love to read. ~ Martina McBride, #NFDB
481:I’m not interested in teaching books by women. ~ David Gilmour, #NFDB
482:Law dies, books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
483:Laws die, books never. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
484:Let our lives be open books for all to study. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
485:maybe the books can get us half out of the cave ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
486:No trilogy should have more than four books. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
487:Read good books many times,
rather than many books ~ Seneca,#NFDB
488:The language of my books has shaped me as a man. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
489:The stuff in books made everyday life seem normal. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
490:We need the books that affect us like a disaster ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
491:When it comes to books, I am a sensuous woman. ~ Jincy Willett, #NFDB
492:With the right books, we can change everything. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
493:Women are books, and men the readers be... ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
494:Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books. ~ Joss Whedon, #NFDB
495:Books and beer are the best and worst defense. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
496:Books are important. They help you sleep at night. ~ Laura Bush, #NFDB
497:Books are not men and yet they stay alive. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
498:Books are real places, make no mistake about that ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
499:Books are the best friends a girl could have. ~ Andrea Heltsley, #NFDB
500:Books were in the world; the world was in books. ~ Lewis Buzbee, #NFDB
501:Books weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. ~ Cindy Pon, #NFDB
502:Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
503:If you love books enough, books will love you back. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
504:I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
505:I Love Jodi anderson and all of her books! ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson, #NFDB
506:In books lies the soul fo the whole past time. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
507:I spend a frightening amount of money on books. ~ Kevin McCloud, #NFDB
508:I will find your books and review with nastiness. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
509:Never lend books, for no one ever returns them ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
510:Perhaps I have a strange affinity for old books. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
511:Read books, discover the blues and don't Tweet. ~ Bernie Taupin, #NFDB
512:So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa ~ Frank Zappa,#NFDB
513:The business of books is the business of life. ~ George Whitman, #NFDB
514:The original business plan contemplated only books, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
515:We are the books we read and the things we love. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
516:You cannot ban books. People can find them". ~ Nawal El Saadawi, #NFDB
517:You write a lot of books; you hope you get better. ~ Alan Furst, #NFDB
518:All good books are about everything, abbreviated. ~ Andrew Smith, #NFDB
519:All of the worst books I ever read were published, ~ Scott Meyer, #NFDB
520:Books allow everyone a traveler’s education, ~ Erin Michelle Sky, #NFDB
521:Books are funny little portable pieces of thought ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
522:Books are the way the dead talk to the living. ~ Laurie Anderson, #NFDB
523:Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful. ~ Junot Diaz, #NFDB
524:Books, books and more books. Her main indulgence. ~ Cherrie Lynn, #NFDB
525:Books were a safe place, a world apart from my own. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
526:Do you think only people in books do crazy things? ~ Nina George, #NFDB
527:He said books were more interesting than people. ~ Justin Cronin, #NFDB
528:Hobbies are for people who don’t read books,’ said ~ Lissa Evans, #NFDB
529:I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
530:if there are books perhaps it won’t be all that bad. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
531:If there are no books. There is no civilization. ~ Thomas Cahill, #NFDB
532:If you always read books, you'll always be happy. ~ Bruce Feiler, #NFDB
533:If you read 50 books, I'll get you a motor bike. ~ Orlando Bloom, #NFDB
534:If you think you have it tough, read history books. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
535:I had books and music and the ocean to swim in. ~ Kim Harrington, #NFDB
536:I imagine he knows magic, if he is reading books. ~ Rene Denfeld, #NFDB
537:I see you in the library. The way you love the books. ~ Ann Hood, #NFDB
538:I spent my life folded between the pages of books ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
539:I think books should have secrets, like people do. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
540:It's okay to bribe people with books, right? ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
541:I've actually not read any books on time management. ~ Elon Musk, #NFDB
542:Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up. ~ Baz Luhrmann, #NFDB
543:Movies can't ruin books. They can only ruin movies. ~ S E Hinton, #NFDB
544:my books only know the minds of their authors. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
545:my books won't take me far
into this place ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
546:My first addiction was to books. -B. Chelsea Adams ~ Larry Smith, #NFDB
547:My life was worth nothing except the books I read, ~ Rufi Thorpe, #NFDB
548:One should never underestimate the power of books. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
549:There are things you find nothing about in books ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
550:These books are my friends, my companions. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
551:Visit many good books, but live in the Bible. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
552:Writers do not come out of houses without books. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
553:Books are funny little portable pieces of thought. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
554:books are like confort food without the calories ~ Elizabeth Berg, #NFDB
555:Books are not men and yet they are alive. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet, #NFDB
556:Books aren't lumps of paper, but minds on shelves. ~ Sheridan Hay, #NFDB
557:Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind. ~ Robert W Chambers, #NFDB
558:Books are the treasured wealth of the world ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
559:Books do actually consume air and exhale perfumes. ~ Eugene Field, #NFDB
560:Books to read. Bitches to push out of the door. ~ Barbara Elsborg, #NFDB
561:Books train your mind to imagination to think big. ~ Taylor Swift, #NFDB
562:Books without the knowledge of life are useless. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
563:Careless of books, yet having felt the power ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
564:- Do you have a television?
- No, I have books. ~ Mia Sheridan,#NFDB
565:Good books are never finished but abandoned. ~ Marc Alan Edelheit, #NFDB
566:He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. In ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
567:holes are interesting. there are books about holes. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
568:How many books did Renoir write on how to paint? ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
569:I always have a few different books going at once. ~ Miranda Kerr, #NFDB
570:I don't like books, they're all fact, no heart. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
571:I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
572:I just want to stay away from people and read books. ~ John Green, #NFDB
573:I spent my life folded between the pages of books. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
574:I think good books have to make a few people angry. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
575:I think really good books can be read by anybody. ~ Norton Juster, #NFDB
576:I try to dull the pain with even duller books. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
577:I've come to think of myself as a writer of books. ~ Richard Hell, #NFDB
578:I was, and still am, on the side of books you love. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
579:I wish I had had my books when I was a kid, I do ~ Paula Danziger, #NFDB
580:Love Scarlett Avery’'s books period!”— Nonna8359 ~ Scarlett Avery, #NFDB
581:Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books. ~ Alison Lurie, #NFDB
582:Only in books do we learn what’s really going on. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
583:Real lives have no end. Real books have no end. ~ J M G Le Clezio, #NFDB
584:Real lives have no end. Real books have no end. ~ J M G Le Cl zio, #NFDB
585:Sleep is good, he said, And books are better. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
586:Sleep is good, he said, and books are better. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
587:Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
588:The physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true. ~ John Ziman, #NFDB
589:The spectacles of books. ~ John Dryden, Essay on Dramatic Poetry., #NFDB
590:What are the First Books, anyway?” Leeli asked. ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
591:When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books ~ John Green, #NFDB
592:When she wanted to escape her life, she read books ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
593:wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone ~ Horace, #NFDB
594:Without books, I would have gone insane long ago. ~ Damien Echols, #NFDB
595:Without story books is like a person with no soul. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
596:You know, I don't only play for the record books. ~ Roger Federer, #NFDB
597:Books and harlots have their quarrels in public. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
598:Books are a finer world within the world. (1863) ~ Alexander Smith, #NFDB
599:Books are, let's face it better then everything else ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
600:Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
601:Books are really places, make no mistake about that. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
602:Books are the treasured wealth of the world. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
603:Books belong to their readers! Own it! Make it yours! ~ John Green, #NFDB
604:Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal. ~ Gary Paulsen, #NFDB
605:Books should cost less and they should be digital. ~ Walt Mossberg, #NFDB
606:Books were my saviour, my escape… my best friends. ~ Smita Kaushik, #NFDB
607:Books were so much easier to relate to than people. ~ Brenda Hiatt, #NFDB
608:Escaping into books had been my only relief in life ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB
609:Every one of my books had killed me a little more. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
610:Everything I ever learned, I learned from books. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
611:Good books don't give up all their secrets at once. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
612:I don't publish the books to make money, not at all. ~ Peter Sotos, #NFDB
613:If books are not good company, where shall I find it? ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
614:I have to go make books. Sorry about that. ~ Teresa Nielsen Hayden, #NFDB
615:I like to read books. I like to listen to music. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
616:I love it when people want to interpret my books. ~ China Mieville, #NFDB
617:I love story songs because I've always loved books. ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
618:I love you the way I love the smell of old books. ~ J T Geissinger, #NFDB
619:I'm not a guy who needs to read motivation books. ~ Lleyton Hewitt, #NFDB
620:In those days, there was no money to buy books. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
621:I read my books aloud before they were published. ~ Beverly Cleary, #NFDB
622:I used to have all the Goosebumps books as a kid too. ~ Tom Felton, #NFDB
623:I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books! ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
624:My books are my brain and my heart made visible. ~ Merilyn Simonds, #NFDB
625:Nature and books belong to all who see them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
626:Nobody read books, but women, parsons and idle people. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
627:She knew where she stood, when she stood among books. ~ M R Graham, #NFDB
628:She liked books more than anything else, ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
629:Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
630:#ThanksAgain #Read #StarWarsBookWorms #StarWars #Books ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
631:That's what this country needs -- more books! ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
632:The greatest university is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
633:The newest books are those that never grow old. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
634:The point of books is to combat loneliness. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
635:We lose ourselves in books, we find ourselves there too. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
636:When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books. ~ John Green, #NFDB
637:Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. ~ Horace, #NFDB
638:Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
639:A house without books is like a room without windows. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
640:A room without books is like a body without a soul, ~ Lucinda Riley, #NFDB
641:Besides, nothin’s real scary except in books.” Atticus ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
642:Books are more real when you read them outside. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
643:Books are much better companions to me than people. ~ Rakesh Satyal, #NFDB
644:Books have meaning. They have depth. They are alive. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
645:Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
646:Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
647:Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions. ~ Regis Debray, #NFDB
648:But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck. ~ John Green, #NFDB
649:By and large books are mankind's best invention. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
650:Century also had shelves of obsolete printed books. ~ Alfred Bester, #NFDB
651:Classics are books everyone knows but no has read. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
652:Destiny is for people in books about magical swords. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
653:He also took two briefing books that included ~ Matthew FitzSimmons, #NFDB
654:How fortunate we are that books are (still) ad-free! ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
655:I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
656:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
657:I don't think about who the audience is for my books. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
658:I don't write the books --I am merely the typist. ~ Anne Carmichael, #NFDB
659:I have been a fan of comic books since childhood. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
660:I have never been able to resist a book about books. ~ Anne Fadiman, #NFDB
661:I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else. Our ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
662:I love books because they are easier than people. ~ Courtney Conant, #NFDB
663:I loved books like people; I liked real people less. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
664:In water, like in books—you can leave your life. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch, #NFDB
665:It made them feel, as all good books do, less alone. ~ Jason Fagone, #NFDB
666:I've read too many books to believe what I am told. ~ Suheir Hammad, #NFDB
667:Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
668:Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
669:Miss Climpson believed in books that began with “begat. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
670:Nine-tenths of all existing books are nonsense. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
671:Nobody ever gave away a trophy for reading books. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
672:Not everyone is fodder for books," said Rosalind. ~ Jeanne Birdsall, #NFDB
673:Not everyone is fodder for books,' said Rosalind. ~ Jeanne Birdsall, #NFDB
674:nothing beats books for understanding the world. See ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
675:Of writing many books there is no end. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
676:Our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
677:Phd dissertations are for people who can't write books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
678:the more the merrier. so enjoy reading more books ~ Francine Pascal, #NFDB
679:Throw away thy books. No longer distract thyself. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
680:What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed? ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
681:When books are opened, we discover that we have wings ~ Helen Hayes, #NFDB
682:When I was your age, television was called books. ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
683:A home without books is a body without soul. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
684:All children in adventure books have to be orphans. ~ Charlie Higson, #NFDB
685:And books are real places, make no mistake about that. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
686:Books are carnival rides for your imagination. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
687:Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
688:Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
689:Books are seldom useful unless they are also beautiful. ~ John Green, #NFDB
690:Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
691:Books are what save us. Books are what don't save us. ~ Miriam Toews, #NFDB
692:Books grounded me, helped me to feel less alone. ~ Carrie Brownstein, #NFDB
693:...,but at least there were books. Books were escape. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
694:Can there be enough books to answer all your questions? ~ Jack White, #NFDB
695:Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
696:He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books. ~ Elfriede Jelinek, #NFDB
697:I always say, 'Books beat boredom,' said Amanda wisely. ~ Mo Willems, #NFDB
698:I fear I lose myself among books. I forget everything. ~ C W Gortner, #NFDB
699:I have my books. I don't live in the actual world. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
700:I have put out my books and now my house has a soul. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
701:I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales ~ Carol Ann Duffy, #NFDB
702:I'm a smeller of books and a marker-upper of books. ~ Matthew Norman, #NFDB
703:In customers’ minds, the Amazon brand meant books only. ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
704:I should have written books instead of reading them. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
705:I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
706:It spoke of journeys, discoveries, books, and change. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
707:Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
708:My books have helped a lot of men to lose weight. ~ Bethenny Frankel, #NFDB
709:Nights without work I spend with whisky and books. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
710:Nights without work I spent with whisky and books. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
711:↟↟Rereading books is like visiting old friends↟↟ ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
712:Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble. ~ Sara Sheridan, #NFDB
713:Seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
714:She was always reading, and she read very good books. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
715:Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading. ~ Charlie Kaufman, #NFDB
716:Throw away thy books. No longer distract thyself. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
717:Too many books by too many authors can be confusing, ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
718:We lose ourselves in books. We find ourselves there too. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
719:We were raised to believe in books, music, and nature. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
720:Where do I find the time for not reading so many books? ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
721:You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books. ~ Ellen Hopkins, #NFDB
722:A home without books is a body without a soul ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
723:A home without books is a body without soul. ~ Stephanie Pearl McPhee, #NFDB
724:Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
725:As a cub reporter, I devoured books about journalism. ~ Lionel Barber, #NFDB
726:Believing in books is a lot like believing in God. ~ Julie Schumacher, #NFDB
727:Books are companions even if you don't open them. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
728:Books are like people, when they are open they are red ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
729:Books are like plants. They're decorations that are alive. ~ Katy Lee, #NFDB
730:Books are not my whole life, but they make my life whole. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
731:Books enveloped the room floor to ceiling like wallpaper. ~ Judy Baer, #NFDB
732:Books make up no small part of human happiness. ~ Frederick The Great, #NFDB
733:He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
734:I apologize from distracting you from reading my books. ~ Jeff Strand, #NFDB
735:I don't have many possessions, apart from my books. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
736:If you eat enough books, you start pooping out words. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
737:I have always come to life after coming to books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
738:I have this obsession with really cool, old books. ~ Constance Zimmer, #NFDB
739:I only write books about dead people. They can't sue. ~ Pierre Berton, #NFDB
740:I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it. ~ Tony Hillerman, #NFDB
741:Life is too short to read books that I'm not enjoying. ~ Melissa Marr, #NFDB
742:Men may leave, but books will always remain true. ~ Martha Hall Kelly, #NFDB
743:My fondness for good books was my salvation. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
744:Nah, books were more important than the Arum. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
745:People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
746:People tend to find books when they are ready for them. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
747:People will perish, but books are immortal. (Pompeii) ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
748:Sometimes books don't find us until the right time. ~ Gabrielle Zevin, #NFDB
749:The author: an imaginary person who writes real books. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
750:There where one burns books, one in the end burns men. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
751:They read all the books but they can't find the answers. ~ John Mayer, #NFDB
752:We read many books, because we cannot know enough people. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
753:Who can say how many lives have been saved by books? ~ Michelle Cliff, #NFDB
754:Working with people made me like my books so much more. ~ Lynn Cahoon, #NFDB
755:You chose books, I chose looks . Now see the difference? ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
756:You don't put your life into books. You find it there. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
757:You lose yourself in books. You find your self there too. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
758:All I did was go to the library to borrow some books ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
759:Books and reading were my escape. A way to leave this world ~ Jani Kay, #NFDB
760:Books are not life, however much we may wish they were ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
761:Books are not missiles, you don’t aim them at anybody ~ Raymond Briggs, #NFDB
762:Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her. ~ Sarah Addison Allen, #NFDB
763:Books make such good friends and quiet neighbors. ~ Catriona McPherson, #NFDB
764:Books may be classed from the Faculties of the mind ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
765:Books open the doors that others have closed on you. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
766:Books tell you more about their owners than the owners do. ~ A M Homes, #NFDB
767:Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
768:Education is the process of selling someone on books. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
769:First they burn the books, and then the bodies follow ~ Kane X Faucher, #NFDB
770:Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
771:He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
772:I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger. ~ Oriana Fallaci, #NFDB
773:I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
774:If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
775:I grew up reading 'The Jungle Books' and loving them. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
776:I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
777:I love men, I love books, I can’t get enough of them. ~ Philip Hensher, #NFDB
778:I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
779:I tend books the way someone in an aviary tends birds. ~ Gregory Sherl, #NFDB
780:I've lived in books more than I've lived nay where else. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
781:Life is sad enough without people writing sad books. ~ James T Farrell, #NFDB
782:Of all my books, I find only a few indispensible. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
783:Readers came and went, only the books stayed forever. ~ Martin Edwards, #NFDB
784:Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
785:Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
786:Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
787:Shelves without books were lonely and just plain wrong. ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
788:Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
789:The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
790:The books I'm writing are houses that I build for myself. ~ Etel Adnan, #NFDB
791:The end of reading is not more books but more life. ~ Holbrook Jackson, #NFDB
792:the girl with the maps and the travel books and the plans. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
793:There is no bond like having read and liked the same books. ~ E Nesbit, #NFDB
794:There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
795:They read all the books, but they can't find the answers. ~ John Mayer, #NFDB
796:We never tire of the friendships we form with books. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
797:When I was a kid, all I liked were books and chocolate. ~ Sonia Rykiel, #NFDB
798:Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
799:A book is not a secret messsage.”
“Some books are. ~ Mark Beauregard,#NFDB
800:A collection of books is the best of all universities. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
801:A room without books is like a life without meaning. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
802:Aziraphale was an angel, but he also worshiped books. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
803:Books are the anchors
Left by the ships that rot away. ~ Clive James,#NFDB
804:...books give a man ideas, they make him want to live. ~ Patricia Engel, #NFDB
805:Books remember all the things you cannot contain. ~ Elizabeth McCracken, #NFDB
806:Books tell many stories besides those printed on the pages. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
807:Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
808:Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
809:Don't give me books for Christmas; I already have a book. ~ Jean Harlow, #NFDB
810:History books that contain no lies are extremely dull. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
811:Hope and perseverance—that’s what I learned from books. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
812:I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
813:I don't have change I'd have to give you nine more books ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
814:If books can transform, those have to be conscientious. ~ Sudhir Mittal, #NFDB
815:I feel sorry for people who say they cannot read big books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
816:I like my men to be manly, as you'll see from my books. ~ Louise Mensch, #NFDB
817:I'm interested in adapting books and all sorts of things. ~ Sean Durkin, #NFDB
818:I'm one of those freaky people that actually reads books. ~ Jason Momoa, #NFDB
819:I need to experience books, not just read them. ~ Lauren Morrill, #NFDB
820:I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
821:I thought... that we could at least talk about books. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
822:I want to be a writer, not an engineer who writes books. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
823:Life is short and the number of books is appalling. ~ John Cowper Powys, #NFDB
824:Love is beautiful even if they are in movies and books. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
825:My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
826:No company like good books, especially the book of God. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
827:One can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
828:Our backs tell stories
no books have the spine to carry ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
829:Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them. ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
830:Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, #NFDB
831:...she made her home in between the pages of books. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
832:The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
833:The New York Times Review of Books is toilet paper. Used. ~ James Purdy, #NFDB
834:there is more to life than books you know but not much more ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
835:There, where one burns books, on in the end burns men. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
836:Visit many good books, but live in the Bible. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
837:We are all but characters in the books of God's library. ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
838:Who wants a library full of books you've already read? ~ Harlan Ellison, #NFDB
839:A books should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
840:Actually, the books were never a planned career path. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis, #NFDB
841:Be a life long student, read as many books as possible. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
842:Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
843:Books and men left the same traces where they burned. The ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
844:Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
845:Books showed me that there were other ways to live a life. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
846:Girls like me are meant to have books instead of friends. ~ Mackenzi Lee, #NFDB
847:If you want to cry, you're not going to like my books. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
848:I know I'll die someday, but I buy books like an immortal. ~ Jeff Strand, #NFDB
849:I love comic books, comic book characters and superheroes. ~ Jon Huertas, #NFDB
850:i love mermaids i cant live without books about them. ~ Tera Lynn Childs, #NFDB
851:I read whatever is put in front of me. I gobble up books. ~ Kara Hayward, #NFDB
852:I will write a couple of books and become a millionaire. ~ Steig Larsson, #NFDB
853:Let's crowd source, curate, and add royalties to books ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
854:Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
855:Man's real genius and knowledge remains preserved in books ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
856:Many books have been written on Thomas Merton already. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
857:More books than I could read? Somehow I doubted that. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
858:My books. They were my only real friends growing up. ~ Walter Dean Myers, #NFDB
859:Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
860:Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
861:Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
862:reading books chronically understimulates the senses.”11 ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
863:Reading made me a traveler; travel sent me back to books. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
864:Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
865:She is too fond of books and it has addled her mind. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
866:... she made her home in between the pages of books. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
867:There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
868:These books were…I don’t know…totems of who I was….I… ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
869:The world is not in your books and maps, it's out there. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
870:Well, usually I learn more from my sheep than from books. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
871:Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
872:Who would ever want movies or TV when there are books? ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
873:Wise men read books about history. Strong men write them. ~ Pierce Brown, #NFDB
874:Wow. Death by books. That would have been some way to go. ~ Beth Reekles, #NFDB
875:You can own a billion books and still be ignorant. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
876:Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books. ~ G H Hardy, #NFDB
877:A crash. Books fall to the speckled linoleum floor. They ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
878:All books are judged by their covers until they are read. ~ Maryrose Wood, #NFDB
879:a man who read too many books and disagreed with everybody ~ Seamus Deane, #NFDB
880:Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody to be near him ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
881:[Books} are the bankers of the treasures of the mind. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
882:Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
883:Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
884:Books were my passion and my escape from madness. ~ Dorothea Benton Frank, #NFDB
885:By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
886:Didn’t anyone share the same passion for books that I did? ~ Meghan Quinn, #NFDB
887:Everything which is good in me should be credited to books. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
888:Having books published is very destructive to writing. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
889:I don't read books. I read the Daily Express and The Star. ~ Tim Sherwood, #NFDB
890:I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway. My ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
891:I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
892:I like people who cry over books. It makes me trust them. ~ Katie Pierson, #NFDB
893:I like to co-author books to learn from those I write with. ~ Dave Ulrich, #NFDB
894:I'm already in the (record) books three or four times. ~ Rickey Henderson, #NFDB
895:I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
896:I should be more frugal, but my weaknesses are books ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
897:I think men that read books are the most attractive kind. ~ Rowan Coleman, #NFDB
898:It's not an accident that successful people read more books. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
899:I use the traditional Moyse scale books slightly modified. ~ James Galway, #NFDB
900:Like a good academic, I thought books were for answers. ~ Helen Macdonald, #NFDB
901:Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
902:One Book is enough, but a thousand books is not too many! ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
903:People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
904:Real life isn’t like those comic books you love so much. ~ James L Rubart, #NFDB
905:She is always starving for new books to gobble, ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
906:She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
907:She talked like a woman who knew more books than people. ~ Melissa Albert, #NFDB
908:She was ditching Facebook and going back to real books. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
909:So this is what I get for reading too many books I suppose. ~ J C Morrows, #NFDB
910:the books shot off the shelf like academic projectile puke. ~ Leigh Evans, #NFDB
911:The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books. ~ St phane Mallarm, #NFDB
912:The greatest university of all is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
913:There's more to life than books, you know. But not much more. ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
914:There's more to life than books you know...but not much more! ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
915:The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. ~ Clarence Day, #NFDB
916:What if we just went home and read books to each other? ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
917:What kind of life can you have in a house without books? ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
918:Women should not let lovers read the books they write. ~ Marguerite Duras, #NFDB
919:You couldn't unburn the books. You could only buy new ones. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
920:You're gay, you sell books... you probably shag the books. ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB
921:"A donkey carrying a pile of holy books is still a donkey." ~ Zen proverb, #NFDB
922:And no reason to talk about the books I read but I still do... ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
923:Are the dead restored? The books say no, the night shouts yes ~ John Fante, #NFDB
924:Books are not about messages. I write to understand my soul ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
925:Books are the best type of the influence of the past. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
926:Books are what teach you about life. Books teach you empathy. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
927:Books console us, calm us, prepare us, enrich us and redeem us. ~ Jos Mart, #NFDB
928:Books demand more. You have to be a more active participant. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
929:Books make great gifts because they can unveil hidden secrets. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
930:Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, #NFDB
931:Fields are places in books, and books are placed in libraries. ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
932:Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books! ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
933:Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
934:How many books had she touched?
How many had she felt? ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
935:Huge piles of books were stacked precariously on all sides. ~ J B Cantwell, #NFDB
936:I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
937:I just want to stay away from people and read books and think ~ John Green, #NFDB
938:Just handle the books gently and you’ll get along fine. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
939:know what new books I have coming, and stay up to date with ~ Vivian Arend, #NFDB
940:Life is too short to waste time on books that end badly ~ Jayne Ann Krentz, #NFDB
941:Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
942:Mack Stiles’s books Speaking of Jesus and Marks of a Messenger ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
943:No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books. ~ Romain Rolland, #NFDB
944:Nothing bonds two people so well as loving the same books. ~ Julia Buckley, #NFDB
945:Now my only income is a few royalty cheques from my books. ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
946:One day I will go back to my books and piano, but not yet. ~ William Hague, #NFDB
947:One who believes all of a book would be better off without books ~ Mencius, #NFDB
948:People are like books, unknown until they are opened. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
949:People should be interested in books, not their authors. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
950:Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
951:Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
952:She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
953:She reads books like one would breath air to fill up and live. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
954:Thank God for books and music and things I can think about. ~ Daniel Keyes, #NFDB
955:The colour books great on her, but she Looks beautiful every day. ~ J Lynn, #NFDB
956:The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books. ~ Stephane Mallarme, #NFDB
957:We are improved by reading books not by owning them. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
958:What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
959:Where one burns books, there one eventually burns people. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
960:Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
961:You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
962:You don't put your life into your books, you find it there. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
963:You like books?” Victor asked, catching my look. “Who doesn’t? ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
964:And I don't like books which are full of name dropping. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
965:A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
966:Books are friends. You don’t just—just—just give away friends! ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
967:Books are like friends to me. Words come alive on the page. ~ Beverly Lewis, #NFDB
968:Books are magic: you never know where they're going to end up. ~ Dan Savage, #NFDB
969:Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons. ~ Emma Donoghue, #NFDB
970:Books by Lee Child Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
971:Books have always a secret influence on the understanding. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
972:Books have led some to learning and others to madness. ~ Francesco Petrarca, #NFDB
973:Books have souls. Or so romantics like me tend to think. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
974:Books think for me. I can read anything which I call a book. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
975:By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
976:Cissy could read big thick books, not just The Cat In The Hat. ~ M A Harper, #NFDB
977:don’t permit man’s books to rob you of God’s wisdom. “Be ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
978:Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
979:Existence has overpowered Books. Today I slew a Mushroom. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
980:I could live without television, but not without books. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
981:I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life. ~ Noah Baumbach, #NFDB
982:I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
983:I love comic books. Since I was a kid, I've collected them. ~ James Mangold, #NFDB
984:I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
985:In the end all books are written for your friends. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
986:It must be a special book."
"All books are special, dear. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
987:It's obvious this is her first love...
Books.
(Grey) ~ E L James,#NFDB
988:I turned to books for comfort. (Former First Lady, Laura Bush) ~ Laura Bush, #NFDB
989:It was books that taught me that perhaps I was not alone. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
990:I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
991:just want to read more books and be a knowledgeable female. ~ Lawrence Hill, #NFDB
992:Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves. ~ William Gilbert, #NFDB
993:My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
994:O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books! ~ Ellen Glasgow, #NFDB
995:People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
996:People read books to escape the uncertainties of life. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
997:Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
998:quot libros, quam breve tempus—so many books, so little time ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
999:Some books leave us free and some books make us free. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1000:Take a look at the books other people have in their homes. ~ Jerzy Kosinski, #NFDB
1001:The author was an invisible point from which the books came ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1002:The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1003:There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1004:There's nothing so heavy as books, sir--unless it's bricks. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
1005:There’s some ex-traordinary things in books,” said the mariner. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
1006:we are all privately agreed that it is better in books ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1007:What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books? ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
1008:Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1009:Where they burn books they will in the end burn people too ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1010:Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1011:You live a thousand lives when you read a thousand books. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
1012:You want all your books to stick around after you've gone. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1013:Alicia, welcome back to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1014:And one day the girl with the books became the woman writing them. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1015:Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
1016:Basically, books were a luxury item before the printing press. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
1017:Bite me." -Lieutenant Eve Dallas, from any of the In Death books. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
1018:Books are the quietest and most constant of friends. ~ Charles William Eliot, #NFDB
1019:Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1020:Books console us, calm us, prepare us, enrich us and redeem us. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
1021:Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
1022:Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured. ~ Terry Goodkind, #NFDB
1023:But that’s fetishism, I think, writing books to write books. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1024:Her books, and some inner source of life, had kept her warm. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
1025:I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart. ~ Gabrielle Zevin, #NFDB
1026:I dislike reading business books, although I skim a lot of them. ~ Brad Feld, #NFDB
1027:I gave you books. You gave me plants. Books live. Plants die. ~ Larry Kramer, #NFDB
1028:I haven't made up my mind about doing anymore Landover books. ~ Terry Brooks, #NFDB
1029:I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1030:Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
1031:In the end, you are going to read very few of your books again. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1032:I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. ~ Gary Paulsen, #NFDB
1033:I read comic books and stuff but I didn't know a lot about it. ~ Josh Brolin, #NFDB
1034:It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1035:It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them. ~ Jean Webster, #NFDB
1036:It's stupid to ban books that tell you the truth about life. ~ Sheila Kohler, #NFDB
1037:Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books ~ Michael Caine, #NFDB
1038:I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at least 30 revisions. ~ Ha Jin, #NFDB
1039:My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
1040:Osho's books inspire me to meditate. They give me peace of mind. ~ Kapil Dev, #NFDB
1041:People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents. ~ Bryce Courtenay, #NFDB
1042:Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read. ~ Alberto Manguel, #NFDB
1043:Read the most useful books, and that regularly and constantly. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
1044:read three or four books at a time to avoid tedium”—and ~ William Manchester, #NFDB
1045:she was left with the warmth of the words from books now ash. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1046:Some books are lies frae end to end. ~ Robert Burns, Death and Dr. Hornbook., #NFDB
1047:That settles it, no more books about vampire before bedtime. ~ Amanda Ashley, #NFDB
1048:The function of a great library is to store obscure books. ~ Nicholson Baker, #NFDB
1049:The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell. ~ Ninon de L Enclos, #NFDB
1050:The only things he cares about these days are books and food. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1051:There are great books in this world and great worlds in books. ~ Anne Bronte, #NFDB
1052:There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1053:The true University of these days is a Collection of Books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1054:The true university of these days is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1055:This stuff only happens in movies and trashy romance books. ~ Scarlett Avery, #NFDB
1056:What's the point of a houseful of books you've already read? ~ Cory Doctorow, #NFDB
1057:Where they burn books they will in the end burn people too. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1058:Writing books is the closest men ever come to child bearing, ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1059:All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder. ~ Tom Lehrer, #NFDB
1060:And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why. ~ Dylan Thomas, #NFDB
1061:Any place books are massed together makes me feel at home. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
1062:A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man. ~ Alfred Nobel, #NFDB
1063:As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1064:Books are always good company if you have the right sort. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1065:books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too. ~ Joel C Rosenberg, #NFDB
1066:Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1067:Books make great gifts because you don't have to plug them in. ~ Alec Baldwin, #NFDB
1068:Books, the children of the brain. ~ Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub, Section I., #NFDB
1069:books were not only important, they were also objects of beauty. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
1070:Dangerous things, books."
"Look what it did to your brain. ~ Clive Cussler,#NFDB
1071:Great children's books are wisdom dipped in words and art. ~ Peter H Reynolds, #NFDB
1072:Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1073:I alternate between reading cook books and reading diet books. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1074:If people are going to be cooking the books, you're in trouble. ~ Don Nickles, #NFDB
1075:I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
1076:I'm not really sure who I am but I love reading books. ~ Krzysztof Kie lowski, #NFDB
1077:I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be, to books. ~ Gary Paulsen, #NFDB
1078:I sat down in the wilderness with my books, and wept for joy. ~ Sofia Samatar, #NFDB
1079:It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end. ~ Frank Kermode, #NFDB
1080:It was the kind of library
he had only read about in books. ~ Alan Bennett,#NFDB
1081:Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
1082:Life is like a box of chocolates, I'm a nerd and I read books ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
1083:Modernism: the books are as hard to understand as life itself. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1084:Mostly I just want my daughter to read. To grow lost in books. ~ Laura Frantz, #NFDB
1085:People never mentioned in history books still made history. ~ Katherine Locke, #NFDB
1086:Read. Forget everything you've been told about books and read. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1087:She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
1088:So many lifetimes can be lead within the covers of books, ~ Victoria Connelly, #NFDB
1089:Some books claiming to be exhaustive are only exhausting to read. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1090:The best books were those uninhabited by those who wrote them. ~ Joy Williams, #NFDB
1091:There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
1092:There are so many books I mean to read, and things I mean to see. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1093:Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1094:Twilight, huh? Maybe Hugh Ellingham was a fan of the books. ~ Kristen Painter, #NFDB
1095:We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
1096:What type of world are we living in, if we're destroying books? ~ Cat Winters, #NFDB
1097:Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1098:You can't do magic with books unless they're very special copies. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
1099:A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books. ~ Tim O Reilly, #NFDB
1100:And maybe we all saw books differently based on our own hearts. ~ Mia Sheridan, #NFDB
1101:An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1102:Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
1103:Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1104:Books Are Good For Lots Of Uses, Not For Dropping In The Toilet. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
1105:Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1106:Books are the salt of life; without them, there is no flavor. ~ Cheryl Koevoet, #NFDB
1107:Books became my world because the world I was in was very hard. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1108:Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1109:Books might be your passion but you can’t fuck a paperback. ~ Alexandra Potter, #NFDB
1110:...but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1111:By small and simple sentences, great books come to pass. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
1112:Customer: Do you have any crime books involving speeding fines? ~ Jen Campbell, #NFDB
1113:Good books and good friends were critical in Lewis’s conversion. ~ Devin Brown, #NFDB
1114:I am not scared of anyone. I will write and publish my books. ~ Taslima Nasrin, #NFDB
1115:I didn't learn a lot from books. I learned a lot from movies. ~ Carole Bouquet, #NFDB
1116:I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels ~ Guillermo Cabrera Infante, #NFDB
1117:I hope my books make statements about our general condition. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
1118:I love your books when I read them I can't stop reading them. ~ Charlie Higson, #NFDB
1119:I'm going to be dead before I read the books I'm going to read. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
1120:I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable. ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
1121:Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1122:Like books and black lives - albums still matter. Tonight and always. ~ Prince, #NFDB
1123:Like picture books if the ones with words don’t work for you. ~ Mariana Zapata, #NFDB
1124:My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
1125:My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
1126:My books are written with a strong chronological spine. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
1127:My last comment was, though, that Congress has cooked the books. ~ Don Nickles, #NFDB
1128:No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books. ~ Julia Quinn, #NFDB
1129:Nowhere will you meet more interesting people than in books. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
1130:People are like books. Everywhere they're opened, they're read. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1131:People who fall in love with books never really stop falling. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
1132:She didn't do people, dammit. She did books. A world of difference ~ Vic James, #NFDB
1133:That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri, #NFDB
1134:The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1135:The books...they helped keep me from losing my mind altogether. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
1136:The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
1137:There is a Book worth all other books which were ever printed. ~ Patrick Henry, #NFDB
1138:There's more to life than what you read in books.' said Weary. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1139:There's no reason, to talk about the books I read. But still I do. ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
1140:Be careful of books, as words have the power to change people ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1141:Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1142:Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom. ~ George William Curtis, #NFDB
1143:Good books are irrefutable, and bad books refute themselves. ~ Remy de Gourmont, #NFDB
1144:Good books help you understand, and they help you feel understood. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1145:Great books help you understand and they help you feel understood. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1146:Half the charm in old books is the marks of living they acquire; ~ Erika Swyler, #NFDB
1147:he is even better than books. - fiction has nothing on you. ~ Amanda Lovelace, #NFDB
1148:He is the best, in my whole life i have only read his books!!!!!! ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
1149:He smells the same—peppermint and cedar and a hint of old books. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
1150:He wrote the kind of books that nobody could be expected to read. ~ Barbara Pym, #NFDB
1151:Hollowcrest!” Books sat up straight. “That murdering bastard! ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
1152:I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
1153:I enjoy working on a number of projects - books - at once. ~ Rigoberto Gonzalez, #NFDB
1154:If your best friends do not read books, they read you. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1155:I have a lot of books and books are better if you can share them. ~ William Gay, #NFDB
1156:I knew you talked to books. I didn't realize they listened. ~ Margaret Rogerson, #NFDB
1157:I'm not courting death; I've far too many books left to read. ~ Alison Sinclair, #NFDB
1158:Isn´t it cool? Words, books, fiction all have the power to kill. ~ Project Itoh, #NFDB
1159:It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1160:It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1161:I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself. ~ Oscar Levant, #NFDB
1162:Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1163:Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.” “Desultory ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1164:My favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships. ~ Jeannette Walls, #NFDB
1165:My great quandary was what coat to wear and which books to bring. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
1166:One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1167:our backs
tell stories
no books have
the spine to
carry ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
1168:Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1169:Overall, books and art were a safer escape from reality than sleep. ~ Lisa Cach, #NFDB
1170:passion for the written word began with the books her mother read ~ Helen Hardt, #NFDB
1171:People are living books. The real library of life is community. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1172:The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
1173:The books you read in childhood shape the person you become. ~ Paula Berinstein, #NFDB
1174:The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1175:The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
1176:A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1177:A self without a shelf remains cryptic; a home without books naked. ~ Leah Price, #NFDB
1178:As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors. ~ Sharon Creech, #NFDB
1179:Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. ~ Edwin Paxton Hood, #NFDB
1180:Books are for reading, not for turning oneself into livestock. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1181:Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1182:Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1183:Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1184:Books don’t change people; paragraphs do; sometimes even sentences. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1185:Books don't just go with you, they take you where you've never been. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1186:Books give us new lives, loves, and the feeling we aren't alone. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
1187:Even as a kid, my memories are of books taking me out of myself. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1188:For life is short and the art of writing books is very, very long. ~ James Geary, #NFDB
1189:Give up your thirst for books so that you do not die a grouch. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1190:Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1191:He died at home in his library, surrounded by the books he loved. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1192:If your best friends do not read books, they reads you. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1193:In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
1194:I read a lot...I love books. I work with books. Books are my life. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1195:I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background. ~ Wilbur Smith, #NFDB
1196:I read books—read, read, one can learn everything from books. ~ Rabih Alameddine, #NFDB
1197:I really don't want to be boring, and so many books are so boring! ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1198:I want to read all the books that made you, Ollie Ollie UpandFree. ~ Leah Thomas, #NFDB
1199:I was a literature major in college and that was my thing, books. ~ Jodie Foster, #NFDB
1200:Laws die, Books never. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839), Act I, scene 2., #NFDB
1201:Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen. ~ J A Konrath, #NFDB
1202:Lowell’s an odd duck,” Peterson said. “He’s a loner. He reads books. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1203:Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, #NFDB
1204:My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers. ~ Mario Benedetti, #NFDB
1205:Nothing new ever happens in the books. It's the same old theme. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
1206:Only give them history books. Men should read nothing else. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
1207:Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness and love. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1208:people look for books that support their mental program. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1209:Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
1210:READ!READ!READ! Till there are no books left in the world to read! ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
1211:She was fond of books. They were an escape from responsibilities, ~ Melissa Grey, #NFDB
1212:Some things make you immortal, such as the books you have written. ~ Shikha Kaul, #NFDB
1213:Sometimes books have housed me and sometimes they have encased me. ~ Kyo Maclear, #NFDB
1214:Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books. ~ David Strathairn, #NFDB
1215:The 'Barnaby' books were always intended to be graphic novels. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
1216:The best books... are those that tell you what you know already. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1217:The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1218:The Kindle is just the razor. The books are the blades - ka-ching! ~ David Pogue, #NFDB
1219:The misery of having no time to read a thousand glorious books. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
1220:The only books I recognize as mine are those I must still write. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1221:There’s a brotherhood of people who read and who care about books. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1222:The "to read' list is a place where most good books go to die... ~ Danny L Deaub, #NFDB
1223:We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
1224:Whether it’s fair or not, we often do judge books by their covers. ~ David Airey, #NFDB
1225:Why don't you write books people can read?(to her husband James) ~ Nora Barnacle, #NFDB
1226:Yesterday You Said Tomorrow published by Burnt Offerings Books ~ Chris Philbrook, #NFDB
1227:Your job is to meet the right people and read the right books. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
1228:All my books are weird love stories. I love weird love stories. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1229:Beautiful books are always written in a sort of foreign language. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1230:Books are not luxuries. They are the meat and drink for the mind. ~ Andrew Taylor, #NFDB
1231:Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen. Samuel Johnson ~ Laura Frantz, #NFDB
1232:Frank is in my house with my books, like he’s sitting in my veins. ~ Erika Swyler, #NFDB
1233:Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1234:Had Twitter been invented earlier, my books would have been shorter. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
1235:He was a thing of books and alembics to me, library and laboratory. ~ Naomi Novik, #NFDB
1236:I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams. ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
1237:I cannot live without books.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ~ Thomas Jefferson,#NFDB
1238:I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction. ~ John Larroquette, #NFDB
1239:I keep my self updated by reading different books and encyclopedias. ~ Arfa Karim, #NFDB
1240:I love all Scarlett Avery's books. This one included. - Kathleen ~ Scarlett Avery, #NFDB
1241:I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
1242:I see this land flowing with books, Father. Widespread literacy. ~ Erika Johansen, #NFDB
1243:I think I would like to write screenplays, books, really anything. ~ Kara Hayward, #NFDB
1244:It's inhuman to take your books away before you know the end. ~ Katherine Rundell, #NFDB
1245:I wrote long reviews of all four books if you want to take a look. ~ Manny Rayner, #NFDB
1246:Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books. ~ Maurice Sendak, #NFDB
1247:Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
1248:Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen. ~ Jack Kilborn, #NFDB
1249:Maelyn smiled. If books could have litters, she'd be just as happy. ~ Anita Valle, #NFDB
1250:My perfect reader doesn't just read - he or she devours books. ~ Anthony Horowitz, #NFDB
1251:Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half. ~ Lorenz Hart, #NFDB
1252:Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
1253:Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
1254:The most important events in every age never reach the history books. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1255:The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1256:We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way. ~ LeVar Burton, #NFDB
1257:When I was quite young my parents never said books were off limits. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1258:Where books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1259:Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people. ~ Jesper Bugge Kold, #NFDB
1260:With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1261:[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1262:All books should be trilogies; I mean I think we all agree on that. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
1263:Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1264:Books are but stepping stones to show you where other minds have been. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1265:Books are still the main yardstick by which I measure true wealth. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
1266:Books were things not as complicated and unsatisfying as real life. ~ Akhil Sharma, #NFDB
1267:Do something every day to market each of your books for three years. ~ John Kremer, #NFDB
1268:Every word I say, you can document it and put it in the history books. ~ Riff Raff, #NFDB
1269:Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1270:He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes books. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1271:Honesty and politics rarely ride in the same wagon,” Books said. ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
1272:I cannot live qithout books"~ Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1273:I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
1274:I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1275:I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, #NFDB
1276:I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. ~ Leigh Hunt, #NFDB
1277:I expect what you're not aware of would fill several books, Dursely. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1278:I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1279:I have my television, my books and that becomes my little world. ~ Anjelica Huston, #NFDB
1280:[I like to read] spiritual books, non-fiction, fiction, I have my moods. ~ MC Lyte, #NFDB
1281:In a way, the main fault of all books is that they are too long. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
1282:I was once in love with books. Now they go their way and I go mine. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1283:Laundromat, mini-mart, nail salon, pet shop, Books of Darkness. ~ Michelle Knudsen, #NFDB
1284:Luckily, I have music and books to calm the pandemonium in my head. ~ Maude Julien, #NFDB
1285:My books are like marmite, you either love them or you hate them!! ~ Laurie Bowler, #NFDB
1286:My brother had boxes of comic books. He was really the collector. ~ Michael Shanks, #NFDB
1287:My own daughter is a big fan of the 'Twilight' stories, the books. ~ Michael Sheen, #NFDB
1288:No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books. ~ Dr Seuss, #NFDB
1289:Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1290:One of my favorite books [The Stand] of all time. I grew up reading it. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
1291:One should play and sweat. Life shouldn't be bogged down by books. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1292:Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1293:People are living books. The real library of life is community. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
1294:People get nothing out of books but what they bring to them. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1295:Scary movies and books were too much for her—she read only romance. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
1296:She gathered the books like clouds and words poured down like rain. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1297:The beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
1298:There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books. ~ E Nesbit, #NFDB
1299:There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1300:The temperature reached 451 degrees and the books began smoldering. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
1301:This is what we do. We make tea and read books and watch people die. ~ Megan Crewe, #NFDB
1302:Well you know I've been fan of Tony Hillerman's books for years. ~ Keith Carradine, #NFDB
1303:As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1304:Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
1305:Books are a uniquely portable magic when you have USA Facebook likes ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1306:Books are enchanted. Books help me travel. Books help me breathe. ~ Margarita Engle, #NFDB
1307:Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1308:Books make great gifts because they're everybody's favorite things. ~ Julie Andrews, #NFDB
1309:Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1310:discarded books littering my apartment like the carapaces of beetles, ~ Rufi Thorpe, #NFDB
1311:Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1312:Great books help you understand, and they help you to feel understood. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1313:Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. Back Bay Books: New York, 2004, ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
1314:Her soul belongs to words and books. Every time she reads, she is home. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1315:I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects. ~ John Banville, #NFDB
1316:If Octavian finds out Ella has the Sibylline Books memorized…” Percy ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1317:Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1318:I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world. ~ Mira Nair, #NFDB
1319:I have an obsession with books about kids with Asperger's syndrome. ~ Donald Glover, #NFDB
1320:I'm always surprised when large numbers of people buy my books. ~ Patricia Cornwell, #NFDB
1321:I'm starting to feel like a character from one of these books ~ Christina Tetreault, #NFDB
1322:I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1323:I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
1324:I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books. ~ Jan Karon, #NFDB
1325:It had come about exactly in the way things happened in books. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1326:I think kids will read more good books than we can possibly produce. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1327:I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1328:I've read some scripts, but I don't read as many books as I should. ~ Stephen Dorff, #NFDB
1329:Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1330:Not all friendships are meant to last, I suppose. Not ever with books ~ Erin Wunker, #NFDB
1331:One does not simply read books...one climbs inside them and lives there ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1332:our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry -women of color ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
1333:Perhaps the book opened a door; books have a way of causing ripples. ~ Erika Swyler, #NFDB
1334:Secondhand books are haunted, according to him. Ghosts in the pages. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
1335:Some books are undeservedly forgotten, none are undeservedly remembered ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
1336:The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1337:The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1338:There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
1339:There are no girl books. There are no boy books. There are just books. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
1340:Unlike life, when books become meaningless, they are making a point. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1341:We are as liable to be corrupted by books as we are by companions. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
1342:We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf. ~ Chris Cleave, #NFDB
1343:Where books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too. ~ Joel C Rosenberg, #NFDB
1344:Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1345:You are not educated if all you have achieved is the study of ten books. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
1346:You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
1347:A great set point here is to read at least two books per month. 7. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
1348:All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
1349:All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
1350:All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1351:Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1352:A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1353:Because to the poor, books are not diversions. Book are siege weapons. ~ Joe Queenan, #NFDB
1354:BIG books are better. There, I said it and it's true. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
1355:Books are beautiful for reading and they're also beautiful for holding. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1356:Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun ~ Saul Williams, #NFDB
1357:Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
1358:Books can tell you almost everything that mankind knows. Or imagines. ~ Liz Braswell, #NFDB
1359:Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. ~ Elif Shafak, #NFDB
1360:Books have a way of making you home sick for a place you've never been to. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1361:Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
1362:Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1363:Day, after day, after glorious day, I was falling in love with books. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1364:For Marc, books were objects of beauty, to be loved, not just read. ~ Martin Edwards, #NFDB
1365:God, that means she’s written more books than she’s read,’ said Ruth. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
1366:good for my thighs; all this humping of books, good for my biceps. ~ Carole Matthews, #NFDB
1367:Here's to the good Nuns for telling me what books NOT to read! ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
1368:Here's to the good nuns for telling me what books NOT to read! ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
1369:He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1370:History has shown that the less people read, the more books they buy. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1371:I am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned. ~ Christopher Marlowe, #NFDB
1372:I collect new books the way my girlfriends buy designer handbags. ~ Jennifer Kaufman, #NFDB
1373:If children are studying the 20th century, I'm in their text books. ~ Paul McCartney, #NFDB
1374:If you are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1375:I have everything I need here,” he said. “Warmth. Drink. Food. Books. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
1376:I'm constantly reading books on God or the absence of God and atheism. ~ Liam Neeson, #NFDB
1377:I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate. ~ James Herbert, #NFDB
1378:In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1379:In particular, we’re never going to run out of new books to write. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1380:I only know how to read because I steal books from rich people. ~ Natalie C Anderson, #NFDB
1381:I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
1382:It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1383:It's not the principles that kill you in the end. It's the books. ~ Michael Swanwick, #NFDB
1384:It’s to read books,” Kevin said softly. “All the books in the world. ~ Debora Geary, #NFDB
1385:I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
1386:... judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart ... ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
1387:Learning comes from books; penetration of a mystery from suffering. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1388:Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives. ~ V S Naipaul, #NFDB
1389:Nobody ought to write books before they’re thirty. I hate precocity. ~ Nancy Mitford, #NFDB
1390:No CEO examining books today understands what the hell is going on. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
1391:Not all books are for all people. We read for different reasons. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1392:One of the books that has had the most influence on me is a little manual called , #NFDB
1393:Only recently had he realized the way books could give a person wings. ~ Silas House, #NFDB
1394:Piles of books on the floor made walking a straight line difficult. ~ Maria V Snyder, #NFDB
1395:Quality literature, such as the Great Books, the Harvard Classics, ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1396:Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
1397:The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed. ~ Patrick Henry, #NFDB
1398:The biggest critics of my books are the people who never read them. ~ Jackie Collins, #NFDB
1399:The fate of books depends on the understanding of those who read them. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1400:Their books they read, and their beads they told. ~ G. P. R. James, The Monks of Old, #NFDB
1401:There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
1402:There is nothing stopping a beautiful girl from facing her books ~ Ay ba mi Ade ba y, #NFDB
1403:There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it. . . ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1404:Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1405:To be making books for children is to be in a sort of state of grace. ~ Arnold Lobel, #NFDB
1406:To live in books is cowardly---but people are not worth investigation. ~ Lily Koppel, #NFDB
1407:What is more important than reading books; is reading people's faces. ~ Anis Mansour, #NFDB
1408:Where are my two precious human books so I may turn their pages, aye? ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1409:Where books are burned, in the end, people will eventually burn too ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1410:Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other? ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1411:Why can´t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other? ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1412:Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other? ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1413:Without his books, his room felt like a body with its hearts cut out. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1414:68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher. ~ Tricia Goyer, #NFDB
1415:All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
1416:And yet, in books were comfort and diversion; and they were wanted! ~ John Galsworthy, #NFDB
1417:As far as books getting turned into movies, I fared very, very well. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
1418:Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
1419:Blessed books—they’re a place to be alone, and no one else can come in. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
1420:Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable. ~ John Edgar Wideman, #NFDB
1421:Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1422:Books keep the mind active. Without them, complacency is a huge danger. ~ Carl Deuker, #NFDB
1423:Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1424:Books open windows to the world and have the power to transform lives. ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
1425:Books were dangerous things filled with uncontrolled words. ~ Gregory Scott Katsoulis, #NFDB
1426:Do you have any books the faculty doesn't particularly recommend? ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1427:Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1428:I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1429:I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end. ~ Richard Brautigan, #NFDB
1430:If we expose kids to books and art, nothing but good can come from it. ~ Kevin Henkes, #NFDB
1431:If you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't fuck them. ~ John Waters, #NFDB
1432:I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
1433:I'm a Christian, and those beliefs occasionally come out in the books. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1434:I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
1435:I remembered less from my own life than I did from the books I read. ~ Melissa Albert, #NFDB
1436:I shrugged and smelled the wine. It was as addictive as old books. ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
1437:I think my funny books are my favorites because I like to laugh so much. ~ Dav Pilkey, #NFDB
1438:I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
1439:It’s a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place, ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1440:I would be as free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1441:I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
1442:Lending books to other people is merely a shrewd form of housecleaning. ~ Joe Queenan, #NFDB
1443:Letters are nothing but dead signs, and books are their coffins. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
1444:Master books, but do not let them master you. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
1445:Maybe we should just wander around other countries carrying books. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, #NFDB
1446:Never read any book that is not a year old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, In Praise of Books, #NFDB
1447:No one could be expected to give up wine and books at the same time. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
1448:Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1449:Of what use is a book that never transports us beyond all books ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1450:Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1451:Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1452:side by side, together and miles apart, we are deep in our books. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
1453:Sparky's the only guy I know who's written more books than he's read. ~ Ernie Harwell, #NFDB
1454:Suddenly, books are arriving every day! "So many books, so little time. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
1455:The art of medicine cannot be inherited, nor can it be copied from books ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
1456:The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
1457:The great thing about book burnings is, they still have to buy the books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1458:The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
1459:There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.” Shmuel ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
1460:there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
1461:These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1462:The secret ingredient in my books is, there has never been a villain. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1463:We go to school to learn what books to read for the rest of our lives. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
1464:Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1465:Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous—they contain ideas. ~ Pete Hautman, #NFDB
1466:A city without books, a city without a library is like a graveyard. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1467:Are you kidding? I'm supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin? ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1468:As far as I can see, a man who's fond of books never need starve! ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
1469:Blessed books--they're a place to be alone, and no one else can come in. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
1470:Books are enchanted. Books help me travel.
Books help me breathe. ~ Margarita Engle,#NFDB
1471:Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1472:Books do not simply happen to people. People also happen to books. ~ Louise Rosenblatt, #NFDB
1473:Books have always had their roots in other books, and they still do. ~ Dubravka Ugre i, #NFDB
1474:Books, Perry, books! The backbone of civilization. And our homework.” I ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1475:books, the only remedy for countless, undefined afflictions of the soul. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
1476:Books’ve got to have a name on ’em so’s everyone knows who’s guilty. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1477:distringit librorum multitudo
(the abundance of books is distraction) ~ Seneca,#NFDB
1478:Does world seem black and white to you? Read books. You will see color. ~ Ksenia Anske, #NFDB
1479:Eventually, as my books became best-sellers, the nickels pile up and one ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1480:First published in the US by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
1481:Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1482:Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose. ~ Matthew Specktor, #NFDB
1483:Great books live longer than people.
They are gonna bury us all. ~ Patricia Nedelea,#NFDB
1484:How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1485:I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1486:I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies. ~ Anthony Minghella, #NFDB
1487:If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books. ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
1488:If you do not keep on sorting your books, your books unsort themselves ~ Georges Perec, #NFDB
1489:If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em! ~ John Waters, #NFDB
1490:I keep coming back to certain books, and you—to try to find myself again ~ John Geddes, #NFDB
1491:I'm a fan of comic books. I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. I'm all that stuff. ~ John Barrowman, #NFDB
1492:indictments in the Prophetic Books, to the smooth elegance of Luke, to the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1493:I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem ~ Luc Sante, #NFDB
1494:It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1495:Last year I think I made more from my Image books than anywhere else. ~ Robert Kirkman, #NFDB
1496:Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books. ~ Carolyn Hart, #NFDB
1497:Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1498:Money for the library? What’s that going to do? We need jobs, not books. ~ Vicki Myron, #NFDB
1499:Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves. ~ Shelby Foote, #NFDB
1500:Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks. ~ Richard Curtis, #NFDB
244 Integral Yoga
123 Poetry
66 Yoga
56 Occultism
52 Fiction
45 Christianity
33 Philosophy
25 Mysticism
16 Psychology
9 Education
7 Sufism
7 Hinduism
6 Philsophy
5 Baha i Faith
3 Theosophy
3 Mythology
3 Islam
2 Integral Theory
1 Zen
1 Thelema
1 Science
1 Cybernetics
1 Buddhism
1 Alchemy
165 The Mother
100 Satprem
51 Sri Aurobindo
46 H P Lovecraft
43 Sri Ramakrishna
31 Saint Augustine of Hippo
28 William Wordsworth
28 Nolini Kanta Gupta
27 Aleister Crowley
18 Jorge Luis Borges
17 A B Purani
15 William Butler Yeats
15 Swami Vivekananda
14 Robert Browning
11 Franz Bardon
11 Carl Jung
10 Walt Whitman
9 Aldous Huxley
8 Percy Bysshe Shelley
8 Nirodbaran
7 Saint Teresa of Avila
7 John Keats
7 George Van Vrekhem
7 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Swami Krishnananda
6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 Rabindranath Tagore
6 James George Frazer
6 Baha u llah
5 William Blake
5 Plato
5 Kabir
4 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
4 Jordan Peterson
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Rudolf Steiner
3 Plotinus
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Muhammad
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Alice Bailey
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Patanjali
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Bulleh Shah
2 Anonymous
46 Lovecraft - Poems
42 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
28 Wordsworth - Poems
21 City of God
17 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
16 Magick Without Tears
15 Yeats - Poems
15 Labyrinths
14 Browning - Poems
13 Questions And Answers 1953
11 Liber ABA
11 Agenda Vol 10
11 Agenda Vol 03
10 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
10 Talks
10 Questions And Answers 1954
10 Agenda Vol 01
9 The Synthesis Of Yoga
9 The Perennial Philosophy
9 Questions And Answers 1956
9 On Education
9 Agenda Vol 02
8 Whitman - Poems
8 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
8 The Bible
8 Shelley - Poems
8 Questions And Answers 1955
8 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
8 Agenda Vol 08
7 Words Of Long Ago
7 The Practice of Magical Evocation
7 Raja-Yoga
7 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
7 Keats - Poems
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
7 Agenda Vol 12
7 Agenda Vol 04
6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Golden Bough
6 Tagore - Poems
6 Emerson - Poems
5 Twilight of the Idols
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Some Answers From The Mother
5 Letters On Yoga IV
5 Letters On Poetry And Art
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
5 Bhakti-Yoga
5 Agenda Vol 13
5 Agenda Vol 11
5 Agenda Vol 07
5 Agenda Vol 06
5 Agenda Vol 05
5 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
4 The Way of Perfection
4 The Red Book Liber Novus
4 Songs of Kabir
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Letters On Yoga II
4 Initiation Into Hermetics
4 Agenda Vol 09
3 Walden
3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 Quran
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
3 Jerusalum
3 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
3 Dark Night of the Soul
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Borges - Poems
3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
3 Amrita Gita
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Problems of Philosophy
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Song of Myself
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Selected Fictions
2 Record of Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Essays On The Gita
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Aion
00.00 - Publishers Note, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have pleasure in presenting the Second Volume of the Collected Works of Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. The six books in this volume were originally published separately. The Essays are mainly concerned with Mysticism and Poetry.
We are happy to note that the Government of India have given to our Centre of Education a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the format of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
By the middle of 1926 I had become aware of the work of Aleister Crowley, for whom I have a tremendous respect. I studied as many of his writings as I could gain access to, making copious notes, and later acted for several years as his secretary, having joined him in Paris on October 12, 1928, a memorable day in my life.
All sorts of books have been written on the Qabalah, some poor, some few others extremely good. But I came to feel the need for what might be called a sort of Berlitz handbook, a concise but comprehensive introduction, studded with diagrams and tables of easily understood definitions and correspondences to simplify the student's grasp of so complicated and abstruse a subject.
During a short retirement in North Devon in 1931, I began to amalgamate my notes. It was out of these that A Garden of Pomegranates gradually emerged. I unashamedly admit that my book contains many direct plagiarisms from Crowley, Waite, Eliphas Levi, and D. H. Lawrence. I had incorporated numerous fragments from their works into my note books without citing individual references to the various sources from which I condensed my notes.
Prior to the closing down of the Mandrake Press in London about 1930-31, I was employed as company secretary for a while. Along with several Crowley books, the Mandrake Press published a lovely little monogram by D. H. Lawrence entitled "Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." My own copy accompanied me on my travels for long years. Only recently did I discover that it had been lost. I hope that any one of my former patients who had borrowed it will see fit to return it to me forthwith.
The last chapter of A Garden deals with the Way of Return. It used almost entirely Crowley's concept of the Path as described in his superb essay "One Star in Sight." In addition to this, I borrowed extensively from Lawrence's Apropos. Somehow, they all fitted together very nicely. In time, all these variegated notes were incorporated into the text without acknowledgment, an oversight which I now feel sure would be forgiven, since I was only twenty-four at the time.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar was on the threshold of youth. He had become the pet of the women of the village. They loved to hear him talk, sing, or recite from the holy books. They enjoyed his knack of imitating voices. Their woman's instinct recognized the innate purity and guilelessness of this boy of clear skin, flowing hair, beaming eyes, smiling face, and inexhaustible fun. The pious elderly women looked upon him as Gopala, the Baby Krishna, and the younger ones saw in him the youthful Krishna of Vrindavan. He himself so idealized the love of the gopis for Krishna that he sometimes yearned to be born as a woman, if he must be born again, in order to be able to love Sri Krishna with all his heart and soul.
--- COMING TO CALCUTTA
--
There came to Dakshineswar at this time a brahmin woman who was to play an important part in Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual unfoldment. Born in East Bengal, she was an adept in the Tantrik and Vaishnava methods of worship. She was slightly over fifty years of age, handsome, and garbed in the orange robe of a nun. Her sole possessions were a few books and two pieces of wearing-cloth.
Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
--
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
--
Now one with Radha, he manifested the great ecstatic love, the mahabhava, which had found in her its fullest expression. Later Sri Ramakrishna said: "The manifestation in the same individual of the nineteen different kinds of emotion for God is called, in the books on bhakti, mahabhava. An ordinary man takes a whole lifetime to express even a single one of these. But in this body [meaning himself] there has been a complete manifestation of all nineteen."
The love of Radha is the precursor of the resplendent vision of Sri Krishna, and Sri Ramakrishna soon experienced that vision. The enchanting ing form of Krishna appeared to him and merged in his person. He became Krishna; he totally forgot his own individuality and the world; he saw Krishna in himself and in the universe. Thus he attained to the fulfilment of the worship of the Personal God. He drank from the fountain of Immortal Bliss. The agony of his heart vanished forever. He realized Amrita, Immortality, beyond the shadow of death.
--
Even when man descends from this dizzy height, he is devoid of ideas of "I" and "mine"; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought for the future, and looks with indifference on the present. He surveys everything in the world with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he — that is to say, his body — is worshipped by the good or tormented by the wicked; for he realizes that it is the one Brahman that manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of Light. In the Vedanta books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are born with a special mission for the world can return
from this height to the valleys of normal life. They live and move in the world for the welfare of mankind. They are invested with a supreme spiritual power. A divine glory shines through them.
--
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."
The Knowledge of Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the gods of the different religions are but so many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by human tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
--
Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met for the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as Pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various forms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image worship as idolatry and gave allegorical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orator and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a horror of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant shores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social reforms for India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted form the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the world. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
--
Shivanath, one day, was greatly impressed by the Master's utter simplicity and abhorrence of praise. He was seated with Sri Ramakrishna in the latter's room when several rich men of Calcutta arrived. The Master left the room for a few minutes. In the mean time Hriday, his nephew, began to describe his samadhi to the visitors. The last few words caught the Master's ear as he entered the room. He said to Hriday: "What a mean-spirited fellow you must be to extol me thus before these rich men! You have seen their costly apparel and their gold watches and chains, and your object is to get from them as much money as you can. What do I care about what they think of me? (Turning to the gentlemen) No, my friends, what he has told you about me is not true. It was not love of God that made me absorbed in God and indifferent to external life. I became positively insane for some time. The sadhus who frequented this temple told me to practise many things. I tried to follow them, and the consequence was that my austerities drove me to insanity." This is a quotation from one of Shivanath's books. He took the Master's words literally and failed to see their real import.
Shivanath vehemently criticized the Master for his other-worldly attitude toward his wife. He writes: "Ramakrishna was practically separated from his wife, who lived in her village home. One day when I was complaining to some friends about the virtual widowhood of his wife, he drew me to one side and whispered in my ear: 'Why do you complain? It is no longer possible; it is all dead and gone.' Another day as I was inveighing against this part of his teaching, and also declaring that our program of work in the Brahmo Samaj includes women, that ours is a social and domestic religion, and that we want to give education and social liberty to women, the saint became very much excited, as was his way when anything against his settled conviction was asserted — a trait we so much liked in him — and exclaimed, 'Go, thou fool, go and perish in the pit that your women will dig for you.' Then he glared at me and said: 'What does a gardener do with a young plant? Does he not surround it with a fence, to protect it from goats and cattle? And when the young plant has grown up into a tree and it can no longer be injured by cattle, does he not remove the fence and let the tree grow freely?' I replied, 'Yes, that is the custom with gardeners.' Then he remarked, 'Do the same in your spiritual life; become strong, be full-grown; then you may seek them.' To which I replied, 'I don't agree with you in thinking that women's work is like that of cattle, destructive; they are our associates and helpers in our spiritual struggles and social progress' — a view with which he could not agree, and he marked his dissent by shaking his head. Then referring to the lateness of the hour he jocularly remarked, 'It is time for you to depart; take care, do not be late; otherwise your woman will not admit you into her room.' This evoked hearty laughter."
--
Mahimacharan and Pratap Hazra were two devotees outstanding for their pretentiousness and idiosyncrasies. But the Master showed them his unfailing love and kindness, though he was aware of their shortcomings. Mahimacharan Chakravarty had met the Master long before the arrival of the other disciples. He had had the intention of leading a spiritual life, but a strong desire to acquire name and fame was his weakness. He claimed to have been initiated by Totapuri and used to say that he had been following the path of knowledge according to his guru's instructions. He possessed a large library of English and Sanskrit books. But though he pretended to have read them, most of the leaves were uncut. The Master knew all his limitations, yet enjoyed listening to him recite from the Vedas and other scriptures. He would always exhort Mahima to meditate on the meaning of the scriptural texts and to practise spiritual discipline.
Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created obstructions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
--
It took the group only a few days to become adjusted to the new environment. The Holy Mother, assisted by Sri Ramakrishna's niece, Lakshmi Devi, and a few woman devotees, took charge of the cooking for the Master and his attendants. Surendra willingly bore the major portion of the expenses, other householders contributing according to their means. Twelve disciples were constant attendants of the Master: Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Jogin, Latu, Tarak, the-elder Gopal, Kali, Sashi, Sarat, and the younger Gopal. Sarada, Harish, Hari, Gangadhar, and Tulasi visited the Master from time to time and practised sadhana at home. Narendra, preparing for his law examination, brought his books to the garden house in order to continue his studies during the infrequent spare moments. He encouraged his brother disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and other spiritual disciplines. They all forgot their relatives and their
worldly duties.
0.00 - Publishers Note C, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of three books: Light of Lights, Eight Talks and Sweet Mother; there are also translations from Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali and French. These, along with the translations of the Dhammapada and Charyapada, have been mostly serialised in Ashram journals.
His original writings in French have also been included here. We are grateful to the Government of India for a grant towards meeting the cost of publication of this volume.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Fourscore and eleven books wrote I; in each did I
expound THE GREAT WORK fully, from The
--
The fourscore-and-eleven books do not, we think,
refer to the ninety-one chapters of this little master-
--
and create no new, so that, as it were, the books are balanced. WHile you have
either a credit or a debit, you are still in account with the universe.
--
AIWASS for the understanding of the Holy books
of {Theta-Epsilon-Lambda-Eta-Mu-Alpha}?
--
communicates to him the Holy books.
Paragraphs 3 and 4 are explained by the 13th
--
books BY ALEISTER CROWLEY
mentioned in the Commentary
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
This period of outer retirement was one of intense Sadhana and of intellectual activity it was also one during which he acted on external events, though he was not dedicated outwardly to a public cause. About his own retirement he writes: "But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he [Sri Aurobindo] had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he attained to it, he used at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world forces."[1]
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
In his three earlier books he has written of the Active Night, of Sense and of
Spirit; he now proposes to deal with the Passive Night, in the same order. He has
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I find some solace in books, how can I say that nothing sustains me and that I am plunged in the divine life
through an absolute emptiness?
--
become restless. So I think it is better to choose one's books
carefully rather than stop reading altogether.
--
have their books.
One must have a lot of patience with young children, and repeat
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How should we read your books and the books of Sri
Aurobindo so that they may enter into our consciousness
--
To read my books is not difficult because they are written in the
simplest language, almost the spoken language. To get help from
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must
meditate on what you have read, reflect on a thought until you
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
finish one of his books, I feel that I have gained nothing,
learned nothing new - that it was a waste of time.
--
It seems that a list of books (English classics) was
sent to You for Your approval, but that You wish only
--
made is: you must read the books and study the teaching.
29 July 1964
--
Mother, I have started reading French books - X has
given me a list.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Your books before going to bed at night. But now I have
lost the habit and I do not even go to the Samadhi very
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I dont know to whom I was mentioning this today (I think it was for a Birthday3 No, I dont know now. It was to someone who told me he was 18 years old. I said that between the ages of 18 and 20, I had attained a constant and conscious union with the Divine Presence and that I had done this ALL ALONE, without ANYONES help, not even books. When a little later I chanced upon Vivekanandas Raja Yoga, it really seemed so wonderful to me that someone could explain something to me! And it helped me realize in only a few months what would have otherwise taken years.
I met a man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who told me of the Gita. There was a French translation of it (a rather poor one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, Read the Gita (this translation of the Gita which really wasnt worth much but it was the only one available at the timein those days I wouldnt have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and well, Sri Aurobindo hadnt done his yet!). He said, Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within. That was all. Read it with THAT knowledgewith the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God, the God within you. Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Of Mother's French translation of these two books by Sri Aurobindo.
***
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There (gesture above the head), everything has been resolved, I could write books on how to resolve this or that, how the synthesis is made, etc., but here (the body) I live this synthesis stumblingly. The two coexist, but it is still not THAT (gesture, hands clasped together, pointing upwards).
(silence)
0 1960-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Publisher and friend are here one in telling you that LOrpailleur is a beautiful book whose richness and force have struck me even more this time than before when I read the first version. I cannot tell you how much your Job is my brotherin his darkness as in his light. The joy, the wild, irrepressible joy that furtively yearns and at times bursts forth, embracing all, this joy at the heart of the book burns the reader for a few, in any case, who are prepared to be inflamed. In the end, I cant say if LOrpailleur will or will not be noticed, if the critics will or will not bestow an article, a comment, an echo upon it, if bookstores will or will not sell it (poor orpailleur!). But what I know is that for a few readers2, 3, 10 perhapsyour book will be the cry that will rip them from their sleep forever. To your song, another song in themselves will respond. Where, how shall this concert finish? Who knowsanything is possible!
My words are a bit disjointed but Im not in the mood to give an articulate discourse. Which is a way of saying, once again, how happy I amand grateful.
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What I call studying is to take Sri Aurobindos books, where he quotes or speaks of one thing or another, then have the corresponding bookswhen he quotes something, you must take the book it corresponds to; when he speaks of something, you must study the writings on that subject. This is what I call studying. Then, after having read the corresponding works, you compare them with what Sri Aurobindo has said, and in this way there may be a beginning of understanding. If someone is very studious, he can review all that has ever been written or taught by going through Sri Aurobindos books. I mean this for someone who loves working.
I SEE this state of mind, this mental attitude Oh! Its its so repugnant. People are so afraid of taking sides, so afraid of appearing biased; they are so afraid of appearing to have faith, so afraid Oh, its disgraceful.
0 1960-08-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
to other books
more beautiful still.
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Just at the doorstep, as She is leaving, Mother tells the disciple that She had seen three books, a trilogy, and the third one would be about Her. And She adds:)
Sri Aurobindo came during my japa to tell me, I will help him all through.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There was a considerable library in the studio; one whole end was given over to the librarymore than two thousand books belonging to my brother. There were even the complete works of several classical writers. And I had my entire collection of the Revue Cosmique, and my post card collection (it was down below)mainly post cards of Algeria, Tlemcen, nearly 200 of them. But there were five years of the Revue Cosmique. And written in such a French! How funny it was!
Theons wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a Frenchman. Myself, I never use a dictionary, she would say, I dont need a dictionary. But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English words that mustnt be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.
There was this Themanlys, my brothers schoolmate; he wrote books, but he was lazy-minded and didnt want to work! So he had passed that job on to me. But it was impossible, you couldnt do a thing with it. And what words! Theon would invent words for the subtle organs, the inner senses; he had found a word for each thinga frightful barbarism! And I took care of everything: I found the printer, corrected the proofsall the work for a long time.
They were stories, narratives, an entire initiation in the form of stories. There was a lot in it, really a lot. She knew many things. But it was presented in such a way that it was unreadable.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I listen, I answer. Its not satisfactory! I told them. But theyve kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): Dont you want us to destroy something? I got angry. But it was This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I didnt movedidnt movelike a a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comesfrom others (theres not just one, you see, there are many): How about a good flood? A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram! Its no good, I said. But maybe thats whats responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!
But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For a while, there was a Muslim girl close to me (not a believer, but her origins were Muslim; in other words, she wasnt at all Christian) who had a special fondness for Santa Claus! She had seen pictures of him, read some books, etc. Then one year while she was here, she got it into her head that Santa Claus had to bring me something. He has to bring you something for Christmas, she told me.
Try, I replied.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In ten months Ive had time to read two books!
It doesnt matter! Put your ideas down on paper. There are things you already know you want to say. Put it all on paper. I assure you it will do you good. I have seen it several times recently and I wanted to tell you: begin your book on Sri Aurobindo! Begin anywhere at all, at any point the middle, the end, the beginningit doesnt matter! Whatever you feel you have to say, write it down. Its good to keep yourself occupied like that now, during this period. And for our next meetings you can work a little on The Synthesis of Yoga and we will look at it together instead of you always making me talk! I have increased your work, there will be no end to it. If it goes on like this, there will never be an end!
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres an American living in Madras, a rather important man, it seems, and an intimate friend of Kennedy, the new President. He has read and reread all of Sri Aurobindos books and is extremely interested. He wrote to Kennedy that he would like him to come here so he can bring him to the Ashram. This man has posed a very interesting question, drawing an analogy. Deep in a forest, a deer goes to quench its thirst; no one is aware of it, yet someone who has made a special study of deer hunting would know by the tracks that the deer had passed bynot only what particular type of deer, but its age, size, sex, etc. Similarly, there must be people with a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunters, who can detect, perceive, that a person is in touch with the Supermind, while ordinary people know nothing about it and wouldnt notice. So he asks, I would like to know by what signs such a person can be recognized?
It is a very intelligent question.
0 1961-02-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anyway, in reply to this nonsense, I have said: Your error, to be precise, is that you go to the Theosophical Society, for example, with the same opening as to the Christian religion or to the Buddhist doctrine or with which you read one of Sri Aurobindos booksand as a result, you are plunged into a confusion and a muddle and you dont understand anything about anything.
And then the reply came to me very strongly; something took hold of me and I was, so to say, obliged to write: What Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.2
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The following is the exact text referred to, an extract from one of Sri Aurobindo's letters: 'I don't believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhereor it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the "religions" and is the reason of their failure....'
2.10.1934
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could findextraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read but he told them as if they were his own, as if hed had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
But one day when my brother had disobeyed him (Matteo must have been ten or eleven, and I perhaps nine or ten), I came into the dining room and saw my father sitting on a sofa with my brother across his knees; he had pulled down his trousers and was spanking him, I dont know what for. It wasnt a very serious spanking, but still. I came in, drew myself up to my full height and said, Papa, if you ever do that again, I am leaving this house! And with such authority, mon petit! He stopped and never did it again.
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Again this morning, between 3 and 4 oclock, Sri Aurobindo seemed to be showing me around the world of expression. I see a host of people I dont know (and some I do). There are immense roomsnot libraries (there are no books) yet everything is there, arranged and organized, in great open roofless rooms. And I walk along with Sri Aurobindo as he passes from one person to another, one group to another, one place to another, one room to another and he coordinates it all. To some he says a few words; others show him things. And its all for the background of your book, for it to be filled with all thisnot explicitly, but potentially for the Force to be there.
And the clarity! It is limpid-an atmosphere so transparent, so limpid, so clear! There are people of today, people of times past, people of forever. They are like living intelligences gathering together the earths memories. Day after day, day after day, Sri Aurobindo has been showing this to me.
--
(A little later Mother begins to sign some 300 books. She remarks:)
I have a convenient signature.
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nowadays I always spend a part of the night in the realm of expression, a realm where generally I never used to go at all. Its a very lovely place, very human in the sense that its not a scene from Nature: there are huge rooms and great, highly intellectual arrangements; yet its very lovely, with such a clear and limpid atmosphereall in clear shades (Mother gives up trying to describe it). Oh, its so luminous and lovely, very well organized, as far as the eye can see; it seems as big as the earth. The rooms are roofless, just imagine! Huge roofless rooms flooded with light, and transparent partitions. And the people inside seem very, very awarenot a lot of people, but extremely studious and attentive, and they are creating arrangements of things. They must be people writing books. They are making compositionsoh, if you knew how lovely it was! Its as if they were taking colors and more or less geometrical forms and placing them in relation to one another. There are huge pigeonholes where everything is in order, and yet without doors, not closed upwide open and still completely protected. An interesting place. I dont usually go there Ive gone maybe two or three times in my life, without paying much attention but lately, because of this book you are writing, Sri Aurobindo is taking me there all the time.
And there are people with no countryhe takes me to a place where the people have no country, no race, no special costume they seem very universal. And they move around harmoniously, silently, as though they were gliding and with precision, everything is extremely precise. Some of them have even shown me things: there were some lovely colored papers! But these colors are unearthly, somehow transparent. They were arranging it all, demonstrating and explaining to me how it has to be arranged to give the maximum effect.
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (especially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a Frenchman asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
When Richard had finished his work, he returned to France with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo and a completely superficial impression of him, yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW (he hadnt at all understood the man that Sri Aurobindo was, he hadnt felt the presence of an Avatar, but he had sensed that he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion, because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant without many spiritual realizations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rollands.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and its difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting than any novel imaginable.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an ABSTRACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the abstract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
Amen.
0 1962-02-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All sorts of things. But quite often we are looking for things related to expression sometimes images, sometimes sentences, sometimes. I have told you I frequently meet you in a kind of library without books. Its very interesting. It is open on top, below too, and no walls; it is extremely spacious, certainly almost as vast as the earth. And there are pigeonholes that seem to hang in the air, with all kinds of things filed in them. We are often sorting through these pigeonholes to find certain txtsideas, I mean. Ideas, explanations, sometimes memories, all kinds of things. This world is mental but very luminous and clear; full of clarity, perfectly ordered, without confusion, and all open. Wide open.
I frequently find you there.
0 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because it comes from very highits not from here, not at all; it was decided on high, and a long, LONG time ago. Before you came here, I was constantly feeling. Besides, it hadnt been so long without Sri Aurobindo; when Sri Aurobindo was here I had nothing to say, and if I did speak it was almost by chance. Thats all. What had to be said was said by him. And when he left and I began to read his books (which I hadnt read before), I told myself, Well, what do you know! There was absolutely no need for me to say anything. And I had less and less desire to speak. The minute I met you, I began to get interested. Ah, I thought, collaboration! Something interesting can be done.
None of this is random chance. Its not that were taking advantage of circumstances, not at all; it was DECREED.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With the work on the Bulletin and other Ashram publications, translating Sri Aurobindo, working on this Agenda, writing his own books and doing many hours of japa, plus other tasks besides, Satprem had been working something like fifteen hours a day (except when he ran off somewhere and even then ...) for eight years nonstop.
***
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didnt understand at all. I had some history booksyou know, the text books they give you to learn history. Well, Id read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and Id see other words or even pictures. I hadnt the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: They talk nonsense in history, you knowit is LIKE THIS; it isnt like that: it is LIKE THIS! And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened. And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arcmany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I see a psychological book. I mean, someone doing research on himself, seeking to understand. Not a philosophical but a psychological booksomeone whos experimenting on himself.
What!
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Heres what he says: I read with great interest the Introduction to your new book on Shri Aurobindo. I must confess that if I have been late in replying it is because I am still very hesitant. The text reads well, but it leaves doubts as to how well the book that follows will conform to the norms of our Spiritual Masters series. I greatly fear that we will both end up disappointed again. The book you want to write is, I feel, very personal, whereas this series must consist of books which are essentially expositions, introductions, tools of information: etc.
(After a silence) I am getting a sort of indication: when I turn the beacon to this side, the resistance suddenly seems to give waythere must be a means of making it give way.
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So now I dont mind finishing The Synthesis. I was a little bothered because I have no other books by Sri Aurobindo to translate that can help me in my sadhana: there was only The Synthesis. As I said, it always came right on time, just when it was needed for a particular experience.
When this new translation is finished (because I know Savitri, I know what it is), I know that when its finished either Ill be there or else things will take a very long time.1
All his other books that could help me are already translated. And with Savitri, the idea isnt to make a translation, but to SEE. To try something. To give me the daily experience of that contact.
I had some magnificent experiences when I read it the first time (two years ago, I believe). Wonderful, wonderful experiences! And since then, each time I read those lines, the same thing happensnot the same experience, but I come in contact with the same realm.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a person I wont name who has read Sri Aurobindos books and thought he understood them. He has been following a yogic discipline (anyway, he thought he was doing yoga) and he pulled down the Force. The Force responded (Mother laughs). He wound up with a headache! He got frightened and wrote to me in these exact words: This Force is the Lords Force (which is true, quite true), and it has turned into fear. So (Mother laughs) fear is the Lords principal perversion. There you have it. He read in books that the Lord is behind everything, that there is nothing that isnt the Lord; so its the Lord who has become perverted in His manifestation, naturally. The Force of the Lord came to help him and was changed into fear, so the Lords principal perversion is fear!
If you read that, youd say he was going off his rocker.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Beyond the musical zone lies thought: thoughts, organized thoughts for plays and books, abstractions for philosophies. But what used to interest me particularly were the combinations that give birth to novels or plays.
That is the third zone.
--
Thus we have form, expressed in painting, sculpture or architecture; sound, expressed in musical themes; and thought, expressed in books, plays, novels, or even in philosophical and other kinds of intellectual theories (thats where you can send out ideas that will affect the whole world, because they influence receptive brains in any land, and are expressed by corresponding thoughts in the appropriate language). And above this zone, free of form, sound and though, is the play of forces appearing as colored lights. And when you go there and have the power, you can combine those forces so that they eventually materialize as creations on earth (it takes some time, its rarely immediate).
But those great waves of music you hear, which you said were beyond soundsare they part of that domain of luminous vibrations?
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I woke up after two thousand years with a rejuvenated body. It was a very amusing little story. And I say vision, but you dont watch these things like a movie: you LIVE them. I somehow extricated myself from that sort of sealed grotto, and where Pondicherry had once stood (it had been completely razed), I came upon some people working. They were VERY DIFFERENT, and quite bizarre. I myself must have looked funny, with a kind of costume totally alien to their epoch. (My clothing had also survived the destruction the whole thing was right out of a storybook!) So of course I attracted some curiosity and they tried to make me understand. Ah, yes I know one of them said (I understood them because I could understand their thoughtsthose two thousand years had enabled me to read peoples minds), and they led me to a very old sage, a wise old fellow. I spoke to him and he began leafing through all kinds of books (he had many, many books), and suddenly he exclaimed, Ah, French! An ancient language, you see (Mother laughs).
It was very funny. I told the story to Sri Aurobindo, and he had a good laugh.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was in both French and English. He called it Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy. It was the work of a certain French metaphysician who was well known around the turn of the centuryhis name began with a B. He met Theon in Egypt when Theon was with Blavatski; they started a magazine with an ancient Egyptian name (I cant recall what it was), and then he told Theon (Theon must have already known French) to publish a Cosmic Review and the Cosmic books. And this B. is the one who formulated all this gobbledygook.
There used to be the name of the printer and the year it was printed, but its not there any more.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what made him lose his eyesight, you know; his eyes were overstrained. I know its due to that, because I heard him say so. Once, they had brought him a stack of books to sign and other things and, unaware that he could be heard, he exclaimed, Oh, they want to make me blind!1 Thats how I knew his eyes were tired. He was indeed losing his sight. At the end, he couldnt see a thing, he had to look at very close range.
So I am not giving in.
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it teaches me English without books! Now, whenever I have to write a letter, all the words come by themselves: the CONTENT of the word (just as I told you for moment and instant), now it works the same way with all words! Yesterday I wrote something in English for a doctor here (Mother looks for a paper): The world progresses so rapidly that we must be ready at any moment to over pass what we knew in order to know better. And you know, I never think: it just comes, either the sound or the written word (it depends on the case: now Ill see the written words, now Ill hear the sound). For instance, the word advance came first, and with it came quick, quickly, repeatedly [the world advances so quickly]. Then came progress, and quickly was out of the picture; and suddenly rapidly came forward. So I understood how it worked, how it works for all words! I understood: progress (the idea or inner meaning of progress) calls for rapidly; and advance calls for quickly. Putting it like this sounds like splitting hairs, but when I saw it, it was positively irrefutable! The word was alive, its content was alive, and along with it was its friend, the word that went with it; and the word that wasnt its friend was not to be seen, it wasnt in the mood! Oh, it was so funny! For that alone it is worth the trouble.
I have made some experiments with French too. I wrote something: Pour chacun, le plus important est de savoir si on appartient au passe qui se perpetue, au present qui sepuise, lavenir qui veut natre. [The most important point for everyone is to know whether he belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born.] I gave it to Zhe didnt understand. So I told him, It doesnt mean our past, our present or our future. I wrote this when I was in that state [the experience Mother told at the beginning of this conversation], and it was in connection with a very sweet old lady who has just left her body. This is what I said to her. Everybody had been expecting her departure for more than a month or two, but I said, You will see, she is going to last; she will last for at least another month or two. Because she knows how to live within, outside her body, and the body lives on out of habit, without jerks and jolts. That was her condition, and it could last a very long time. They had announced she would leave within two days, but I said, Its not true. I know her well, in the sense that she had come out of her body and there was a link with me. And I said to her, What do you care! (though she wasnt at all worried, she was staying peacefully with me), The whole point is to know whether one belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born. Sometimes what WE call the past is right here, its the future trying to be born; sometimes what WE call the present is something in advance, something that came ahead of time; but sometimes also its something that came late, that is still part of all that is to disappear I saw it all: people, things, circumstances, everything through that perception, the vibration that would go on transforming itself, the vibration that would exhaust itself and disappear, the vibration that, though manifested for a long time, would be entitled to continue, to persist that changes all notions! It was so interesting! So I wrote it down as it waswithout any explanations (you dont feel much like explaining in such a case, the thing is so self-evident!). Poor Z, he stared at meall at sea! So I told him, Dont try to understand. I am not speaking of the past, present and future as we know them, its something else. (Mother laughs)
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Simply for want of training. If you train yourself, you remember quite well. There are small holes in the consciousness, gaps, and when you go through such a gap you forget. You may suddenly get a fleeting impression of something, and then it eludes youoh, its gone! Only, it takes a long time to train yourself; you shouldnt be in a hurry or too busy. I went through it at a time when I was bedridden for five months. I had nothing to do. (You cant keep reading all the timeduring those five months I read some eight hundred books no, nine hundred and fifty! But it tires the eyes.) So the rest of the time (you cant sleep too much either when youre in bed all the time), I trained myself: that was when I learned to have completely conscious nights. But its a discipline. When you wake up, either in the middle of the night or in the morning, dont budge, stay absolutely still, concentrated, very silent, and PULL the memory back. For one month, two months, you seem to get nowhere; after six months it begins to work; and eventually you remember everything. At the end, you do the opposite movement, in the sense that whenever you have an interesting dream, you wake up: you learn to wake up in the middle of the night every time you have a vision or a dream, or some activity (there are various cases), so that you can remember, and then you repeat it to your consciousness (once youre awake, you repeat it to yourself two or three or ten times, till youre certain not to forget), and then off you go again.
But you cant do that if, when morning comes, you have to leap out of your bed and attend to fifty thousand pressing matters. It isnt indispensable for the yoga, not at all. Its a hobby, rather, something to amuse yourself with.
0 1963-05-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anyhow it wouldnt have been in their Collection because it has more than 300 pages and the books in their Collection have only 150. But it could have been outside the Collectionwell, it doesnt seem its going to happen. Id be curious to see their criticisms.
Oh, they wont understand anything anyway.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, as long as I dont write, it doesnt matter I dont suppose Im going to write books all the time?!
Next time, Ill give you a bottle of lotion. Before writing, rub yourself with it! (laughter) It keeps you cool.
0 1963-10-05, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I thought it was something in the vital, because all my relationships with the people downstairs, before going back upstairs, were with their character, their vitalnot with material matter but with the character, vital nature. And it was! You could write books: an irony, a sharp perception, fine, delicatepriceless! Its charming, you know: each one with his own little flawthey were all people I know!
But there are some beings that have been in two or three persons: for example, a vital being that went from one person to another (a being I know very well, so I know it happened that way), and what I saw was the BEING, not the different persons. A vital, female-looking being (they take on a sexual appearance when they have been in human beings: they retain the female or male appearance), a female-looking being, and just when the question of preparing my bath arose (always that bath Ill have to find out what it means), she had something very urgent to do, went into her room, then (laughing) came out again a minute later with a dress a sort of green dressgrass green but brightwith an immense train! And she walked past so proudly: Yes, I wanted to show them who I am. What an admirable comedy! If I had the time to write, it could make utterly charming stories.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here is what happened: I do my usual bath of the Lord and it is arranged that, after a time, Champaklal opens the doorwhich signals to me the end of the visit. So I looked at X, just to see (I had looked at him several times before, but there was nothing particular), I looked at him and saw in front of him a sort of mass of substance, not material but responsive to a mental formation, which means that mental thought and will can make this substance take different shapes I know it (Mother makes a gesture of fingering the substance), its very like the sort of substance mediums use for their apparitions (less material, more mental, but anyway the same kind). There was a sort of mass in front of him, which was hiding him; it wasnt luminous, not black either, but dark enough. So I looked at it, STARED at it to see what it was, and as I was staring, I saw that there was a will or an effort to give that mass of substance a shape. It was exactly in front of Xs head and shoulders. And there was a will to give it a shape (gesture of molding). As I stared very carefully, it took the shape of Sri Aurobindos head as it appears in newspapers and magazines (what I call the popular Sri Aurobindo, as he is shown in books), the substance took that form. Immediately I thought (ironic tone), Oh, its the popular form, that doesnt resemble him! And instantly, the substance rearranged itself and took the form of Cartier-Bressons Sri Aurobindo1 (the three-quarter face photo, where he is seated in his armchair). That was better! (Mother holds back a chuckle) It wasnt yet quite good, but anyway it was better (although, mind you, it had neither light nor life: it was mattera subtle matter, of courseput into shape by a mental will). So I began to wonder: Whatever is this?! Does he want me to believe that Sri Aurobindo is in him, or what? Because Xs head and shoulders had completely disappeared, there was nothing left but that. And I thought (not a strong thought, just a reflection): No, its not very good, really not very lifelike! (Mother laughs) Then there was a last attempt and it became very like the photo that was taken when he left his body (that photo which we stood on end and called Meditation), it was very like the photo, (in an ironic tone) a very good likeness. And it stayed. So I thought, Oh yes! This is the photo.
Then I concentrated just a little and thought, Lets see, now. Whom is he trying to delude? And instantly, everything vanished. And I saw X, his head.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That photograph was clearer than the others, less confusedit was clearer. And I looked at all the details, thinking, A pity the boxes werent open, the books could have been seen, it would have looked better. In other words, I looked at the photo attentively and saw all the details, the different intensities of shade and light: it wasnt just a passing glance. Then I went on looking up to the end of the book and gave it to someone to look at. Naturally, the first thing that someone said to me was, You dont quite get an impression of Paris. I said, True, but there was one photo that gave a very good impression of Paris: that of the bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine. He looked surprised; so I said, Of course! I took the book and started turning the pages. I turned all the pagesmy photo wasnt there! So I thought, Ive missed it (I was looking without my magnifying glass), I must have missed it. I took my magnifying glass, turned all the pages starting from the other end, very carefullynothing! No bouquinistes. I turned the pages a third time (Mother laughs), still no bouquinistes! I said to myself, Theres an aberration somewhere something that makes me turn two pages at a time or that veils my sight. So I said, All right, Ill look tomorrow morning, and I put the book aside.
The next morning I was alone, concentrating I concentrated a lot, saying to myself, I do not want to be under an illusion, I do not want to be fooled by something. I had seen the photo as clearly as I saw it, I looked at it for several MINUTES. Which is to say that I am absolutely sure of what I saw.
--
Maybe they intended to include it in the book but didnt? Maybe the photo is with the books publisher? But the photo exists, I saw it materially with these eyes (Mother touches her eyes) and a magnifying glass. Anyway But it isnt in the book.2
(silence)
--
Secondh and booksellers; on the banks of the Seine in Paris, their stalls consist of big wooden boxes.
See the end of this story in Agenda IX, May 22, 1968.
0 1964-09-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I didnt read her books, incidentally.
Oh, I tried several times, but its really all stories, it gets on your nerves.
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres also the story of that poor T. He gathered up from Sri Aurobindos books all the passages in which he says that mind is indispensable to man (Mother laughs), that mind is the means of progress, that without mind life would be incomplete, etc.there are many such passages, of course! And he forgot all the others. So as I am full of mischief, I gathered up (laughing) all the other passages and bombarded him with them!
He took it as a personal offense!
0 1964-10-17, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not old. Obviously, there was no cinema and no newspapers! But newspapers and all paper things cant last very long. In America, they have made underground shelters for booksthey take all the best, then they store it under certain conditions. But what if the earth and the continents move! And anyway, who will be able to read? Even the Assyrian inscriptions, which arent old, are still a riddle. They dont really know: they imagine they know. The names we were taught when we were small and the names todays children are taught are totally different, because they hadnt found the phonetic notation.
Ultimately, if we look at things with the slightest care, even OUTWARDLY, we know nothing.
0 1964-10-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its as if a fantastic amount of things were made known to me: people whom I dont know physically, things that I dont know physically. And with the clear vision of the true Consciousness behind it all: the workings of the Consciousness. Its interesting, but anyway It would be wonderful for a writer, he would have books and books to write! I even hear sentences; when things are written, I see them writtenits even more precise than in a film. And all the answers. And then the two consciousnesses side by side: the superficial consciousness, the way it works in people, and the true Consciousness that moves it all as it would puppets.
Its interesting, obviously.
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are odd phenomena. You didnt meet this B. when he was here? He introduced me to certain things I was unaware of: it seems there are in various corners of the world people who have received messages, and in particular a being who calls himself Truth and who speaks in my name. He says, The Mother says the Mother says and also, The Mother will make declarations, and you will have to take them very seriously. All sorts of things like that (people whom I dont know). Then there is someone, among those same people who receive messages and revelations, a spirit (I dont know if he is that same Truth or someone else, I dont remember in detail), who said, who announced 1967this is interesting. And I dont know those people at all. And it doesnt seem possible to me that they could have had in their hands books by Sri Aurobindo or me, I dont think. He announced that in 67 (I repeat roughly), we would have reached the point of the push button that triggers the destruction (because in those countries, they boast of being able to trigger a terrible destruction by pushing a button), and just when the catastrophe is about to take place, the supreme Power, as he says in a picturesque way, will push its own button and everything will be transformedjust when people expect complete destruction, the complete transformation will come.
Thats the domain in which their imagination works. They receive messages of that sort. Which means that people seem to be feeling very strongly that just before the change there will be an extremely critical moment. Only, of course, they tell you that in a quiet tone, The transformation will come and everything will be saved thats all very well, but
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People make too many personal stories out of what I say; you know, the anecdote about the guru, as you read them in books.
Theyre silly!
0 1965-07-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, not the small distorting books.
Oh, no! Quotations distort.
--
Now, the Italians worship the Virgin a lot, its a lot in their makeup, and through that they would understand (those who are intelligent and see the symbol behind the story). There was a Pope (not the present one or the previous one, but the one before1) who did remarkable things because he was in touch with the Virgin; he was a worshipper of the Virgin and that really put him on the right path. So I think that if they want a small book (it is a small book, you can even put it in your pocketpeople are afraid of big books, they dont have time), there are lots of things in that small book, The Mother, lots of things. But the part on the four aspects of the Mother can really be felt only by Indians; those who have a Christian education (laughing) must find it very frightening (!) But we could omit that chapter. You see, the book was made from letters, so each piece is a whole; it wasnt at all composed as one piece: we arranged it as it is following the instructions Sri Aurobindo gave. But that last chapter (the biggest, besides) is mostly for India. It can be omitted.
So you can say this to N.: a biographical note in dictionary style to announce the publication of your book.
0 1965-09-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How many times, how many times have I seen that he had written down my experiences. Because for years and years I didnt read Sri Aurobindos books; it was only before coming here that I had read The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and another one, too. For instance, Essays on the Gita I had never read, Savitri I had never read, I read it very recently (that is to say, some ten years ago, in 1954 or 55). The book Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother I had never read, and when I read it, I realized what he wrote to people about me I had no idea, he had never told me anything about it! You see, there are lots of things that I had said while speaking to people that I had said just like that, because they came (gesture from above) and I would say them and I realized he had written them. So, naturally, I appeared to be simply repeating what he had written but I had never read it! And now, its the same thing: I had read this passage from Savitri, but hadnt noticed itbecause I hadnt had the experience. But now that I have had the experience, I see that he tells it.
Its quite interesting.
0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If he was brought up in a Christian way, its the photo where he is young which is good, they instantly see in it the face of Christ I All of them. The day before yesterday again, an American painter, who is here and has read Sri Aurobindos books, wanted to do a portrait of Sri Aurobindo (he never saw him) from photosits just as it was with the bust in Sri Aurobindos room!1 They all make a mystic Sri Aurobindo with narrow temples, like that (gesture tapering upward), a long mystic face, because they cant get out of their Christianity! For them, of course, the Power, anything that expresses the Power, oh! (gesture of repulsion)
I wanted to say that to this American. For them, spiritual life is sacrifice, its the God who sacrifices himself: he renounces the joys of the earth and sacrifices his existence to save mankind. And they cant get out of it!
0 1966-01-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, your book on Sri Aurobindo is exceptional in all respects and it was a sort of summit in expression. There was also the fact that Sri Aurobindo was always there while you were writing it. When it came, I had the sense of a summit that cannot be exceeded. Thats why I no longer thought about other books: my consciousness used this book on Sri Aurobindo as a starting point towards something else, something more complete. But when I read your letter yesterday, I thought, Maybe, after all, there is indeed something that has to be expressed; maybe it will be the right way to get rid of a past thats lingering on.
Thats what I wanted to tell you.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This morning, there was a very amusing story. I was rinsing my eyes and mouth; I do it before daybreak, that is, with electric light. And in my bathroom there is an emergency light. Its one of the latest inventions: its connected to the power and as long as there is power, the light remains off and a battery inside gets charged; as soon as the power fails, the light turns on and the battery is discharged to keep the light on. Its very well made, they invented it for hospitals and other places where any power failure must be avoided: as soon as the power goes, the light turns on instantaneously, and when the power returns, it goes off and gets recharged for the next time. They installed it for me in the bathroom. And this morning while I was washing my teeth, poff! the light went off. I continued, naturally, since I had that emergency light. But then, I did a study. The lights in C.s room (and everywhere) were on, it was only here, in this group of rooms. That was an odd phenomenon to begin with. Then I looked, and while I looked I noticed something I hadnt taken note of all these last few days: a will to disorganize all my personal life. And causing power failures is one of the known occult methods (I dont know how its done, in fact, but that man who wrote books and came here a very long time ago, Brunton, said it was one of the tricks known to those who practice occultism: a sudden failure of the lights). There are lots of other such tricks designed to disorganize peoples lives with the idea of frightening them or announcing catastrophes to them (I have always found this very childish). But then, I saw that there was (I think I know where, here, it comes from) a will for disorganization, and I saw the path it followed (winding gesture as if Mother were going back to the source). It had begun last night, in the middle of the night: when I got up around midnight, I saw a will wanting to preoccupy me with thoughts of money! And it was insisting: the thought that everything was going wrong, and so on. I saw that in the middle of the night. I was busy with other things, but I saw that will: formations; and naturally I dealt with them as they deserved. But I saw that it went on, trying to disturb people, to make them uncomprehending, and then to turn the power off, all sorts of silly things. Its not the first time it has happenedits not always the same people because generally, when they have tried and got a good knock in return, they dont try a second time, theyve had enough! But there are others who think they are very clever and want to prove to me (laughing) that they are right and I am wrongbecause ultimately it always comes to that! So I spent half an hour this morning, before they restored the power and I resumed my usual activities, half an hour having huge fun following the thread (same winding gesture going back to the source) wherever there was mischief, and then I very kindly answered.
In reality, people who live in the ordinary consciousness know very, very little of what goes on physicallyvery little. They think they know, but all they know is a very superficial appearance, just like like a sheet of paper wrapping a package; there is the whole package underneath with all that it contains, but all they see is an appearance (gesture of something as thin as cigarette paper). And they are so used to it that they always give an explanation. I asked, How is it that just this power connection here gave way? (Lights were on everywhere, only the connection here, which supplies my room, was off.) I asked to see. They told me, Oh, we dont know, maybe the wire was old and it broke! (Mother laughs) I said, Very well.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ninety percent subjective. Regularly, for more than a year, every night at the same time and in the same way, I entered the vital to do a special work there. It wasnt the result of my own will: I was destined to do it. It was something I had to do. So then, the entry into the vital, for instance, is often described: there are passages where beings are stationed to stop you from entering (all those things are much talked about in all books of occultism). Well, I know from experience (not a passing one: an experience I learned repeatedly) that that opposition or ill will is ninety percent psychological, in the sense that if you dont anticipate it or dont fear it, or if there is nothing in you thats afraid of the unknown and none of those movements of apprehension and so on, its like a shadow in a picture, or a projected image: it has no concrete reality.
I did have one or two real battles in the vital, yes, while going to rescue someone who had gone astray. And both times I got blows, and in the morning when I woke up, there was a mark (Mother points to her right eye). Well, I know that in both cases, there was in me, not a fear (I never had any fear there), but it was because I expected it. The idea that it may well happen and my expecting it caused the blow to come. I knew that in a definite way. And if I had been in what I might call my normal state of inner certitude, it couldnt have touched me, it couldnt. And I had that apprehension because Madame Thon had lost an eye in a battle in the vital and had told me so; so (laughing) it gave me the idea that it was possible, since it had happened to her! But when I am in my state (I cant even say that, its not personal: its a way of being), when you have the true way of being, when you are a little conscious and have the true way of being, it CANNOT touch you.
0 1966-05-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, I instinctively go and take the book, I open it and find the money. So I asked him, Would you like to entrust your money to me? I will keep it for you. He replied, That would make things simpler. But after a year, I had three thousand rupees of his money, coming from books, from here and there! I told him (laughing), See, it has borne fruit!
***
0 1966-06-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night againvery often, almost every night, I spend a while in the night in the state of consciousness of your book: the manner of seeing, feeling and saying (Mother draws a strip in midair representing the books region), like that. So now and then, I make a suggestion, but not with words: I seem to introduce into it another way of seeing and feeling: Why not this way? It has happened several times. But when I wake up I dont remember the details because there are too many things. But its a place where the book is taking shape, so I enter that place and seem to bring currents of air into it! (Mother laughs) I make proposals. It happens very often. I think it regularly happens every night, but I remember only when I think it necessary.
***
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience: it is not a question of piling up books and of repeating them like that. Thats not the way to be a teacher the whole earth is like that, let it be like that outside if it makes them happy! As for us, we arent propagandists, we simply want to show what can be done and try to prove that it MUST be done.
When you begin with very small children, its wonderful! With them, theres so little you have to do: it suffices TO BE.
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a very nice little story The day before yesterday some people came (yesterday morning, I saw fifty-five people in the room over there fifty-five! The day before there were less, maybe forty-five), and there was a little child, less than a year old, carried by his father. He was sleepy, leaning on his fathers shoulder, like that. The father came in; when he came near me, the child saw mehe opened his eyes, a mans eyes! It wasnt a child anymore, you understand. Then he looked at me. He had a blissful smile and held his hand out to me! He caught hold of my hand, I gave him my handhow happy he was! But the father wanted to do pranam [prostration], so he put him down. There was a large tray beside me with about fifty of these small books (which contain all the quotations of the passages in which Sri Aurobindo spoke of God). The child looked; he took a book, looked at it, fingered it, tried to open itwithout a word, nothing. Naturally, the parents, who think they are very wise, the father who thinks he is a wise man, said, We cant leave this book in the childs hands, and he took it to put it back in its place the child howled! Then C. took the book and gave it to the little one, and while the others did pranam (there were a dozen people), all the while he kept looking at the golden letters, feeling them.
He is certainly one of the most remarkable, but not the only one. All the children less than a year old who are brought to me are like that (more or less). This one is very, very conscious. Such eyes, you knowfully conscious eyes.
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I know I was his mother; at that moment I knew who I was, because I know that Amenhotep is so and sos son (and also I looked it up in history books). Otherwise theres no connection: a blank.
I always admire those mediums (they generally are very simple people) who have the exact memory of the sound and can tell you, This and that is what I said. That way we could have a phonetic notation. If I remembered the sounds I uttered we would have the notation, but I dont.
0 1967-05-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He writes a lot of books in Tamil.
Its the second card Ive received from him. In the first he wrote he was going round the world for the second time, especially round Europe, and that he had been invited to Russia. And he has written a whole book (in Tamil) on Sri Aurobindos yoga.
0 1967-06-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the contrary, theyre taught to rely on books, precisely on encyclopedias. I had to come here to understand what it meant, why I used to pull from above. That is to say, it wasnt at all encouraged when I was a child.
But Z has done experiments like that. He told me the story of a girl at the School who had no imagination: when she was asked a question she could only answer what she had learned, and when she was given a problem she could never solve it. She was like that, blocked above. And he taught her to try and make contact precisely with that intuitive zone, by keeping quiet, falling silent and listening. And it seems that after some time, she had extraordinary results in that way, by falling silent and listeninganswers which were really remarkable and certainly came from the region of intuition. And thats a practical fact, he did it at the School.
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a time I attended a private school: I didnt go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, Why are towns, the big cities, settled on rivers? I saw the students bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, Lucky the question wasnt put to me! I replied, But its very simple! Its because rivers are a natural means of communication. (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback! Thats how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the timeenjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!
The teacher of literature He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essaysdo you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my homework on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene. Oh, but I was a good girl!
0 1967-11-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, that experience, such as Ive told you, with the whole intensity of concrete reality, occurs not only daily, but several times a day. At times its very severe, that is, like a mass; at other times, its only like something that touches; then, in the body consciousness, its expressed like this, with a sort of thanksgiving: one more progress made over Unconsciousness. But those arent thunderous events, the human neighbour isnt even aware of them; he may note a sort of cessation in the outward activity, a concentration, but thats all.3 So of course, you dont talk about it, you cant write books about it, you dont do propaganda. Thats how the work goes.
None of the mental aspirations are satisfied with that.
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the meaning of to get rid of all other mental influences? Is it this that I had better not read any other books except Sri Aurobindos or not try to learn anything by hearing or admiring others?
It is not a question of books or learning facts. When a woman loves or admires, her mind is instinctively moulded by the one she loves or admires, and this influence remains after the feeling itself has gone or appears to be gone. This does not refer to Xs influence merely. It is the general rule given to keep yourself free from any other admiration or influence.
May 30, 1932
0 1968-04-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, if I put anything else, I mean a photo of Sri Aurobindo, for instance, or books, it will look like it will be as if we wanted to start a new religion I dont want religions, an end to religions!
So its an attempt to realize.
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There have been two little things, very little things, but amusing. A year or a year and a half ago (I dont remember), someone had sent me an album of photos of France, and Paris in particular, and I had looked at it; I looked at it, and as I looked, I saw a photo of the banks [of the Seine in Paris]. I saw it, looked at it attentively, in detail, saw the banks with all the bouquinistes [secondh and booksellers]. There was a bookseller in front, seated in the foreground, I saw him. Then I closed the album and put it aside. I wanted to mention it to someone and said, Would you like to see what the bouquinistes in Paris look like? Theres a photo I turned page after page after pagenot a single photo of a bookseller! I looked again and again not a single photo of a bookseller.3 It was enough of a problem for me to view the book several more times and even to try to find an explanation. And then M. and G. went to Paris and sent me a postcard of the banks with the bouquinistesit was my photo! I received it yesterday. It wasnt in the album: I received it yesterday, exactly my photo.
The other thing is about R., who had had an attack of filariasis a few years ago. He had told me about it and it had passed. Then it came back. It came back after some three or four years, very strongly, and he couldnt get rid of it. He wrote to me complaining. I told him there was a drop in his faith. It appears it was the third time Id written that to him (I knew nothing about it I never know either why or how I write things). So he wrote back to ask me, Its the third time youve told me that, what does it mean? I explained it to him. But while receiving his letter and explaining it to him, I did what I always do (I always do it, all the time), I put him in contact with the Lord and asked for his intervention. He got my letter, and today he writes to me that while he was reading it, in the space of about ten minutes, he actually saw (his foot had grown twice as big, his leg was swollen, you know how it is with elephantiasis), he actually saw it shrink and shrink, and in ten or fifteen minutes it was gone! He wrote it to me this morning. I had told him that the Force was the same, it was his faith that was no longer the same, and that was why the Force no longer had the same effect. And he writes in his letter, I was simply reading your letter, and it went away before my very eyes!
0 1968-06-05, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, shes even very pious. A nice woman, it seems. So P. L. asks if he shouldnt try to explain to her what hes doing here, to send her a few of your books and see how it acts. It might make her turn to something more interesting?
Isnt she a woman who wants peace on earth?
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then You know that from every side Ive been trying to get Sri Aurobindo published [in France], in particular The Human Cycle. At last I got a letter from a certain J. B., who writes: For a long time now, a publisher (F.) has been asking me to create a collection in his publishing house. I thought of a few books, mostly foreign ones, grouped around a title such as Towards the spiritual mutation and focused on the present researches, individual and clumsy, often dangerous, but sincere and undertaken in a spirit quite different from that of the former generation, the spirit of a certain youth I am in contact with. The idea is to show these young people that their attempts and aspirations are legitimate, even if they have discovered them through drugs, since in many cases drugs alone have been able to unmoor them from the Cartesian rationalist bedrock, to put before them experiences that, at least, are positive, and to offer them directions and models. In other words, the aspect of amateurism and exoticism found in Z [another publisher] would be replaced here by a practical and technical side, wide open to all spiritual researches, whatever they may be, to all duly controlled metapsychical experiments, serious psychedelic experiments (I have T. Leary in mind, for instance), new theologies Naturally, there would be room, a major place, for the Oriental endeavor. In sum, it would involve all researches and attempts to crack open that sort of corset within which the Western mind has been going in circles for such a long time. That does not in the least rule out, on the contrary, certain scientific worksof pure sciencein which, out of intrinsic necessity, this Cartesianism has already been singularly shaken. Of course, all that would make for quite an ill-assorted backdrop for Sri Aurobindos thought, a backdrop you will regard as unworthy of it. The planned Collection might be called Spiritual Adventures.
We can try.
0 1969-01-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So all the rest People give me books, give me letters, but I am not interested.
Thats it.
0 1969-03-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then he sends another note. In Rome they had the visit of Swami Z, and our friend P.L. had lunch with him (because they took the Swami to see the Pope, he had an audience with the Pope), they had lunch together and, writes Msgr. R., The Swami declared himself very happy about the audience with the Pope. He was able to give one of his books to the Holy Father, who told him (in English) that he liked India very much, that he thanked him for his spiritual work undertaken for the good of humanity, and encouraged him to pursue his mission. The Pope gave him a papal medal, and even added that he had great difficulty in developing his spirituality owing to his present entourage.
Oh, this is interesting! Its interesting.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Me, I dont keep any books. Have they put translated from the French or translated from the English?
Translated from the French.
0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The silence was dense, the stupefaction huge. And I went on again: But we believe we are the interpreters, and except us none has the right to speak. Nevertheless we are faced with the current phenomenon of anti-establishment protest. The youth is running away from us, our formulas are old, ineffective, we preach without conviction, we demand absurd things, and to have peace, we stick a label of sin on all taboos. I know that my speech will be called subversive. In dictatorial or established regimes, those who move forward are suspicious. For twenty centuries we have used the weapon of heresy, and we know the atrocities that were committed in the name of Christ: that was our defenseit was his wisdom to keep power But if Christ suddenly appeared here, in front of us, do you think he would recognize himself in us? Is the Christ we preach the Christ of the BEATITUDES? Our preoccupation is to prohibit opening. And we make fools of ourselves with the pill. But are we also preoccupied with the TRUTH? Yet we should read our holy books again, but read them without passion, without egoistic interest; almost two thousand years ago, St. Paul said, Multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens in prophetis, novissime diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio (several times and in several ways God has spoken through the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son Jesus Christ). Thus God has spoken in several ways. I know that a new light has just appeared, a new Consciousness let us go in search of it. But we shall have to step down from our throne, from our convenience; perhaps to leave the place to others and do away with the Hierarchy: no more Pope or Cardinals or Bishops, but all of us seekers of the TRUTH, of the CONSCIOUSNESS, the POWER, the SUPRANATURAL, the SUPRAHUMAN..
Satprem, I left the room and went away for a walk in the countryside. What is going to happen to me? Will they put me on trial? Will they declare me insane, heretic? I am waiting. I am eager to go and see Mother. I am preparing my travel for Easter. (That took place on Monday the 24th of February.) To this day, no reaction. Has the Pope been informed? I do not know. I have continued with the inquiry entrusted to me. I feel very calm, very strong. I have not spoken about all that to any of those close to me (not even to Msgr. R.). The malefic character seen in dream (Msgr. Z) was present, but he did not react either.
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a question Id like to tell you about. Its about the publication of Sri Aurobindos books in France. You know that we sent The Synthesis of Yoga and The Human Cycle.1 The woman who looks after those publications hasnt reacted very well. And not because of the translation (which she finds good), but because of Sri Aurobindo and the text itself She rather arrogantly passes judgment on Sri Aurobindo, whom she doesnt understand at all but has sized up at a glance. A sort of arrogance
What has she read?
--
Sri Aurobindo often said or hinted that writing, for him, was a sort of concession to the mental world, but that he might very well have done without writing, and that his real Action, in fact, took place in silence. Sri Aurobindo was not a writer, but an evolutionary leaven, a tremendous impelling Force, like the Mother. So we may say that his books, even if poorly understood, or misunderstood, act as vehicles for this Force, and that we should just take the plunge and publish them anyhow, until the day that famous mental slit will open, and people will gape open-mouthed. The Work gets done in spite of mental incomprehension, even in spite of mental comprehension! Only, it is a pity that people do not see the beauty of the Play and do not consciously take part in it.
Before one takes a first step into the great Kingdom, I think one must have definitively felt all mental comprehension, all mental illumination, and naturally all mental explanation, to be worthless or inadequate. For more than ten years I have not read any book, but if I am given one in my hands, I immediately know the level of its vibration, In order to see clearly, one must get out of it, obviously. The same goes for the little individualrenouncing the individual is what you call saintliness, but its merely the beginning of Humanity! Does one renounce an anthill?One gets out of it! And it is wide and joyful. We are right in the middle of human infancy.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Mother, do you know in the West, the influential books (not only influential, theyre read and devoured by all the young) are those of Mao Tse-tung?
Of?
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes! There was even one amusing detail: among that pile of things that were there, there were books; then as he went by, Sri Aurobindo took one to see what was inside. But B. was there (you know, the Italian), and told him, You mustnt touch this without Mothers permission!4
(Mother laughs heartily) Oh, this is priceless!
0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have wondered if we couldnt have in Auroville a publishing house, because Auroville is an international township, and so we could have an INTERNATIONAL publishing house. There would be books in every language. That would be interesting.
Auroville is beginning to be fairly well known in America. Theres a lady (I told you about that) who is planning to come in a boat for 1972she is very interested in Auroville, she has gatherings and is in touch with the government. It seems to be moving fairly well there. So we could have a publishing house in several languages.
0 1969-09-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, I had the visit of the Vice-President1an intellectual. I am told he is a very remarkable lawyer, a man of law, and hes read Sri Aurobindos books, he regards himself as a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. He came from Delhi with his whole family specially to see me. He came: the Consciousness didnt manifest in the very leastnothing. It was like that (impassive, outspread gesture). Like that, still, nothing, absolutely nothing Thats curious. He gave me books to sign (he had just taken or received them, I dont now), a book by Sri Aurobindo, my photo. Anyway, he behaved like a disciple, he had brought his whole family along and the whole family expressed a lot of devotion and so onnothing. I dont know if it was there, but it didnt manifest: it was like this (same impassive gesture). Its curious.
But it feels the way people are, because did I tell you what the President said while leaving?
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Hes come here with a questionnot a mental one. But I should perhaps tell you the stages of his discovery. As you know, he discovered experimentally on himself what was going on. So he sought to understand: he bought books, went to see so-called healers. The first people who taught him were Spiritualists. They told him, Use a pendulum. He used a pendulum to detect diseases, and it worked very well. Then, after a time, he thought, But this isnt reality. And then his Pendulum stopped working! Afterwards, he went to see someone else, who told him, But you should do magnetic passes. He was taught how to do it, and it worked very well: with his fingers he could feel the organs that were out of harmony (because, for him, the key word is Harmony or disharmony). Then, after a while, he said to himself, But this isnt reality either. And nothing worked anymore.
Oh, its very interesting!
0 1969-10-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but as for me, I have all the books to prepare! Its necessary.
Of course.
0 1970-01-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, the problem is that we cant get the translations published at the Press, things arent moving. I have five books by Sri Aurobindo ready, and nothing is moving.
They cant manage to do their work.
0 1970-05-23, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The country seems to be falling apart, so there [in Delhi] they asked me what should be done. I told them that this Centenary [of Sri Aurobindo, in 1972] has come ON PURPOSE. Its certainly something thats coming now because the ONLY salvation for the country, the ONLY thing that can unify it, is for it to adopt Sri Aurobindos ideal for the countryhe had a plan, he very clearly saw how the country should be organized, he said it to me. Its there, if one reads his books seriously, one can see it. So I said that things should be so organized that THROUGHOUT India there should be study groups, libraries, lectures, anything whatever, so the whole country should know Sri Aurobindos thought and will. And the Centenary is an excellent opportunity. They asked me, Whats the way out of this chaos? On my advice, Indira has been trying to surround herself with people of value. (She had me told that she had forgotten questions of party and wants to surround herself with capable people.) The difficulty is to find upright people. So they need to be educated they dont even have a NOTION of how they can be! So I said, This Centenary should be organized right now, at once, like something covering the whole country on the occasion of the Centenary. And in what Sri Aurobindo wrote, they will find all they need to organize the country, and much better, I tell them, infinitely better than what I may say, because he knew the country infinitely better than I do, and the mental formation and everything.
People need occasions to do things. But this seems to have been wonderfully prepared ON PURPOSE.
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This rising of the kundalini, I had it in I was still in Paris. It was before I came to India. I had read Vivekanandas books about it. And when the Force rose, it emerged from the head through here (gesture at the top of the head); the [classic] experience was never described in that way. The Force came out and the consciousness settled here (gesture about eight inches above the head). So when I came here, I told Sri Aurobindo about it; he told me it had been the same thing with him, and that according to the teaching of [ancient] texts, you cannot live when that takes place: you die! So (laughing) he told me, Here are two who havent died!
The consciousness has remained there (gesture above), it didnt come down again; its there, its always there.
0 1970-07-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An old disciple, author of several books about Sri Aurobindo and editor of one of the Ashram's magazines.
Satprem's letter to T. and the following letter from A. are retranslated here from the French translation.
0 1970-09-30, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Instead of a stem that writhes (you dont writhe! [laughter]), you can put seven linesseven lines. Then a gathering of the seven lines here (just above the surface of the waters). This is symbolic of the books formation. And then here (above the waters), rise straight and (Mother draws seven lines opening up at the top of a stem). You understand: seven ascents (below) and here (above) seven responses. Like this. Seven lines gathering at a point that corresponds to this [the other point where the seven lines from below gather]. Then it has a meaning.
***
0 1971-01-30, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their chest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhereor it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy or silence. It is what has happened to the religions and is the reason of their failure.
October 2, 1934
0 1971-03-13, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What should be done for these books is to put a note in, to insert a note in each book saying that this particular word used here corresponds to that word used in the other booksto let people know. Because if its the same word as mental, that leads to terrible confusionterrible, the worst confusion. There has to be a distinction, its imperative: either T.K. has to put a note or. Because you see, if they put mental for both words, or even another word that means the same thing, it distorts the teaching immediately. It immediately creates terrible confusion.
In any event, there should be a note explaining that the word is taken in a particular sense.
0 1971-04-03, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyre selling books the way youd sell margarine or peanuts.
When someone lies like that, its finished. I cant trust him anymore. You have to be very thick-skinned to lie to my face.
0 1971-04-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont very much like the destiny of the two books being mixed together. You see, I had made a special formation [for Supermanhood], I had put a special force, but it was on that one.
I can call him, its quite easy.
0 1971-05-26, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She wrote me about it, at any rate, saying that she didnt feel the Presence in the bookshe wrote, The Presence is missing in this book.
She knows better than I do.
0 1971-06-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perhaps someone who doesnt have a lot of money and would be only too happy to have our printed bookshe would only have to put on his own jacket.
I feel very strongly, you know.
0 1971-07-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
which were plain to me, like what I expressed in my booksits as if all that had turned to dust. As if it didnt have any yes, its dust. I dont have a single sure idea I can lean on. There are no more reference points.
But thats exactly what I just said in different words! Everything we think (its been ages since I had any ideas), is like that, it seems so futilely futile, I dont know.
0 1972-02-16, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A question of principle remains: do we give these books to B.C. and thus encourage him to publish the bulk of Sri Aurobindos works? After all, hes the first publisher who seems to be interested in Sri Aurobindo.
Yes! Why not? Good for him! (Mother laughs) Everybody, including A., always sees things from the wrong end, you know, as if WE had to gain somethingwell, its not so! Its THEM. Its THEIR chance.
--
Well then, Ill encourage this man to publish as many books of Sri Aurobindo as possible.
Yes, yes.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Your reply to the questions of a Swedish magazine regarding whether religions have in fact promoted the conditions of tolerance and understanding among men happened to fall into my hands just as I have started giving a series of lectures on your works at the International University Center of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This coincidence, along with a long-standing familiarity with your books, prompt me to write you a few words about another testimony, that of Sri Aurobindo, which I am sure you are aware of, but whose work, still incompletely translated in French, remains poorly known in Europe.
I seem to find in Sri Aurobindos work an answer that meets yours and develops it for the question is indeed to reinstate the gods IN man after having reinstated the demons, as you rightly stated in the Swedish article but I also find there an answer to the agonizing question constantly raised by your characters from The Royal Way to The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Indeed, all of them seek a deeper notion in man that will deliver them from death and solitudethis is THE question of the West, to which Sri Aurobindo brings a solution at once dynamic and illuminating. Hence, I am taking the liberty of sending by surface mail one of Sri Aurobindos books in the original English entitled The Human Cycle. I hope it will interest you.
I call on you rather than any other contemporary writer because I think your works embody the very anguish of the West, an anguish I have bitterly experienced all the way to the German concentration camps at the age of twenty, and then in a long and uneasy wandering around the world. Insofar as I have always turned to you, daring and searching with each of your characters what surpasses man, I am again turning to you because I have a feeling that, more than anyone else, you can understand Sri Aurobindos message and perhaps draw a new impetus from it. I am also thinking of a whole generation of young people who expect much from you: more than an ideal of pure heroism, which only opens the doors (as does all self-offering) on another realm of man we have yet to explore, and more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prisonwhere we seem to have been immured alive and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. For we tend too often to forget that it is for living that your heroes think so constantly of death; also I think that the young people I mentioned want the truth of Tchen and Katow, the truth of Hernandez, Perken and Moreno [characters in Malrauxs novels] beyond their death.
--
The young Indian students with whom I discuss your books understand perhaps better than Westerners the reason for all those bloody and apparently useless sacrifices the torments conflicts and revolts of your heroes condemned to death, the great Hunger that drives them beyond themselves for they know that these are like the contractions of childbirth, and that the thick shell of egoism, routine, conformism, intellectual and sentimental habits must be broken for the inner Divine to transpierce the surface of this life for the Divine is indeed WITHIN man, and life harbors its own hidden justification. Echoing the Upanishad, Sri Aurobindo tells us that The earth is His foothold. He also wrote, God is not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and the whirlwind.
I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have apparently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.
To the question raised by the Swedish magazine and to the one many characters in your books ask themselves, I believe that Sri Aurobindo and his vast synthesis bring the key to a reconciliation and long-sought answer, a reconciliation between being and doing, which religion is incapable of supplying. Through our Yoga, Sri Aurobindo wrote, we propose nothing less than to break totally the past and present formations which make up the ordinary mental and material man and create a new centre of vision, a new universe of activities in ourselves, which will form a divine humanity or a superhuman nature. This is not an idea but an experience to be lived, which Sri Aurobindo has minutely described in his extensive body of works. It is what some thousand men and women from all over the world are trying to do at the Pondicherry Ashram.
In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.
Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.
0 1972-07-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The following has already been the subject of several conversations the past year and will unfortunately come up again. It concerns the sales of my books abroad and a subsequent traffic in foreign currencies to which I was impudent or imprudent enough to call attention. But the real problem was that certain people were outrightly and openly robbing Mother. My books were in fact only a small part of a vaster racket that involved all of Sri Aurobindos works. Much like Don Quixote, then, I was pitching headlong into a battle whose outcome was foreseeable. It may be recalled that the head of SABDA, the book business, is the brother of the man who tried to appropriate Auroville. In reality I was taking on a well-organized mafia. But I was still unaware of it. This anecdote is reported here only insofar as it is symbolic of a larger whole.)
You have nothing to ask?
--
Oh, that problem really bothers me. Its about my books with All India Press.
Then, mon petit, you should discuss it with Andr.2
Yes, I did speak to Andr. I dont know what theyre doing with my books. You see, they dont give me any statements and dont tell me anything about what theyre doing. I dont know what theyre doing with my books in Europein Switzerl and in particular they dont inform me of anything nor have I any control over whats happening. I wrote a letter to M. [the director of All India Press], a nice, polite letter in which I asked him to keep me posted up with what theyre doing with my bookshe never replied. So I thought something should be written to M. and that none but you could do it.
It isnt M., its (Mother tries to remember a name).
--
Satprems books will not be translated, reprinted or subject to any commitment without his formal consent.
Thats obvious. Self-evident!
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What falsehood? I know what I said to M. and to B.: I told them (and especially M.) that this was no way to behave, that they should not behave that way. Thats what I told him. I told him that nothing concerning your books should be decided without consulting you first. So I dont understand at all.
Yes.
--
No, nothing. And also for Sri Aurobindos books thats where theyre directly deceiving you. They dont lift a finger, they simply do nothing. They wont give the least information about what theyre doingwhat are they HIDING, these people, Id like to know? As long as theyre told words, its completely ineffective. I wonder what action will make them move?
(silence)
--
Regarding the accounts they should give you about what theyre doing with Sri Aurobindos books and Satprems books.
Theyre not giving any accounts?
--
And thats what I want for my booksnot money!
Oh, then theres a confusion, because from what Andr told me, I understood it was money.
--
(Andr:) Well, Satprem would like to know whats happening with his books.
Yes, and hes right.
Yes. And by the same token, it would be good if we could knowif someone in the Ashram could knowwhat exactly M. is doing with Sri Aurobindos books.
Yes, quite.
The fact is, nobody knows anything. Theyre printing books, SABDA tries to sell them here and therethey have excellent promotional methods, but we have no idea what they are specifically. We dont know whats going on. It even goes Ill go further, Mother: for the last two years, I havent been able to put my hand on the corrections made to the film negatives, I mean the offset reproduction of the Centenary edition [of Sri Aurobindos works].
There were corrections made?
--
I am no longer on this side but not yet on the other; I am in betweenits difficult. But I am still capable of controlling what these people are doing. At any rate, they have no right to do whatever they want with Sri Aurobindos books. And as for Satprems books, I had said that he gave them to me personally
(Satprem:) Yes.4
--
(Andr to Satprem:) Yes, what you did for your books was very good.
And if he doesnt comply, hell be putting himself in the wrong but I think he will.
--
(Satprem:) Ask the same for Sri Aurobindos books: what are their production and their distribution? And they must keep you informed of reprints, etc.
Yes. Thats right.
0 1973-01-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a curious phenomenon: because books [by Mother] are published, I am put in contact with things I said before, and of course when I said them I was very convinced, but now I tell myself: how could you say that!
Well.
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas - its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before it - also the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations - the perfectibility of the race, certain
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Uddhava might have had numberless teachers and instructors, but the Guru of his soul was Sri Krishna alone, none other. We may learn many things from many places, from books, from nature, from persons; intuitions and inspirations may come from many quarters, inside and outside, but the central guidance flows from one source only and one must be careful to keep it unmixed, undefiled, clear and pure. When one means nothing more than playing with ideas and persons and places, there is no harm in being a globe-trotter; but as soon as one becomes serious, means business, one automatically stops short, finds and sticks to his Ishta, even like the Gopis of Sri Krishna who declared unequivocally that they would not move out of Brindaban even by a single step.
***
05.03 - The Body Natural, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
With regard to the food that man takes, there are two factors that determine or prescribe it. First of all, the real need of the body, that is to say, what the body actually requires for its maintenance, the elements to meet the chemical changes occurring there, something quite material and very definite, viz, the kind of food and the quantity. But usually this real need of the body is obscured and sumberged under the demands of another kind of agency, almost altogether foreign to it, (I) vital desire and (2) mental notions. Indeed, the menu of our table, at least 90% of it, is arranged so as to satisfy the demands of the second category, the consideration that should come first comes last in fact. The body is at present a slave of the mind and the vital; it is hardly given the freedom of choosing its own requirements in the right quantity and quality. That is why the body is seen to suffer everywhere and it normally sick for the greater part of its earthly existence. It has been compelled to occupy an anomalous position in the human organism between these two tyrants. The vital goes by its greed, its attraction and repulsion, its impulse to excess (sometimes to its opposite of deprivation); what it has been accustomed to, what it has taken a fancy for, to that it clings, and if the body has not what it prescribes, it throws the suggestion into the body that it will fall ill. The physical mind has its own notions and schemes, pet ideas and plans (perhaps from what has been read in books or heard from persons) in respect of the body's needs; it thinks that if a certain prescription is not followed, the body will suffer. The mind and the vital are thus close friends and accomplices in regimenting the body. They impose their own demands and prejudices upon the body which helplessly gets entangled in them and loses its native instinct. The body left to itself is marvellously self-conscious; it knows spontaneously and unfailingly what is good for its health and strength. The animals usually, especially those of the forest, preserve still the unspoilt body instinct; for they have no mind to tyrannise over the body nor is their vital of a kind to go against the normal demands of the body. The body, segregated from the mind and the vital, can very easily choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on the side of excess and immoderation or perversity. The vital is dramatic, the mind is imaginative, but the body is sanity itself. And that is not a sign of its inconscience and inertia. The dull and dumb immobility of which it is sometimes accused is after all perhaps a mode of its self-defence against the wild vagaries of the mind and the vital to which it is so often called upon to lend its support. Indeed, it may very well be that the accusation against the flesh that it is weak is only an opinion or suggestion imposed on the body by the mentalvital who throw the whole blame upon the body just to escape from the blame due to themselves. The vital is impatient and clamorous, and if it is all push and drive-towards physical execution and fulfilmentit is normally clouded and troubled and obscured and doubly twisted when counselled and supported by a mind, narrow and superficial, not seeing beyond its nose, bound within a frame of incorrect and borrowed notions.
The body, precisely because of its negative natureits dumb inertia, as it is calledprecisely because it has no axe of its own to grind, that is to say, as it has no fancies and impulsions, plans and schemes upon which it can pride itself, precisely because of this childlike innocence, it has a wonderful plasticity and a calm stability, when it is not troubled by the mind or vital. Indeed, the divine qualities that are secreted in the body, which the body seeks to conserve and express are a stable harmony, a balance and equilibrium, capable of supporting the whole weight of all the levels of consciousness from the highest peak to the lowest abysses even as physically it bears the weight of the entire depth of the atmosphere so lightly as it were, without feeling the burden in the least.
06.27 - To Learn and to Understand, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is one thing to learn (apprendre), quite another to understand (comprendre). In learning you take in a thing by your surface mind and it is a thing that comes in from outside like a foreign body; it is put into you, almost driven and thrust into you. You do not absorb it, make it wholly your own. If you are not mindful, leave it aside for sometime, it goes clean out of your memory. Understanding a thing, on the other hand, means, you absorb it, get it into the stuff of your being, you live it in your consciousness within. When you have understood a thing you never forget it; it has become an element of your consciousness. Years and years might have passed, yet the thing would be as clear and vivid as it was on the first day. Why do you forget so easily the lessons that you learnwith pain and difficultyfrom books or at school from teachers? It is because you simply learn, but do not understand. You retain in your brain the words, the outer formula or forms, you note down the information; but what they stand for, their import and inner law, the living truth escape you totally. You read Einstein, read over and over again his formulas and equations and even commit them to memorylearn by rote; but after a time, if you lose touch with them, they vanish from your mind or become very vague and misty and you have to start again. That is because you learnt Einstein simply as a lesson, whereas if you entered into the perceptions these forms embody, the inner principles that determine them, if the Einsteinian consciousness became in some way your consciousness, then you would have understood and never forgotten. It would not be a lesson but an experience. What is needed, then, is this inner awakening by which you live a thing, identify yourself with it, become one with it and not simply meet or make a mere nodding acquaintance with it. Unless there is this awakening or openness, as we say, in the consciousness, however much a lesson is thrust into you, it will not enter deeply enough. You may learn, like a parrot, but you will not understand, it will pass over your head and soon be forgotten.
Indeed it was not very much necessary for the ancient sages and occultists to try to hide their knowledge in an obscure language, in codes and symbols and ciphers for fear of misuse by the common uninitiate; even if they had expressed their knowledge in ordinary language, ordinary people would not have understood it at all. It would be like my speaking to you in Chinese-, you would not make out anything of it. One comprehends only what one already possesses, that is to say, you must have within you something at least of what you want to know and understand, something corresponding to it, similar in nature and vibration. That is what I mean when I say that you should be open, your mind and consciousness should be turned and attuned to the object it wishes to seize; it must have some light in it in order to receive the light outside and beyond. If it is mere obscurity, the light does not light; even if it manages to come it departs soon or is engulfed in the darkness.
07.06 - Record of World-History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You can certainly test and correct the information you get from your inner voyage by outside information, what others have found or what are recorded in books. The inner know-ledge need not and should not replace the outer knowledge, but supplement it, both should support and complete each other. But there is a mixture about which you must be very careful. Your silent mind, your inner consciousness receives the necessary knowledge, but as you want to express it or translate in normal terms, that is to say, as your brain gets active again, it may and often does supply its own materials and formations and the original knowledge gets disturbed and distorted. Sometimes what you may do is to dictate most passively the things you see or perceive and let another take down in writing as you proceed. You must say exactly as you see and the other take down exactly as he hears.
It is the image of reading a book that I have given you. But it is, as I said, only an image. What it is really is a kind of perception. And the perception may be in the form of an image, it may be in the form of a narrative. At other times it may be a simple answer to a particular question. There are many kinds and varieties of record, different according to the types or levels of consciousness that you go to.
07.38 - Past Lives and the Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Most people are not at all conscious of what is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a few, very few indeed, who are consciousconscious of what is beyond the three, viz, their psychic being. For it is only that element which endures, persists through successive lives. Certain people have known or learnt some rudiments of the matterwho believe in rebirth, but conceive it in the most childish manner. Their idea is as if the person changed his body like a robe. There are persons even who have written books describing seriously all the lives they had passed through since the time they were monkeys! As I have said, it is the psychic element alone that persists after death, all the rest gets dissolved. And in 999 cases out of 1,000, the psychic is a very small formation lying behind and taking little part in the actual life of the person. I speak of the average man, not of the Yogi, that is to say, one who has a developed psychic being to the extent that it is capable of controlling and guiding the outer life. How often does an ordinary man get in contact with his psychic being? Years and years pass for many or most to have just a passing taste of this movement. It is this moment that abides and is carried over to the next life, all other things are simply effaced. At a given point of our life, there comes a special circumstance, there is a call within, an absolute inner necessity that brings forward the psychic and the contact is made perhaps for an instant. That experience is preserved in the psychic memory. More than the outer circumstances and the physical events, however, what is cherished in the consciousness is the intimate emotion, the vibration that accompanied the perception at the time. At the most, a word said, a phrase heard, just a passing scene is all that is stored, net and clear, engraved as it were. But above all it is the soul's state that is the most important thing. I t is these scattered elements that serve as stepping-stones or sign-posts on the soul's forward journey. They are the constants that build up the personality of a man. On rare occasions there is a larger clearing, the circumstances preserved are sufficiently definite to point to a date and a historical person. Usually, however, one cannot say, I was such a person, I lived in such a country or did such things. These psychic flashes, more in some cases, less in others, are the only genuine and au thentic records of the story of a person's lives.
It is a being who is completely identified with his psychic, who has organised his whole person, in all its parts, around this centre, in fact, a being of one piece, entirely and solely turned to the Divine that can alone remember or hold in his consciousness something like a totality of his personal history. For in his case even when the body drops, the other parts being integrated and taken up into the soul substance maintain their individual existence; the personality formed around the psychic continues to exist with its memory intact: even it can pass from one life to another without losing the consciousness.
08.02 - Order and Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Anyway the result is the same. That is to say, confusion. There are children who, when they undress, throw their clothing right and left or, when they have done their task, do not know where they put their books and paper, pencil, or ink pot; it takes a lot of trouble to find them again or bring them together. In reality, all this shows an undisciplined nature, a character that is not methodical; it shows that not only in the outside but internally too the person is disorderly. There are people, perhaps considering themselves big, who even have a contempt for physical objects. But Sri Aurobindo says, people who cannot take care of things do not deserve to have them, have no right to ask for them. As I say, it shows a kind of acute egoism, much inner confusion.
There are people who live in rooms apparently clean and tidy. But open a cupboard, pull out a drawer, you will find there a battlefield: all is mixed up. They have a head too that is very much like thata poor small head where ideas are in the same condition as the objects outside in the cupboard. They have not organised them, put them in order. You may take it as an absolute rule. I have never seen a man who keeps things in a disorder and yet possesses a logical brain. In him ideas like the objects are thrown together pell-mell, the most dissimilar and contradictory ideas form a jumble, they are not organised, harmonised into a higher synthesis.
Hence, to know a man's character you need not spend your time in talking to him, you just go and open a drawer of his or open his almirah, you will know. But I may speak of someone I shall tell you presently who it iswho used to live in the midst of heaps of books and papers. You enter into his room, you find piles of them everywhere. But if by chance, you were, to your misfortune, to displace a single sheet of paper, he would know perfectly well and would ask immediately who was it that had disturbed the papers. There were masses of things, on your entering you would not find your way. But each thing had its placenotes, letters, books, all in order and you could not mishandle them without his knowing it. Well, it was Sri Aurobindo. In other words, you must not confuse orderliness with poverty. Naturally if you have a few thingsa dozen books and a limited number of objectsit is easier to have them properly arranged. But what is to be aimed at is a logical order, a conscious intelligent order among a multiplicity of objects. That requires a capacity for organisation. It is a capacity which every one must acquire and possess, unless of course you are physically disabledwhen one is ill or sickly or maimed and has not the required strength: even then there is a limit. I know of sick people who could tell you: "Open me that drawer, you will find on the right or on the left or at the bottom such and such a thing." They could not themselves move and handle the things but knew where they were. Apart from such cases, the ideal must be one of order, organisation, like that of a library for example, where you have thousands and thousands of books that are yet all arranged, classified, docketed and you have only to name a title and in a few minutes the book is in your hand of course, it is not the work of a single person; even then, the pattern is there as an example to follow.
You too must organise your affairs in the same way. You need not follow another's method or system. You have your own rule, that which is convenient and true for you but it must be well planned and properly laid out.
08.08 - The Mind s Bazaar, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is nothing like an idea belonging to oneself and an idea belonging to others. No one has an idea exclusively his own. There is an immensity out of which one can draw according to one's personal affinity. Ideas are a collective possession, a joint property. Only there are different stages. There is the most common or commonplace stage where all of us have our brain sunk in a crowded mass of impersonal notions. It is the stage of Mr. Everybody. The next stage is a little higher, that of thinkers, as they are called. There are other stages further up, many others, some beyond the domain of words, others still within the domain of ideas. Those who can mount sufficiently high are able to catch something that looks like light and bring it down with its packet of ideas or its bundle of thoughts. An idea brought down from a higher region organises itself, crystallises itself into a variety of thoughts that are capable of expressing the idea in different ways. Then, if you are a writer, a poet or an artist and bring it further down into more concrete forms, then you can have all kinds of expressions, infinite ways of presenting a single idea, a single small idea perhaps, but coming down from a great height. If you can do that, you know also how to distinguish between the pure idea and the manner of expressing it. If you are unable to do it by yourself, you can take the help of others, you can learn from persons and books. You can, for example, note how one particular idea has been given so many different forms by different poets. There is the pure or essential idea, then there is the typal or generic idea and then the many formulations.
You can exercise your mind in this way, teach it suppleness, subtlety, strength and other virtues.
08.34 - To Melt into the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You have to go a long way before you can think of merging your ego, your self in the Divine. First of all, you cannot merge your ego or your self until you are a completely individualised being. And do you know what does that mean'to be completely individualised'? It means one capable of resisting all external influences. The other day I received a letter from someone who says that he hesitates to read books; for he has a very strong tendency to identify himself with what he reads; if he reads a novel or a drama he becomes the character pictured and is possessed by the feelings and thoughts and movements of the character. There are many like that. If they read something, while they read they are completely moved by the ideas and impulsions and even ideals they read about and are totally absorbed in them and become them, without their knowing it even. That is because ninety-nine per cent of their nature is made of butter as it were: if you press your finger it leaves a mark. That is the ordinary man's character. One takes in, as one comes across it, a thought experienced by another, a phrase read in a book, a thing observed or an incident the eyes fall upon, a will or wish of a neighbour, all that enters pell-mell intermixed enters and goes out, others come inlike electric currents. And one does not notice it. There is a conflict, a clash among these various movements, each trying to get the upper hand. Thus the person is tossed to and fro like a piece of cork upon the waves in the sea.
Instead of this unformed and unconscious mass, one has to become conscious, cohesive, individualised, that which exists by itself and in itself, independently of its surroundings, that which can hear, read, see anything and will not change because of that. It receives from outside only what it wishes to receive. It rejects automatically what does not agree with its purpose: nothing can leave any impression upon it, unless it wishes to have the impress. It is thus that one begins to be individualised. And when one is an individual, then only can one make a gift of it, for unless you possess a thing you cannot give it; when you have nothing or are nothing you can give nothing. So in order that the separate ego may disappear, one must be able to give oneself wholly, totally without restrictions. And to be able to give, one must exist and to exist one must be an individual. If your body were not rigid as it is the body is indeed terribly rigidif it were not something quite fixed and if you had not this solid skin around the skeleton, if you were the exact expression of what you are vitally and mentally, it would be worse than the gelatinous jelly fish. All would enter and melt into one another, what a chaos and confusion would it be! That is why a rigid form is given at the outset. And you complain: the physical is so fixed, it lacks plasticity, supplenessit lacks the fluidity that enables one to melt into the Divine! But it was a necessity. For if you were out of your body and entered into the regions behind the vital,you would see how things stand there: things get mixed, separated, intertwined, all kinds of vibrations, currents, forces that come and go, struggle and fight, seize each other, absorb each other, repulse each other! Very difficult to find a personality in all that. It is only forces, movements, impulsions, desires. Not that there are not individualities and personalities there too! But they are Powers. They who have individualised themselves in such a world are either heroes or demons!
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One needs years of labourorganising, selecting, building up very diligently, very carefully, very rationally, very cohesively, in order simply to form oneself: to form this simple thing, for example, to think in one's own way. You believe you think in your own way, you do not know how much you depend for your thoughts upon the people you speak to, upon the books that you read, upon your varying moods; yes, it depends not unoften upon your good or bad digestion, upon the fact of your being closed in a room or free in the open air, upon the scenery around you, upon sun or shower. You do not notice it, but you think of different things in different ways according to conditions or situations which have nothing to do with your own self. So, I say, to have your thoughts coordinated, cohesive, logical, you would need a long, very long work in minute details. And then, that is the most important part of the thing, when you have come to a beautiful mental structure, well-shaped, very strong, very powerful, the first thing you will be told to do is that you must break it up, if you wish to be united with the Divine! And unless and until you have done that first part you cannot do the second part, unless you form yourself you cannot give yourself, you would have nothing to give to the Divine. You are nothing more than a mass of inchoate things which are not yourself. First you must exist, you must be, before you can give yourself.
At the present moment in the actual state of things what one can give to the Divine is one's body. But that is precisely the thing that one does not give. Yes, try to consecrate your work, your bodily labour; even there, there are so many things that are not true or correct.
09.12 - The True Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, on rare occasions, because of something read or for another reason, there comes to me in the wake of a question what is called an experience but what is simply the fact of entering into a certain state of consciousness and, having entered into it, describing that very state. In such a case, the Force, the Consciousness that express themselves pass across the individual mind, use it like a storehouse of words and draw from it by a sort of affinity the words necessary for the expression. That is the true teaching, the teaching that is difficult to find in books. It can be there, but one must be oneself in that state of consciousness to be able to discover it, whereas, with the spoken word, the sound vibration transmits at least something of the experience and this can be contagious for all who are sensitive.
On other occasions, the question posed and the subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided that the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the question on to the higher Consciousnessa capacity not always present.
09.16 - Goal of Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You say it is obvious that evolution has a goal and that it cannot stop here or now. It seems to you obvious because you have read Sri Aurobindo's books. But if you take anybody you meet in the street and ask him what is the purpose of the universe or of the evolution, you will see that he will answer by saying that he knows nothing about it. Even here there are many, perhaps hundreds, if you ask them individually not to repeat what they have read but to say what they feel and think by themselves about the question, what is the intention behind the universal evolution or whether there is any intention at all, they will not be able to give a better answer. I do not think that there are many who will be able to tell you in all sincerity, "It is like this, it is like that, it is evident, etc., etc." A good number may be able to quote passages from Sri Aurobindo; otherwise, if you cease thinking, thinking with what you have read or heard, if you try to express your own personal experience, would you have any certitude to declare? I do not speak of the result of what you have learnt, what you have read or heard about, I speak of your own personal experience, exclusively genuinely your own, something that is evident because it is your life and realisation. Are you capable of anything of that kind?
If you have an experience of the kind, I shall be glad to congratulate you and say that you have not wasted your time here.
1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
What are problems? A problem is a situation that has arisen on account of the irreconcilability of one person, or one thing, with the status and condition of another person, or another thing. I cannot reconcile my position with your position; this is a problem. You cannot reconcile your position with mine; this is a problem. Why should there be such a condition? How is it that it is not possible for me to reconcile myself with you? It is not possible because there is no clear perception of my relationship with you. I have a misconceived idea of my relationship with you and, therefore, there is a misconceived adjustment of my personality with yours, and a misconception cannot solve a problem. The problem is nothing but this misconception nothing else. The irreconcilability of one thing with another arises on account of the basic difficulty I mentioned, that the person who wishes to bring about this reconciliation, or establish a proper relationship, misses the point of one's own vital connection underline the word 'vital' with the object or the person with which, or with whom, this reconciliation is to be effected. Inasmuch as this kind of knowledge is beyond the purview or capacity of the ordinary human intellect, the knowledge of the Veda is regarded as supernormal, superhuman: apaurusheya not created or manufactured by an individual. This is not knowledge that has come out of reading books. This is not ordinary educational knowledge. It is a knowledge which is vitally and organically related to the fact of life. I am as much connected with the fact of life as you are, and so in my observation and study and understanding of you, in my relationship with you, I cannot forget this fact. The moment I disconnect myself from this fact of life which is unanimously present in you as well as in me, I miss the point, and my effort becomes purposeless.
We are gradually led by this proclamation of the Veda into a tremendous vision of life which requires of us to have a superhuman power of will to grasp the interrelationship of things. This difficulty of grasping the meaning of the interrelationship of things is obviated systematically, stage by stage, gradually, by methods of practice. These methods are called yoga the practice of yoga. I have placed before you, perhaps, a very terrible picture of yoga; it is not as simple as one imagines. It is not a simple circus-master's feat, either of the body or the mind, but a superhuman demand of our total being. Mark this definition of mine: a superhuman demand which is made of our total being not an ordinary human demand of a part of our being, but of our total being. From that, a demand is made by the entire structure of life. The total structure of life requires of our total being to be united with it in a practical demonstration of thought, speech and action this is yoga. If this could be missed, and of course it can easily be missed as it is being done every day, then every effort, from the smallest to the biggest, becomes a failure. All our effort ends in no success, because it would be like decorating a corpse without a soul in it. The whole of life would look like a beautiful corpse with nicely dressed features, but it has no vitality, essence or living principle within it. Likewise, all our activities would look wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, but lifeless; and lifeless beauty is no beauty. There must be life in it only then has it a meaning. Life is not something dead; it is quite opposite of what is dead. We can bring vitality and life into our activity only by the introduction of the principle of yoga.
10.04 - Transfiguration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is what the Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it face to face.
As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and Goddesses and give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His image. The Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.
1.004 - Women, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
136. O you who believe! Believe in God and His messenger, and the Book He sent down to His messenger, and the Book He sent down before. Whoever rejects God, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day, has strayed far in error.
137. Those who believe, then disbelieve, then believe, then disbelieve, then increase in disbelief, God will not forgive them, nor will He guide them to a way.
1.008 - The Principle of Self-Affirmation, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
These are things which cannot be learned theoretically by the study of books, because very few people have lost everything; we always have something with us. But to experience that moment of reckoning, we must lose everything, even our last strip of cloth; no one should want to even look at our face, as if we are the worst perhaps in the whole of creation. Such should be the condition to come upon us nothing to eat, no food of any kind, no place to lie down, no raiment on the body, everything is horrible at that moment the true nature of a person comes out. Otherwise, whatever self-analysis we will do, it will be an analysis of the false personality. Psychological analysis or yogic investigation conducted by a false mind will produce only false results and, therefore, a very superior type of CID (Central Intelligence Division) agent, who is not involved in the case on hand, is necessary to investigate into the mind someone quite different from and outside the purview of the operation of the involved mind. Such a mind is called the higher mind, which is in us. It is this higher mind that has to do what is called the stock-taking of one's own condition.
When a person seriously takes to the practice of yoga, a thorough analysis or stock-taking may have to be done, taking into consideration one's experiences during the past many years, of whose nature a little may be still present in one's current state of affairs. Memories of the past sometimes evoke present experiences, and we must also take note of those experiences and factors which can evoke memories of the past. According to Patanjali, memory is one of the obstacles in yoga. Many people think that memory is a very good thing, and even complain that they have no memory. Well, that is all right for the workaday world, but from another angle of vision memory is regarded as an obstacle because we are repeatedly made to think of something that has happened in the past, so that it goes on annoying us constantly even though that event has passed and has no connection with our present life. Both pleasures of the past and pains of the past can evoke conditions which may force us to repeat those experiences, positively or negatively.
1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
So, it would not be judicious on the part of any individual to vehemently assert that the physical perceptions of the world are all-in-all. The materialist's conception is, therefore, not correct, because this conception arises on account of a miscalculated attitude towards everything. This is the reason why, in the practice of yoga, expert guidance is called for, because we are dealing with matters that are super-intellectual, super-rational. Here our own understanding is not of much use, nor are books of any use, because we are treading on dangerous ground which the mind has not seen and cannot contemplate. We are all a wonder, says the scripture. This is a mystery, a wonder. It is a wonder because it is not capable of intellectually being analysed. The scripture proclaims that the subject is a great mystery, a great wonder and marvel; and one who teaches it is also a marvel, and the one who receives this knowledge, who understands it the disciple is also a wonder, indeed, because though the broadcasting station is powerful, the receiver-set also must be equally powerful to receive the message. The bamboo stick will not receive the message of the BBC. So the disciple is also a wonder to receive this mysterious knowledge, as the teacher himself is a wonder; and the subject is a marvel by itself.
Thus arises the need to be cautious in the adjustment of the mind and the judgement of values in life. The sutras of Patanjali that I referred to give only a hint, and do not enter into details the hint being that the vrittis or the modifications of the mind are of a twofold character, which I translated as determinate and indeterminate, and have to be gradually controlled. This control of the vrittis or the modifications of the mind is regarded as yoga: yoga citta vtti nirodha (I.2). Yoga is the control of the modifications of 'the stuff' of the mind, the very substance of psychological action. Not merely the external modifications, but the very 'stuff' of it, the very root of it, has to be controlled, and this is done in and by successive stages. We have always to move from the effect to the cause in the manner indicated in this analysis that we have made.
1.00a - DIVISION A - THE INTERNAL FIRES OF THE SHEATHS., #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Certain facts are known in connection with the fire spirits (if so they may be termed). The fundamental fact that should here be emphasised is that AGNI, the Lord of Fire, rules over all the fire elementals and devas on the three planes of human evolution, the physical, the astral, and the mental, and rules over them not only on this planet, called the Earth, but on the three planes in all parts of the system. He is one of the seven Brothers (to use an expression familiar to students of the Secret Doctrine) Who each embody one of the seven principles, or Who are in Themselves the seven centres in the body of the cosmic Lord of Fire, called by H. P. B. "Fohat." He is that active fiery Intelligence, Who is the basis of the internal fires of the solar system. On each plane one of these Brothers holds sway, and the three elder Brothers (for always the three will be seen, and later the seven, who eventually merge into the primary three) rule on the first, third and the fifth planes, or on the plane of adi, of atma [xxii]22 and of manas. It is urgent that we here remember that They are fire viewed [66] in its third aspect, the fire of matter. In Their totality these seven Lords form the essence of the cosmic Lord, called in the occult books, Fohat. [xxiii]23
This is so in the same sense as the seven Chohans, [xxiv]24 with Their affiliated groups of pupils, form the essence or centres in the body of one of the Heavenly Men, one of the planetary Logoi. These seven again in Their turn form the essence of the Logos.
1.00a - Foreword, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
There is no doubt that every one who has been searching for the true and au thentic cognition, in vain looked for years, if not even for a lifetime, to find a reliable method of training. The ardent desire for this noble aim made people again and again collect a mass of books, from near and far, supposed to be the best ones, but which were lacking a great deal for real practice. Not one, however, of all the seekers could make any sense from all the stuff collected in the course of time, and the goal aimed at so fervently vanished more and more in nebulous distances. Provided the one or the other did start to work on the progress after instructions so highly praised, his good will and diligence never saw any practical results. Apart from that, nobody could reliably answer to his pressing questions, whether or not just this way he had selected, was the correct one for his individual case.
Just at this time Divine Providence decided to help all those seekers who have been searching with tough endurance to find means and ways for their spiritual development. Through this book universal methods are given into the hands of mankind by a highest initiate who was chosen by Divine Providence for this special task.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
On the other hand, you must be careful to avoid taking the correspondences given in the books of reference without thinking out why they are so given. Thus, you find a camel in the number which refers to the Moon, but the Tarot card "the Moon" refers not to the letter Gimel which means camel, but to the letter Qoph, and the sign Pisces which means fish, while the letter itself refers to the back of the head; and you also find fish has the meaning of the letter Nun. You must not go on from this, and say that the back of your head is like a camel the connection between them is simply that they all refer to the same thing.
In studying the Qabalah you mention six months; I think after that time you should be able to realize that, after six incarnations of uninterrupted study, you may realize that you can never know it; as Confucius said about the Yi King. "If a few more years were added to my life, I would devote a hundred of them to the study of the Yi."
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777 is practically unpurchaseable: copies fetch 10 or so. Nearly all important correspondences are in Magick Table I. The other 2 books are being sent at once. "Working out games with numbers." I am sorry you should see no more than this. When you are better equipped, you will see that the Qabalah is the best (and almost the only) means by which an intelligence can identify himself. And Gematria methods serve to discover spiritual truths. Numbers are the network of the structure of the Universe, and their relations the form of expression of our Understanding of it.*[G1] In Greek and Hebrew there is no other way of writing numbers; our 1, 2, 3 etc. comes from the Phoenicians through the Arabs. You need no more of Greek and Hebrew than these values, some sacred words knowledge grows by use and books of reference.
One cannot set a pupil definite tasks beyond the groundwork I am giving you, and we should find this correspondence taking clear shape of its own accord. You have really more than you can do already. And I can only tell you what the right tasks out of hundreds are by your own reactions to your own study and practice.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
canonical books, but has the great advantage of being less well known and therefore
more vivid and, so to say, more audible than they are. Moreover much of this Smriti
1.00b - Introduction, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The reader will easily realize, how significant and how manifold the application of this tablet is. Not one of the books published up to date does describe the true sense of the first Tarot card so distinctly as I have done in my book. It is let it be noted born from the own practice and destined for the practical use of a lot of other people, and all my disciples have found it to be the best and most serviceable system.
*Tetragrammaton literally means the four-letter word. It was a subterfuge to avoid the sin of uttering the sacred name YHVH (Yahveh) or Jehova as it later became when the vowels of another word were combined with the consonants of YHVH.
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Therefore only people endowed with exceptional faculties, a poor preferred minority seemed to be able to gain this sublime knowledge. Thus a great many of serious seekers of the truth had to go through piles of books just to catch one pearl of it now and again. The one, however, who is earnestly interested in his progress and does not pursue this sacred wisdom from sheer curiosity or else is yearning to satisfy his own lust, will find the right leader to initiate him in this book. No incarnate adept, however high his rank may be, can give the disciple more for his start than the present book does. If both the honest trainee and the attentive reader will find in this book all they have been searching for in vain all the years, then the book has fulfiled its purpose completely.
The Author.
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
c. Microcosmic static disorders, or a consideration of the etheric body in connection with its work of providing a ring-pass-not from the purely physical to the astral. As has been said, both here and in the books of H. P. B., the ring-pass-not [l]48a is that confining barrier which acts as a separator or a division between a system and that which is external to that system. This, as may well be seen, has its interesting correlations when the subject is viewed (as we must consistently endeavour to view it) from the point of view of a human being, a planet and a system, remembering always that in dealing with the [111] etheric body we are dealing with physical matter. This must ever be borne carefully in mind. Therefore, one paramount factor will be found in all groups and formations, and this is the fact that the ring-pass-not acts only as a hindrance to that which is of small attainment in evolution, but forms no barrier to the more progressed. The whole question depends upon two things, which are the karma of the man, the planetary Logos, and the solar Logos, and the dominance of the spiritual indwelling entity over its vehicle.
IV. MACROCOSMIC AND MICROCOSMIC ETHERS
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
As we have been told, and as is generally recognised, the effect of heat in matter is to produce that activity which we call rotary, or the revolution of the spheres. Some of the ancient books, and among them a few that are not yet accessible in the occident, have taught that the entire vault of heaven is a vast sphere, revolving slowly like a stupendous wheel, and carrying with it, in its revolution, the entire number of constellations and of universes contained within it. This is a statement unverifiable by the finite mind of man at his present stage, and with his present scientific accessories, but (like all occult statements) it contains within it the seed of thought, the germ of truths, and the clue to the mystery of the universe. Suffice it here to say, that the rotation of the spheres within the solar periphery is a recognized occult fact, and indications are available to prove that science itself likewise formulates the hypothesis that the solar ring-pass-not similarly rotates in its appointed place among the constellations. But at this juncture we will not deal with this angle of the subject, but will study the rotary action of the spheres of the system, and of its contentall the lesser spheres of every degreeremembering ever to keep the distinction clearly in mind that we are dealing now simply with the inherent characteristic of matter itself, and not with matter in co-operation with [152] its opposite, Spirit, which co-operation brings about spiral-cyclic movement.
II. THE EFFECTS OF ROTARY MOTION
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
This treatise on the Alchemy of Happiness, or Kimiai Saadet, seems well adapted to extend our knowledge of the writings of Ghazzali and of the opinions current then and now in the Oriental world. Although it throws no light on any questions of geography, philology or political history, objects most frequently in view in translations from the Oriental languages, yet a book which exhibits with such plainness the opinions of so large a portion of the human race as the Mohammedans, on questions of philosophy, practical morality and religion, will always be as interesting to the general reader and to a numerous class of students, as the facts that may be elicited to complete a series of kings in a dynasty or to establish the site of an ancient city can be to the historian or the geographer. I translate it from an edition published in Turkish in 1845 (A. H., 1260), at the imperial printing press in Constantinople. [9] As no books are allowed to be printed there which have not passed under the eyes of the censor, the doctrines presented in the book indicate, not only the opinions of eight hundred years since, but also what views are regarded as orthodox, or tolerated among the orthodox at the present day. It has been printed also in Persian at Calcutta.
In form, the book contains a treatise on practical piety, but as is the case with a large proportion of Mohammedan works, the author, whatever may be his subject, finds a place for observations reaching far wide of his apparent aim, so our author is led to make many observations which develop his notions in anatomy, physiology, natural philosophy and natural religion. The partisans of all sorts of opinions will be interested in finding that a Mohammedan author writing so long since in the centre of Asia, had occasion to approve or condemn so many truths, speculations or fancies which are now current among us with the reputation of novelty. Many of the same paradoxes and problems that startle or fascinate in the nineteenth century are here discussed. He came in contact, among his contemporaries, with persons who made the same general objections to natural and revealed religion, as understood by Mohammedans, as are in our days made to Christianity, or who perverted and abused the religion which they professed for their own ends, in the same manner as Christianity is abused among us. And he engaged with earnestness now truthfully, and now erroneously, in refuting these men. His usual stand-point in discussion is equally removed from the most extravagant mysticism, and literal and formal orthodoxy. He attempts a dignified blending of reason [10] and faith, requiring of his fellow men unfeigned piety in the temper and tone of an evangelical Christian. He reminds his readers, in these discourses, that they are not Mussulmans if they are satisfied with merely a nominal faith, and treats with scorn those who are spiritualists only in language and dress.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
These are the ordinances of God that have been set down in the books and Tablets by His Most Exalted Pen. Hold ye fast unto His statutes and commandments, and be not of those who, following their idle fancies and vain imaginings, have clung to the standards fixed by their own selves, and cast behind their backs the standards laid down by God. Abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sundown, and beware lest desire deprive you of this grace that is appointed in the Book.
It hath been ordained that every believer in God, the Lord of Judgement, shall, each day, having washed his hands and then his face, seat himself and, turning unto God, repeat "Allah-u-Abha" ninety-five times. Such was the decree of the Maker of the Heavens when, with majesty and power, He established Himself upon the thrones of His Names. Perform ye, likewise, ablutions for the Obligatory Prayer; this is the comm and of God, the Incomparable, the Unrestrained.
Ye have been forbidden to commit murder or adultery, or to engage in backbiting or calumny; shun ye, then, what hath been prohibited in the holy books and Tablets.
We have divided inheritance into seven categories: to the children, We have allotted nine parts comprising five hundred and forty shares; to the wife, eight parts comprising four hundred and eighty shares; to the father, seven parts comprising four hundred and twenty shares; to the mother, six parts comprising three hundred and sixty shares; to the brothers, five parts or three hundred shares; to the sisters, four parts or two hundred and forty shares; and to the teachers, three parts or one hundred and eighty shares. Such was the ordinance of My Forerunner, He Who extolleth My Name in the night season and at the break of day.
--
Thou speakest false! By God! What thou dost possess is naught but husks which We have left to thee as bones are left to dogs. By the righteousness of the one true God! Were anyone to wash the feet of all mankind, and were he to worship God in the forests, valleys, and mountains, upon high hills and lofty peaks, to leave no rock or tree, no clod of earth, but was a witness to his worship-yet, should the fragrance of My good pleasure not be inhaled from him, his works would never be acceptable unto God. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Lord of all. How many a man hath secluded himself in the climes of India, denied himself the things that God hath decreed as lawful, imposed upon himself austerities and mortifications, and hath not been remembered by God, the Revealer of Verses. Make not your deeds as snares wherewith to entrap the object of your aspiration, and deprive not yourselves of this Ultimate Objective for which have ever yearned all such as have drawn nigh unto God. Say: The very life of all deeds is My good pleasure, and all things depend upon Mine acceptance. Read ye the Tablets that ye may know what hath been purposed in the books of God, the All-Glorious, the Ever-Bounteous. He who attaineth to My love hath title to a throne of gold, to sit thereon in honour over all the world; he who is deprived thereof, though he sit upon the dust, that dust would seek refuge with God, the Lord of all Religions.
Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God, ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying impostor. We pray God that He may graciously assist him to retract and repudiate such claim. Should he repent, God will, no doubt, forgive him. If, however, he persisteth in his error, God will, assuredly, send down one who will deal mercilessly with him. Terrible, indeed, is God in punishing! Whosoever interpreteth this verse otherwise than its obvious meaning is deprived of the Spirit of God and of His mercy which encompasseth all created things. Fear God, and follow not your idle fancies. Nay, rather, follow the bidding of your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Wise. Erelong shall clamorous voices be raised in most lands. Shun them, O My people, and follow not the iniquitous and evil-hearted. This is that of which We gave you forewarning when We were dwelling in Iraq, then later while in the Land of Mystery, and now from this Resplendent Spot.
--
God hath relieved you of the ordinance laid down in the Bayan concerning the destruction of books. We have permitted you to read such sciences as are profitable unto you, not such as end in idle disputation; better is this for you, if ye be of them that comprehend.
O kings of the earth! He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come. The Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting. Worship none but God, and, with radiant hearts, lift up your faces unto your Lord, the Lord of all names. This is a Revelation to which whatever ye possess can never be compared, could ye but know it.
--
Recite ye the verses of God every morn and eventide. Whoso faileth to recite them hath not been faithful to the Covenant of God and His Testament, and whoso turneth away from these holy verses in this Day is of those who throughout eternity have turned away from God. Fear ye God, O My servants, one and all. Pride not yourselves on much reading of the verses or on a multitude of pious acts by night and day; for were a man to read a single verse with joy and radiance it would be better for him than to read with lassitude all the Holy books of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Read ye the sacred verses in such measure that ye be not overcome by languor and despondency. Lay not upon your souls that which will weary them and weigh them down, but rather what will lighten and uplift them, so that they may soar on the wings of the Divine verses towards the Dawning-place of His manifest signs; this will draw you nearer to God, did ye but comprehend.
150
--
Whoso hath not recognized this sublime and fundamental verity, and hath failed to attain this most exalted station, the winds of doubt will agitate him, and the sayings of the infidels will distract his soul. He that hath acknowledged this principle will be endowed with the most perfect constancy. All honour to this all-glorious station, the remembrance of which adorneth every exalted Tablet. Such is the teaching which God bestoweth on you, a teaching that will deliver you from all manner of doubt and perplexity, and enable you to attain unto salvation in both this world and in the next. He, verily, is the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Bountiful. He it is Who hath sent forth the Messengers, and sent down the books to proclaim "There is none other God but Me, the Almighty, the All-Wise".
164
--
We, verily, see amongst you him who taketh hold of the Book of God and citeth from it proofs and arguments wherewith to repudiate his Lord, even as the followers of every other Faith sought reasons in their Holy books for refuting Him Who is the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Say: God, the True One, is My witness that neither the Scriptures of the world, nor all the books and writings in existence, shall, in this Day, avail you aught without this, the Living Book, Who proclaimeth in the midmost heart of creation: "Verily, there is none other God but Me, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."
169
1.00 - Preface, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
I am greatly indebted to Madame H. P. Blavatsky's writings, and I believe I shall not be too egotistical in claiming that a proper understanding of the principles outlined herein will reveal many points of subtlety and philosophic interest in her Secret Doctrine , and aid in the comprehension of this monumental work of hers. The same is also true of S. L. McGregor Mathers' translation of portions of the Zohar, " The Kaballah Unveiled ", and of Arthur E. Waite's excellent compendium of the Zohar, " The Secret Doctrine in Israel ", both of which are closed books, in the main, to most students of mystical lore and philosophy who do not have the specialized comparative knowledge which I have endeavoured to incorporate in this little book.
I should here call attention to a tract, the author of which is unknown, entitled The Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, of which splendid translations have been made by W. Wynn Westcott, Arthur E. Waite, and Knut Stenring. In the course of time this appears to have become incorporated into, and affiliated with, the text of the Sepher Yetsirah, although several critics place it at a later date than the genuine Mishnahs of the Sepher Yetsirah. However, in giving the titles of the Paths from this tract, I have named throughout the source as the Sepher Yetsirah to avoid unnecessary confusion. It is to be hoped that no adverse criticism will arise on this point.
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
They werent my things, however I had stolen them. Most of them I had taken from books. Having
understood them, abstractly, I presumed I had a right to them presumed that I could adopt them, as if
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion.
What good is all that?
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1. Medieval manuscripts were numbered by folios instead of pages. The front side of the folio is the recto (the right-hand page of an open book), and the back is the verso (the left-hand of an open book). In Liber Primus, Jung followed this practice. He reverted to contemporary pagination in Liber Secundus. All citations for photos refer back to the page in the Red books German Caligraphy Edition.
2. In 1921, Jung cited the first three verses of this passage (from Luther's Bible), noting: "The birth of the Savior, the development of the redeeming symbol, takes place where one does not expect it, and from precisely where a solution is most improbable" (Psychological Types, CW 6, 439).
1.01 - About the Elements, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
In the oldest oriental scriptures, the elements are designated as tattwas. In our European literature, they are only considered on the ground of their good effects and in so far as we are warned against their unfavourable influence, which means that certain actions can be undertaken under the influence of the tattwas, or else must be omitted. The accuracy of this fact is not to be doubted, but all that has been published up to date points to a slight aspect of the effects of the elements only. How to find out about the effects of elements respecting the tattwas for any personal use, may be sufficiently learned from astrological books.
I am penetrating far deeper into the secret of the elements and therefore I have chosen a different key, which, although being analogous to the astrological key, has, as a matter of fact, nothing to do with it. The reader, to whom this key is completely unknown, shall be taught to use it in various ways. As for the single tasks, analogies and effects of the elements, I shall deal with tem by turns and in detail in the following chapters, which will not only unveil the theoretical part of it, but point directly to the practical use, because it is here that the greatest Arcanum is to be found.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
that those who read my books will think that they are very
simply and clearly written, when in fact, quite on the con-
--
some complete books of all the sources mentioned in the
previous paragraph, and there were also several unknown
1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Humanly speaking, Sri Aurobindo is close to us, because once we have respectfully bowed before the "wisdom of the East" and the odd ascetics who seem to make light of all our fine laws, we find that our curiosity has been aroused but not our life; we need a practical truth that will survive our rugged winters. Sri Aurobindo knew our winters well; he experienced them as a student, from the age of seven until twenty. He lived from one lodging house to another at the whim of more or less benevolent landladies, with one meal a day, and not even an overcoat to put on his back, but always laden with books: the French symbolists, Mallarm, Rimbaud, whom he read in the original French long before reading the Bhagavad Gita in translation. To us Sri Aurobindo personifies a unique synthesis.
He was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872, the year of Rimbaud's Illuminations, just a few years before Einstein; modern physics had already seen the light of day with Max Planck, and Jules Verne was busy probing the future. Yet, Queen Victoria was about to become Empress of India, and the conquest of Africa was not even completed; it was the turning point from one world to another.
--
When he sailed back to India, Sri Aurobindo was twenty. He had no position, no titles. His father had just died. What remained of his fourteen years in the West? We are tempted to recall Edouard Herriot's perfect definition, for if it is true that education is what remains when everything is forgotten, then what remains of the West after one has left it is not its books, its museums, and theaters, but an urge to translate into living acts what has been theorized. There,
perhaps, lies the true strength of the West. Unfortunately, we in the West have too much "intelligence" to have anything truly substantial to translate outwardly, while India, too inwardly replete, does not possess the necessary urge to match what she lives with what she sees.
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
I am now sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which I see sheets of paper with writing or print. By turning my head I see out of the window buildings and clouds and the sun. I believe that the sun is about ninety-three million miles from the earth; that it is a hot globe many times bigger than the earth; that, owing to the earth's rotation, it rises every morning, and will continue to do so for an indefinite time in the future. I believe that, if any other normal person comes into my room, he will see the same chairs and tables and books and papers as I see, and that the table which I see is the same as the table which I feel pressing against my arm. All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating, except in answer to a man who doubts whether I know anything. Yet all this may be reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be sure that we have stated it in a form that is wholly true.
To make our difficulties plain, let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is oblong, brown and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it gives out a wooden sound.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
what he makes himself, what is said in books, or what people
talk about. But when it happens spontaneously it is a spookish
1.01 - Asana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In a sense this is true, because any posture becomes uncomfortable sooner or later. The steadiness and easiness mark a definite attainment, as will be explained later on. Hindu books, such as the "Shiva Sanhita," give countless postures; many, perhaps most of them, impossible for the average adult European. Others insist that the head, neck, and spine should be kept vertical and straight, for reasons connected with the subject of Prana, which will be dealt with in its proper place. The positions illustrated in Liber E (Equinox I and VII) form the best guide.
footnote: Here are four:
1.01 - Description of the Castle, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
8.: Certain books on prayer that you have read advise the soul to enter into itself,10' and this is what I mean. I was recently told by a great theologian that souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use.' Just so, there are souls so infirm and accustomed to think of nothing but earthly matters, that there seems no cure for them. It appears impossible for them to retire into their own hearts; accustomed as they are to be with the reptiles and other creatures which live outside the castle, they have come at last to imitate their habits. Though these souls are by their nature so richly endowed, capable of communion even with God Himself, yet their case seems hopeless. Unless they endeavour to understand and remedy their most miserable plight, their minds will become, as it were, bereft of movement, just as Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking backwards in disobedience to God's command.11
9.: As far as I can understand, the gate by which to enter this castle is prayer and meditation. I do not allude more to mental than to vocal prayer, for if it is prayer at all, the mind must take part in it. If a person neither considers to Whom he is addressing himself, what he asks, nor what he is who ventures to speak to God, although his lips may utter many words, I do not call it prayer.12' Sometimes, indeed, one may pray devoutly without making all these considerations through having practised them at other times. The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave-caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition-cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner. I trust His Majesty will prevent any of you, sisters, from doing so. Our habit in this Order of conversing about spiritual matters is a good preservative against such evil ways.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the _I_, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other mens lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
--
Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,that is, keep comfortably warm, and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course _ la mode_.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The confusion is also due to the efforts of those theo- logians in mediaeval times who, being desirous of saving their benighted Hebrew brethren from the pangs of eternal torture and damnation in the nether regions, muddled and tampered not only with the original texts but with extreme sectarian interpretations in order to show that the authors of the Qabalistic books were desirous that their Jewish posterity should become apostates to Christianity.
The Qabalah taken in its traditional and literal form
--
This statement is altogether without foundation in fact, for a careful perusal of the books of the Old Testament, the Talmud, and other well-known Rabbinical records which have come down to us, indicate that there the early monumental bases of the Qabalah may be found.
The Qabalistic doctrine admittedly is not explicit there, but analysis reveals it to be tacitly assumed, and the many cryptic remarks of several of the more important Rabbis can have no particle of meaning without the implication of a mystical philosophy cherished and venerated in their hearts, and affecting the whole of their teaching.
--
About 1240 a.d. was born Abraham Abulafia, who became a celebrated figure - bringing, however, a great deal of dis- repute to the name of this theosophy. He studied philo- logy* medicine, and philosophy, as well as those few books on the Qabalah which were available at the time. He soon perceived that the Pythagorean Number Philosophy was identical with that expounded in the Sepher Yetsirah, and later, becoming dissatisfied with academic research, he turned towards that aspect of Qabalah termed nbsp n'ova or the Practical Qabalah, which, to-day, we term
Magick. Unfortunately, the Qabalists in the public eye at that time were not acquainted with the developed specialized technique that is now available, derived as it is from the Collegii ad Spiritum Sanctum. The result was that
--
Baal Shem Tov in the first half of the eighteenth century is sufficiently important to warrant some mention here. For although Chassidism, as that movement was called, derives its enthusiasm from contact with nature and the great out-doors of the Carpathians, it has its primary literary origin and significant inspiration in the books which consti- tute the Qabalah. Chassidism gave the doctrines of the
Aohar to the " Am ha-aretz " in a way in which no previous set of Rabbis had succeeded in doing, and it would, more- over, appear that the Practical Qabalah received a con- siderable impetus at the same time. For we find that
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "Does he read many books?"
BRINDE: " books? Oh, dear no! They're all on his tongue."
M. had just finished his studies in college. It amazed him to hear that Sri Ramakrishna read no books.
M: "Perhaps it is time for his evening worship. May we go into the room? Will you tell him we are anxious to see him?"
--
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance. When Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, "And you are a man of knowledge!", M.'s ego was again badly shocked.
God with and without form
--
The assertion that both are equally true amazed M.; he had never learnt this from his books. Thus his ego received a third blow; but since it was not yet completely crushed, he came forward to argue with the Master a little more.
God and the clay image
1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
I had an introduction to Sj. V. V. S. Aiyar who was then staying at Pondicherry. It was in December 1918 that I reached Pondicherry. I did not stay long with Mr. Aiyar. I took up my bundle of books mainly the Arya and went to No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, the Arya office, which was also Sri Aurobindo's residence. The house looked a little queer, on the right side, as one entered, were a few plantain trees and by their side a heap of broken tiles. On the left, at the edge of the open courtyard, four doors giving entrance to four rooms were seen. The verandah outside was wide. It was about eight in the morning. The time for meeting Sri Aurobindo was fixed at three o'clock in the afternoon. I waited all the time in the house, occasionally chatting with the two inmates who were there.
Sri Aurobindo was sitting in a wooden chair behind a small table covered with an indigo-blue cloth in the verandah upstairs when I went up to meet him. I felt a spiritual light surrounding his face. His look was penetrating. He had known me by my correspondence. I reminded him about my brother having met him at Baroda; he had not forgotten him. Then I informed him that our group was now ready to start revolutionary activity. It had taken us about eleven years to get organised.
1.01 - NIGHT, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
O'er books and papers saw me bend;
But would that I, on mountains grand,
--
Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust,
Which to the vaulted ceiling creep,
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
There is still one farther observation that deserves to be made. If a person by the payment of a thousand pieces of gold, could become master of alchemy, yet the condition of the man who is absolutely master of ten thousand pieces of gold would be better and preferable. And this illustrates the position of the soofees. If a person follow their method and attain to the knowledge of some things, he still does not equal in excellence, the doctors of the law. Just as we see, that books on alchemy, and students of alchemy are very numerous, while those who are successful are the least of few, so the path of mysticism is sought for by all men, and longed for by all classes of society, yet those who [34] attain to the end are exceedingly rare. Perhaps, as in the case of alchemy, it only exists now in name and form. The greater part of the notions and fancies of most of the mystics, which they esteem as revelations and mysteries, are nothing but vain triflings and pure self complacency; just as that while visions are a reality, still mere confused dreams are very abundant. The mystic, however, who by spiritual revelation has learned all that a doctor of the law has been able to learn after many years of study, and who has no remaining doubts in matters of internal or external knowledge, is certainly more excellent than the doctor of the law who is learned only in external knowledge, and this should not be denied. And it follows that the way of the mystics must be acknowledged to be a true one, and that you must not destroy the belief of those weak minded and vain persons who follow them; for, the reason why they cast reproaches upon knowledge and calumniate the doctors of law is that they have no acquirements or knowledge themselves.
O, inquirer after divine mysteries! do you ask how it is known that the happiness of man consists in the knowledge of God, and that his enjoyment consists in the love of God ? We observe in reply, that every man's happiness is found in the place where he obtains enjoyment and tranquility. Thus sensual enjoyment is found in eating and drinking and the like. The enjoyment of anger is derived from taking revenge and from violence. The enjoyment of the eye consists in the view of correct images and agreeable objects. The enjoyment of the ear is secured in listening to harmonious voices. In the same way the enjoyment of the heart depends upon its being employed in that for which it was created, in learning to know every thing in its reality and truth. Hence, every man glories in what he knows, even if the thing is but of little importance. He [35] who knows how to play chess, boasts over him who does not know: and if he is looking on while a game of chess is played, it is of no use to tell him not to speak, for as soon as he sees an improper move, he has not patience to restrain himself from showing his skill, and glorying in his knowledge, by pointing it out....
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Many and even innumerable books, O student of the divine mysteries, have been written in explanation of the organization of the body and the uses of is parts: but they have no more made the subject clear and exhausted it, than a drop can illustrate the ocean, or an atom illustrate the sun. [38] It is impossible for the thing formed to understand the knowledge of him that formed it. And how is it possible, that he who is of yesterday, should comprehend the secrets of the operations of the Ancient of days ?
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 !
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
lectures, or reading books, or reasoning, is merely preparing
the ground; it is not religion. Intellectual assent, and
1.01 - Soul and God, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
Your God should not be a man of mockery, rather you yourself will be the man of mockery. You should mock yourself and rise above this. If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked 61 and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.
Is there anyone among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: "Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs. 62
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:For the Sadhaka of the Integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, -- if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the written Truth, -- sabdabrahmativartate -- beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, -- srotaryasya srutasya ca. For he is not the Sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a Sadhaka of the Infinite.
8:Another kind of Shastra is not Scripture, but a statement of the science and methods, the effective principles and way of working of the path of Yoga which the Sadhaka elects to follow. Each path has its Shastra, either written or traditional, passing from mouth to mouth through a long line of Teachers. In India a great authority, a high reverence even is ordinarily attached to the written or traditional teaching. All the lines of the Yoga are supposed to be fixed and the Teacher who has received the Shastra by tradition and realised it in practice guides the disciple along the immemorial tracks. One often even hears the objection urged against a new practice, a new Yogic teaching, the adoption of a new formula, "It is not according to the Shastra." But neither in fact nor in the actual practice of the Yogins is there really any such entire rigidity of an iron door shut against new truth, fresh revelation, widened experience. The written or traditional teaching expresses the knowledge and experiences of many centuries systematised, organised, made attainable to the beginner. Its importance and utility are therefore immense. But a great freedom of variation and development is always practicable. Even so highly scientific a system as Rajayoga can be practised on other lines than the organised method of Patanjali. Each of the three paths, trimarga 51, breaks into many bypaths which meet again at the goal. The general knowledge on which the Yoga depends is fixed, but the order, the succession, the devices, the forms must be allowed to vary, for the needs and particular impulsions of the individual nature have to be satisfied even while the general truths remain firm and constant.
1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
In the clear morning light I could have a good view of Sri Aurobindo as he was lying on his bed, almost motionless and straight. I asked myself; "Is he enjoying a bit of sweet sleep since he had none the whole night? Or is he simply keeping quiet and bearing the severe pain with equanimity?" It was the latter, as he told us afterwards. Only the Mother's visit, to make some enquiries or to offer some drink, showed flickers of life in his otherwise trance-like mood. I could now observe him from close at hand and the room he had been living in for the last twelve years! Since then, it has undergone such a tremendous change that just a faint memory of its original state is all that remains today. The wooden bed (on which Sri Aurobindo was lying) was rather large, the upper part being slightly raised, and he filled almost the entire breadth the broad chest and the head large and round, the fine silken hair parted in the middle. As for the rest of the room, it was very plain, almost austerely furnished, except for the carpet, one small box-wood table at either end of the room, a semicircular table in the middle; note books, and odds and ends of papers lying scattered on one of the tables; a big almirah containing a small number of books: on the top shelf, the bound volumes of the Arya. On the next one, the Collected Works of Shakespeare and Shelley and books presented by writers such as Radhakrishnan, James Cousins, etc. There were two paintings, one Chinese and the other of Amitabha Buddha with the lotus in his hand; a few wood carvings; a couch for the Mother opposite Sri Aurobindo's bed. The only furniture of luxury was a long cane chair in the adjacent room, in which he could recline and have some repose.
When Dr. Manilal arrived after his breakfast, he asked Sri Aurobindo how he felt. There was no complaint and the answer was brief. Soon after, Dr. Rao arrived. On hearing the story of the fall he proposed that an orthopaedic surgeon from Madras be called for consultation. He had a friend Dr. Narasimha Ayer, well known for his efficiency. The Mother approved and he left for Madras.
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
I have taken these stories from various different books.b But there are many more. They are truly endless in number.
In contrast to these terrible tales of retri bution, there are also accounts of children who thanks to heaven's miraculous intervention were enabled to carry out acts of great filial devotion: the story of a rare medicinal stone suddenly appearing in the garden of a son who needed it to cure an ailing father; of midwinter ice breaking up and fresh carp leaping into the arms of a son whose stepmo ther had a craving for minced fish; of a poor man whose shovel struck a cauldron filled with gold as he was about to bury his child alive to ensure his mother would be adequately fed; of bamboo shoots emerging in midwinter for a son anxious to feed them to his mother; of a carp-filled fountain gushing up in the garden of a son who wanted to satisfy his mother's yearning for fine water and minced fish.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magical weapons," pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" these sentences in the "magical language" i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. I call forth "spirits" such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution is thus an act of
MAGICK
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It has been said that all great things are mysteries. They are not calculated effects produced logically by imagined causes, but are mysteries, which is another way of saying that all of this is unthinkable by the human mind. Knowledge somehow arises. One fine morning we get up and find that we are fired with a love for God. What has happened to us? Why is it that we suddenly we say, "Oh, today I am something different." Why we are something different today? From where has this inspiration come? Nobody knows what has happened. If we read the lives of great masters, sages and saints, we will find that they were all suddenly fired with a longing which they could not explain, and no one can explain ordinarily. That knowledge, that aspiration, that love of God has not come from books. It has not come from any imaginable source. It has simply come that is all. How? Nobody knows.
Inasmuch as it is a super-logical mystery, there would be no necessity on our part to investigate the causes thereof and the methods thereof, logically or scientifically, beyond a certain limit, though logical and scientific thinking is a help to corroborate the presence of this aspiration. The aspiration is already present within us. It is not created by logical thinking and, therefore, such logical thinking is only a bulwark that we create to reinforce the aspiration that is already there. We already have a faith in God. We already believe that God-realisation is the goal of life. This belief has taken possession of us already, and now all that we do is only an ancillary process which is contri butory to streng thening this aspiration and enabling it to become more and more potent and influential in our daily life. We cannot create a concept of God by any amount of effort.
10.26 - A True Professor, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
books and programmes are of secondary importance, they are only a scaffolding, the building within is made of a different kind of bricks. A happy luminous consciousness within is the teacher's asset, with that he achieves all; without it he fails always.
If the teacher is to be a yogi, the pupil on his side must be at least an aspirant. But I suppose a pupil, so long as he is a child, is a born aspirant. For, as the Mother says, a child's consciousness retains generally something of the pure inner consciousness for sometime at least until it is overshadowed by the development of the body and the mind in the ordinary normal way. Something of this, we know, has been expressed in the famous lines of the visionary English poet:
1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
From the point of view of this Absolute, one can with equally good reason affirm that God is or that He is not, that He is the unique or that He is beyond number, that He is inseparable from the universe or that He is without relation to the universe. He is being if all outside Him is non-being, He is non-being if universe exists. So is He defined in certain sacred books of the East.
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1.02 - Karma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
21. If you are a doctor, treat the poor free of charge. If you are an advocate, plead for the poor. If you are a teacher or a professor, give free tuition to poor boys. Give them books free.
22. Keep Twelve Tissue Remedies or some household remedies and treat the poor.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
emerge suddenly and unpredictably, by the fantasies in books, on TV, and in the theater.
Events or experiences that remain beyond the reach of exploration, assimilation and accomodation stay
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
In the books of former prophets it is written, "Know thine own soul, and thou shalt know thy Lord," and we have received it in a tradition, that "He who knows himself, already knows his Lord." This is a convincing argument that the soul is like a clean mirror, into which whenever a person looks, he may there see God. If you say, however, that there are many who have studied themselves, and have learned that they are creatures, and still they do not know their Lord, I reply, that to pass from the knowledge of the soul to the knowledge of God, and to demonstrate the latter [42] from the former, may be accomplished by two methods. The first method is most deep and profound. The most exalted in wisdom and the most penetrating among men are far from understanding it, even when they apply themselves to it, both with science, practice and a pure life. How then should those ignorant persons understand it, who are utterly destitute of a knowledge of external things! Let us, therefore, pass to the second method and explain that: for he who possesses a discriminating mind, even if he were blind, is capable of understanding it.
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.
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This opens to us the door to almost unlimited power. Suppose, for instance, a man understood the Prana perfectly, and could control it, what power on earth would not be his? He would be able to move the sun and stars out of their places, to control everything in the universe, from the atoms to the biggest suns, because he would control the Prana. This is the end and aim of Pranayama. When the Yogi becomes perfect, there will be nothing in nature not under his control. If he orders the gods or the souls of the departed to come, they will come at his bidding. All the forces of nature will obey him as slaves. When the ignorant see these powers of the Yogi, they call them the miracles. One peculiarity of the Hindu mind is that it always inquires for the last possible generalisation, leaving the details to be worked out afterwards. The question is raised in the Vedas, "What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything?" Thus, all books, and all philosophies that have been written, have been only to prove that by knowing which everything is known. If a man wants to know this universe bit by bit he must know every individual grain of sand, which means infinite time; he cannot know all of them. Then how can knowledge be? How is it possible for a man to be all-knowing through particulars? The Yogis say that behind this particular manifestation there is a generalisation. Behind all particular ideas stands a generalised, an abstract principle; grasp it, and you have grasped everything. Just as this whole universe has been generalised in the Vedas into that One Absolute Existence, and he who has grasped that Existence has grasped the whole universe, so all forces have been generalised into this Prana, and he who has grasped the Prana has grasped all the forces of the universe, mental or physical. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his own mind, and all the minds that exist. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his body, and all the bodies that exist, because the Prana is the generalised manifestation of force.
How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All the trainings and exercises in this regard are for that one end. Each man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him. This body is very near to us, nearer than anything in the external universe, and this mind is the nearest of all. The Prana which is working this mind and body is the nearest to us of all the Prana in this universe. This little wave of the Prana which represents our own energies, mental and physical, is the nearest to us of all the waves of the infinite ocean of Prana. If we can succeed in controlling that little wave, then alone we can hope to control the whole of Prana. The Yogi who has done this gains perfection; no longer is he under any power. He becomes almost almighty, almost all-knowing. We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we examine these different bodies, we shall find at the back of each this control of the Prana, whether they know it or not. If you boil all their theories down, the residuum will be that. It is the one and the same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force and are using it unconsciously without knowing its nature, but it is the same as the Yogi uses, and which comes from Prana.
1.02 - Priestly Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the ritual books. The King of Madagascar was high-priest of the
realm. At the great festival of the new year, when a bullock was
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
books, but study of those books which teach the liberation of
the soul. Then again this study does not mean controversial
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mentioned by the Yogis in their books. These men change the
very material of their bodies; they re-arrange the molecules in
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
We can find remarkable illustrations of this attitude. Id like to mention one, but only parenthetically. Theres a chapter (incidentally, a very interesting chapter in some ways) in Mau- rice Maeterlincks new book The Great Riddle. 4 Its subject is the anthroposophical method of viewing the world. He discusses anthroposophy, and he also discusses me (if youll forgive a per- sonal reference). He has read many of my books and makes a very interesting comment. He says that, at the beginning of my books, I seem to have a levelheaded, logical, and shrewd mind. In the later chapters, however, it seems as if I had lost my mind. It may very well appear this way to Maeterlinck; subjectively he has every right to his opinion. Why shouldnt I seem levelheaded, logical and scientific to him in the first chapters, and insane in later ones?
Of course, Maeterlinck has a right to think this way, and nobody wants to dispute that. The question is, however, whether such an attitude isnt really absurd. Indeed, it does become absurd when you consider this: I have, unfortunately, written a great many books in my life (as you can see from the unusual appearance of the book table here). No sooner have I finished writing one, than I begin another. When Maurice Maeterlinck reads the new book, hell discover once again that in the first chapters I am shrewd, levelheaded and scientific, and then I lose my mind later on. Then I begin to write a third book; the first chapters again are reasonable and so forth. Consequently, if nothing else, I seem to have mastered the art of becoming at will a completely reasonable human being in the early part of a book andequally by choicea lunatic later, only to return to reason when I write the next book. In this way, I take turns being reasonable and a lunatic. Naturally, Maeterlinck has every right to find this; but he misses the absurdity of such an idea. A modern man of his importance thus falls into absurdities; but this, as I say, is only a little parenthetical remark.
4 . Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949), Belgian poet, dramatist, and essayist. In Paris he gained a reputation through Symbolist verse and became a leading Symbolist playwright. He was awarded a Nobel prize for literature in 1911.
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When we read modern books on embryology, botany, or zool- ogy, we feel a sense of despair in finding ourselves immediately forced to plunge into a cold intellectuality. Although the life and the development of nature are not essentially intellectual, we have to deliberately and consciously set aside every artistic ele- ment. Once weve read a book on botany written according to strict scientific rules, our first task as teachers is to rid ourselves of everything we found there. Obviously, we have to assimilate the information about botanical processes, and the sacrifice of learn- ing from such books is necessary; but in order to educate children between the change of teeth and puberty, we have to eliminate what we found there, transforming everything into artistic, imagi- nal forms through our own artistic activity and sensibility. What- ever lives in our thoughts about nature has to fly on the wings of artistic inspiration and be transformed into images that then come before the soul of the child.
Artistically shaping our instruction for children between the change of teeth and puberty is all that we should be concerned with in the metamorphosis of education for our time and the near future. If the first period of childhood requires a priestly element in education, the second requires an artistic element. What are we really doing when we educate a person in the second stage of life? The individuality journeying from an earlier earthly life and from the spiritual world is trying gradually to develop and permeate a second self. Our job is to assist in this process; we incorporate what we do with the child as teachers into the forces that inter- wove with spirit and soul to shape the second self with a unique and individual character. Again, the consciousness of this cosmic context needs to act as an enlivening impulse, running through our teaching methods and the everyday conditions of education. We cant contrive what needs to be done; we can only allow it to happen through the influence of the children themselves on their teachers.
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In many ways, this runs counter to the ordinary tendencies of modern culture, and of course we belong to this modern culture. We read books that impart meaningful content through little squiggles we call a, b, c, and so on. We fail to realize that weve been damaged by being forced to learn these symbols, since they have absolutely no relationship to our inner life. Why should a or b look the way they do today? Theres no inner necessity, no experience that justifies writing an h after an a to express a feeling of astonishment or wonder.
This was not always the situation, however. People first made images in pictographic writing to describe external processes, and when they looked at the sheet or a board on which something had been written, they received an echo of that outer object or pro- cess. In other words, we should spare the child of six or seven from learning to write as its done today. What we need instead is to bring the child something that can actually arise from the childs own being, from the activities of his or her arms and fingers. The child sees a shining, radiant object and receives an impression; then we fix it with a drawing that represents the impression of radiance, which a child can understand.
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple.
The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Reading books on Hinduism, it would appear that it is a kind of spiritual paleontology interspersed with polysyllabic Sanskrit words,
as if Indians were a mixture of arcane philosophers and unrepentant idolaters. But if we look at India simply, from within, without trying to divide her into paragraphs of Hinduism (which are necessarily 11
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He simply says: "Have the experience yourself; if you do this, you'll get that result; if you do that, you'll get another result." All the ingenuity, the skill and precision we have expended for the last century or two in the study of physical phenomena, the Indian has brought, with equal exactness for the last four or five millennia, to the observation of inner phenomena. For a people of "dreamers," they have some surprises in store for us. And if we are a little honest, we will soon admit that our own "inner" studies, i.e., our psychology and psychoanalysis, or our knowledge of man, demands an ascesis as methodical and patient, and sometimes as tedious, as the long studies required to master nuclear physics. If we want to take up this path, it is not enough to read books or to collect clinical studies on all the 14
All quotations from the Upanishads, the Veda, and the Bhagavad Gita in this book are taken from Sri Aurobindo's translations.
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Indeed, if we brought as much sincerity, meticulousness, and perseverance to the study of the inner world as we do to the study of our books, we would go fast and far the West also has surprises in store for us but it must first get rid of its preconceptions (Columbus did not draw the map of America before leaving Palos). These simple truths may be worth repeating, for the West seems to be caught between two falsehoods: the overly serious falsehood of the spiritualists, who have already settled the question of God in a few infallible paragraphs, and the not-serious-enough falsehood of the rudimentary occultists and psychics, who have reduced the invisible to a sort of freak-show of the imagination. India, wisely, refers us to our own direct experience and to experimental methods. Sri Aurobindo would soon put this fundamental lesson of experimental spirituality into practice.
But what kind of men, what human substance, was he going to find in that India he did not know? Once we have set aside the exotic facade and the bizarre (to us) customs that amuse and intrigue tourists,
1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
All authors of books dealing with ceremonial magic and giving reports about conjuration and invocation of beings of any kind point out that the magic circle plays the most important role in this. Hundreds of instructions can be found on how to make magic circles to attain various goals, for instance with Albertus Magnus, in the Clavicula Salomonis, in the Goethia, in Agrippa, in Magia Naturalis, in the Faust-Magia-Naturalis and in the oldest Grimoires. It is told everywhere that when invoking or calling a being, one must stand within the magic circle. But an explanation of the esoteric symbolism of the magic circle is hardly ever given.
Therefore I intend to give the studious and eager magician a completely satisfactory description of the magic circle according the Universal Laws and Analogies.
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The esoteric essence of the magician's standing in the centre of the magic circle is, therefore, quite different from that which the books on evocations usually maintain. If a magician standing in the centre of the magic circle were not conscious of the fact that he is, at that moment, symbolizing God the Divine and Infinite, he would not be able to practise any influence on any being whatsoever. The magician is, at that instant, a perfect magic authority whom all powers and beings must absolutely obey. His will and the orders he gives to beings or powers are equivalent to the will and orders of the Infinite, the Divine, and must therefore be unconditionally respected by the beings and powers the magician has conjured up. If the magician, during such an operation, has not the right attitude towards his doings, he degrades himself to a sorcerer, a charlatan, who simply mimics and has no true contact with the Highest. The magician's authority would, in such a case, be rather doubtful. Moreover, he would be in danger of losing his control over such beings and powers, or, what would even be worse, he could be mocked by them, not to speak of other unwanted and unforeseen surprises and accompanying phenomena that he would be exposed, especially if negative forces were involved.
The way in which a magic circle has to be formed depends on the grade of maturity and the individual attitude of the magician.
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The books dealing with the construction of the magic circle clearly state that during the act of invocation the magician must not leave the circle, which, in its magic sense, means nothing else but that the consciousness of, or contact with, the Absolute, (i. e. the macrocosm), must not be interrupted. Needless to say that the magician, during his magic operation with the help of a magic circle and with the being standing in front of him, must not step out of the circle with his physical body, unless he has finished his experiment and dismissed the relevant being.
All this clearly shows that a true magic circle is really the best means to practice ceremonial magic. The magician will always find that the magic circle is, in every respect, the highest symbol in his hand.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The extract which follows next is of great historical significance, since it was mainly through the Mystical Theology and the Divine Names of the fifth-century author who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite that mediaeval Christendom established contact with Neoplatonism and thus, at several removes, with the metaphysical thought and discipline of India. In the ninth century Scotus Erigena translated the two books into Latin and from that time forth their influence upon the philosophical speculations and the religious life of the West was wide, deep and beneficent. It was to the authority of the Areopagite that the Christian exponents of the Perennial Philosophy appealed, whenever they were menaced (and they were always being menaced) by those whose primary interest was in ritual, legalism and ecclesiastical organization. And because Dionysius was mistakenly identified with St. Pauls first Athenian convert, his authority was regarded as all but apostolic; therefore, according to the rules of the Catholic game, the appeal to it could not lightly be dismissed, even by those to whom the books meant less than nothing. In spite of their maddening eccentricity, the men and women who followed the Dionysian path had to be tolerated. And once left free to produce the fruits of the spirit, a number of them arrived at such a conspicuous degree of sanctity that it became impossible even for the heads of the Spanish Inquisition to condemn the tree from which such fruits had sprung.
The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with splendours of transcendent beauty. We long exceedingly to dwell in this translucent darkness and, through not seeing and not knowing, to see Him who is beyond both vision and knowledgeby the very fact of neither seeing Him nor knowing Him. For this is truly to see and to know and, through the abandonment of all things, to praise Him who is beyond and above all things. For this is not unlike the art of those who carve a life-like image from stone; removing from around it all that impedes clear vision of the latent form, revealing its hidden beauty solely by taking away. For it is, as I believe, more fitting to praise Him by taking away than by ascription; for we ascribe attri butes to Him, when we start from universals and come down through the intermediate to the particulars. But here we take away all things from Him going up from particulars to universals, that we may know openly the unknowable, which is hidden in and under all things that may be known. And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural light.
1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
There was a rush to buy the book and get Sri Aurobindo's autograph in the bargain! For a divine policy was announced whose brain-wave it was, I do not know that all buyers would be favoured with the autograph of the Master. Volume after volume began to pour in with the names of the buyers appended to them. The names were sometimes quite long, such as Purushottamdas Thakurdas Chintamani Patil, and he would ask, "Am I to write all that?" And there were fanciful spellings to boot! Dates as well! At times the names of the husband and his wife together! If sometimes a name struck his fancy he would ask, "Who the devil is he?" or "Who is this Lord Shiva?" or we, would ourselves say that he was so and so. Many were the bhaktas who could not understand a word of the book but bought it for the sake of his blessings. For us sadhaks who could not afford to buy it, the book was given free on our birthday, with the autograph added to it. Later all the books of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo when published, were given to us according to our needs, on our birthdays. The Mother would ask, "Do you want any book? Have you got this book?" One wonders how much money was spent on this; and the custom continues even now, though in a modified form.
When Vol. III came out, it being the bulkiest, Sri Aurobindo remarked, "What a fat elephant!" And when they entered the room in packs and were heaped on the side-couch waiting for the autograph, they made an impressive herd and thrilled us with joy that The Life Divine had at last been delivered on this woe-begone planet of ours! But with the encroaching dimness of his eye-sight, the Mother stopped the practice of giving autographs altogether.
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These are the highlights of the first year following the accident. Sri Aurobindo's leg had now become quite strong, he could walk without any support. When at the end of the year 1939, Dr. Manilal asked Sri Aurobindo if the accident had done any good, he replied, " Yes, I have advanced much further since last November. I have found time to complete some books. Now I get more time to concentrate!"
Owing to the accident, the Mother's programme also had changed a lot. She had had to suspend all Pranams and personal interviews with the sadhaks. But now they were resumed, though in a different form. Old things as they used to be never come back. I remarked before the Mother one day, "Now that Sri Aurobindo is all right we shall soon be packed off!" She heard and gave a broad smile.
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
"Spiritual books occasionally quote [this] Latin saying which has terrified more than one soul" (Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking, New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1929, pp. 203-204).
Ibid., conclusion.
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This is the aspect of the hero-problem illustrated in the won drous Arabian Nights adventure of the Prince Kamar al-Zaman and the Princess Budur. The young and handsome prince, the only son of King Shahriman of Persia, persistently refused the repeated suggestions, requests, demands, and finally injunctions, of his father, that he should do the normal thing and take to himself a wife. The first time the subject was broached to him, the lad responded: "O my father, know that I have no lust to marry nor doth my soul incline to women; for that concerning their craft and perfidy I have read many books and heard much talk, even as saith the poet:
Now, an of women ask ye, I reply:
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
attentive observation. The student says to himself: "The stone has a form; the animal also has a form. The stone remains motionless in its place. The animal changes its place. It is instinct (desire) which causes the animal to change its place. Instincts, too, are served by the form of the animal. Its organs and limbs are fashioned in accordance with these instincts. The form of the stone is not fashioned in accordance with desires, but in accordance with desireless force." (The fact here mentioned, in its bearing on the contemplation of crystals, is in many ways distorted by those who have only heard of it in an outward, exoteric manner, and in this way such practices as crystal-gazing have their origin Such manipulations are based on a misunderstanding. They have been described in many books, but they never form the subject of genuine esoteric teaching.)
By sinking deeply into such thoughts, and while doing so, observing the stone and the animal with rapt attention, there arise in the soul two quite separate kinds of feelings. From the stone there flows into the soul the one kind of feeling, and from the animal the other kind. The attempt
--
These trials are often discussed in books, but it is only natural that such discussions should as a rule give quite false impressions of their nature; for without passing through preparation and enlightenment no one can know anything of these tests and appropriately describe them.
The would-be initiate must come into contact with certain things and facts belonging to the
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
There is yet another major artist of that age who continues the discussion of this subject in advance of the definitive statements of Leonardo. Toward the end of his life, Pierodella Francesca furnishes a penetrating theory of perspective compared to which Alberti's seems amateurish and empirical. In his three books De Perspectiva Pingendi based anEuclid, which were written in collaboration with Luca Pacioli, he defines for the first time costruzionepittorica as perspective. He had himself been successful in the practical application of perspective during the time ofFoquet, i.e., the latter half of the fifteenth century, though after the brothers van Eyck (to mention only the outstanding figures). This had facilitated the ultimate achievement of perspectivity, the "aerial perspective" of Leonardo's Last Supper.
Before returning to Leonardo, we must mention two facts which demonstrate better than any description the extent of fascination with the problem of perspective during the later Part of the fifteenth century when perspective becomes virtually normative (as in Ghiberti's modification of Vitruvius). In his DivinaProporzione, Luca Pacioli - the learned mathematician, translator of Euclid, co-worker with Pierodella Francesca, and friend of Leonardo - celebrated perspective as the eighth art; and when Antonio del Pollaiuolo built a memorial to perspective on one of his papal tombs in St. Peters some ten years later (in the 1490s), he boldly added perspective as the eighth free art to the other seven.
1.02 - To Zen Monks Kin and Koku, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
"indescribable state of disrepair" when he was installed as abbot in 1717. Judging from occasional references in his books and letters to the privations of life at Shin-ji, there does not seem to have
been much improvement in living conditions for some time afterward. Hakuin's primary focus in the first decade of his incumbency was his own post-satori practice, although the records mention a small number of students, mostly villagers from Hara, who were coming to him for instruction at this time.
1.036 - The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Ordinarily, no one can understand what effects follow from spiritual practice. We cannot understand this by a study of books, because the actions, or the reactions we may say, that follow the practice of a system of spiritual discipline for a protracted period depends upon what is already inside us. What is inside us will come out; and different persons, finding themselves in different stages of evolution, have different patterns of this deposit in themselves. So the experiences that seekers pass through vary in various ways merely because of the difference, and the type of the content of their own personalities.
For a long time it may look as if nothing is happening in spiritual practice. This has been the experience of all yogis, saints and sages. For years and years together we will have no experience whatsoever. It will look like everything is dead, there is no life in anything, that we are striking a brick wall or a hard stone with no effect whatsoever, that our japas produce no effect, our meditations mean nothing, our worships are perhaps not heard by God, and there is only suffering. This condition may persist for several years, and the number of years or the extent of their duration depends upon the nature of the case, just as the purifying medical effect of a medicine depends upon the nature of the disease, the intensity of the disease, and the particular case on hand, to give an instance. But, suddenly, there will be a miracle. This is always the case in spiritual experience it always comes like a miracle. It doesn't come very, very slowly with halting steps, giving previous notice. It will give no notice. When there is illumination, we will not know that it is coming; and when we are going to be opposed, we will not know that it is going to happen. Both things will happen without our having previous knowledge of what is happening.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
II I On books
1.03 - Of some imperfections which some of these souls are apt to have, with respect to the second capital sin, which is avarice, in the spiritual sense, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
counsels and learning spiritual precepts, and of possessing and reading many books
which treat of this matter, and they spend their time on all these things rather than
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
could be understood. books like The Life Divine, The Syn-
thesis of Yoga and Essays on the Gita contained all essentials
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: The intention is all that hath been sent down from the Heaven of Divine Utterance. The prime requisite is the eagerness and love of sanctified souls to read the Word of God. To read one verse, or even one word, in a spirit of joy and radiance, is preferable to the perusal of many books.
69. QUESTION: May a person, in drawing up his will, assign some portion of his property-beyond that which is devoted to payment of Huququ'llah and the settlement of debts-to works of charity, or is he entitled to do no more than allocate a certain sum to cover funeral and burial expenses, so that the rest of his estate will be distributed in the manner fixed by God among the designated categories of heirs?
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106. He is God, exalted be He, the Lord of majesty and power! The Prophets and Chosen Ones have all been commissioned by the One True God, magnified be His glory, to nurture the trees of human existence with the living waters of uprightness and understanding, that there may appear from them that which God hath deposited within their inmost selves. As may be readily observed, each tree yieldeth a certain fruit, and a barren tree is but fit for fire. The purpose of these Educators, in all they said and taught, was to preserve man's exalted station. Well is it with him who in the Day of God hath laid fast hold upon His precepts and hath not deviated from His true and fundamental Law. The fruits that best befit the tree of human life are trustworthiness and godliness, truthfulness and sincerity; but greater than all, after recognition of the unity of God, praised and glorified be He, is regard for the rights that are due to one's parents. This teaching hath been mentioned in all the books of God, and reaffirmed by the Most Exalted Pen. Consider that which the Merciful Lord hath revealed in the Qur'an, exalted are His words: "Worship ye God, join with Him no peer or likeness; and show forth kindliness and charity towards your parents..." Observe how loving-kindness to one's parents hath been linked to recognition of the one true God! Happy they who are endued with true wisdom and understanding, who see and perceive, who read and understand, and who observe that which God hath revealed in the Holy books of old, and in this incomparable and wondrous Tablet.
107. In one of the Tablets He, exalted be His words, hath revealed: And in the matter of Zakat, We have likewise decreed that you should follow what hath been revealed in the Qur'an.
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr Camar Uddn Mast,
Being seated to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines. I kept Homers Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that _I_ lived.
The student may read Homer or schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely _spoke_ the
Greek and Latin tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to _read_ the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not _hear_, after the lapse of ages a few scholars
--
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient mans thought becomes a modern mans speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor schylus, nor Virgil evenworks as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and
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The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers.
What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts any where made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to keep himself in practice, he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best
English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class- books, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him,my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet
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It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of
Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
is in great demand when war is expected. One of the ancient books of
India prescribes that when a sacrifice is offered for victory, the
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The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset
on his marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
efforts of our teachers and those who wrote and printed books. Seeing this,
how can we be proud, thinking that we have good qualities because we are
1.03 - The End of the Intellect, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk,"
his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I
would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea.
We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z
opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit,
which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit,
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even learning all the languages in the world and reading all the books in the world, and yet not progress at all. For the mind does not truly know, even though it may appear to it seeks to grind. Its need of knowledge is primarily a need for something to grind. If by chance the machine were to come to a stop because knowledge had been obtained, it would soon rise up in revolt and find something new to grind, just for the sake of grinding and grinding; such is its function.
That within us which seeks to know and to progress is not the mind,
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Sri Aurobindo had come to a turning point; temples did not interest him and books were empty. A friend advised him to practice yoga, but Sri Aurobindo refused: A yoga which requires me to give up the world is not for me,25 he moreover added: a solitary salvation leaving the world to its fate was felt as almost distasteful. 26 Then one day Sri Aurobindo witnessed a curious scene, though not uncommon in India (to be sure, banality is often the best trigger of inner movements),
when his brother Barin was ill with a severe fever. (Barin, born while Sri Aurobindo was in England, was Sri Aurobindo's secret emissary in the organization of Indian resistance in Bengal.) One of those halfnaked wandering monks appeared. He was probably begging for food from door to door as is their custom, when he saw Barin rolled up in blankets, shivering with fever. Without a word, he asked for a glass of 23
1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
today, this time with a scientific foundation, in the books of
professional scientists (Haldane, Huxley, Sherrington and so
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Egyptians, one of their books which had escaped the flames which devoured their superb libraries, and which contains their purest doctrines. . . . Were we to add that this book for several centuries had been accessible to everyone, would it not be surprising ? And would not that surprise be at its height were it asserted that people have never suspected it
was Egyptian, that they possess it in such a manner that they can hardly be said to possess it at all, that no one has ever attempted to decipher a single leaf, and that the out- come of a recondite wisdom is regarded as a mass of extravagant designs which mean nothing in themselves ?
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It was only in the last century that we had the statement of Eliphaz Levi that were a man incarcerated in a dungeon cell in solitary confinement, without books or instructions of any kind, it would still be possible for him to obtain from this set of cards an encyclopaedic knowledge of the essence of all sciences, religions, and philosophies. Ignoring this specimen of typical Levi verbosity, it is only necessary to point out that instead of using the ten digits and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet for the basis of his magical alphabet, Levi adopted as his fundamental framework the twenty-two trump cards of the Book of
Thoth, attri buting to them his knowledge and experience in a way similar to the attri butions of the thirty-two Paths of Wisdom.
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Then the question sinks a little deeper. In fact, it is not that it sinks or intensifies; it is as if a first breath of air enabled us to appreciate better the daily suffocation we live in and revealed deeper layers to our eyes, other, subtler coverings. We are indeed Bill Smith, a legal and national artifice, a little mechanized cog that would like to get out of the machine. But what is behind Bill Smith? There is a man walking a boulevard, going up and down the great mental roller coaster, humming with a thousand thoughts, of which none truly matters, none remedies his sorrow or desire; there is what the latest book thinks, what that billboard or those headlines scream, what the professor or schoolmaster or friend or colleague or neighbor said a thousand passersby milling in the inner street but where is the one who does not pass, the lodger of the dwelling? There is yesterday's experience, which ties in with the accident of the day before, which ties in with... a gigantic telephone network, with switches, relays and instant communications, but which really communicates nothing, except the same rehashed and self-contained story, which keeps swelling up and swelling up and curling back onto itself and unrolling a sum of past that never makes a true present, or a future that is but the sum of a million acts adding up to zero where is the act, where? Where is the self of that addition, the minute of being that is not the result of the past, the pure touch of sunlight that escapes that machinery, even more merciless than the other one? There is what our fathers and mothers have put into us, and books, priests, partisans, grandfa ther's cancer, great-uncle's lust, the good of this one, the less good of that one; there are the Tables of the Law of iron, the thou-cannots, thou-should-nots, Newton and the churches, Mendel and the law of gestation of germ cells but what germinates in all that? Where is the Germ, the pure unexpected seed suddenly bursting open, the Thou-Can like a stroke of grace in this implacable round conditioned by the fathers of our fathers inside the mental fortress? There is this little man walking along a boulevard, going up and down the same avenue a thousand times; inside, outside, it's all the same, like nothing walking in nothing, anybody inside anything, John or Peter with only different neckties: between this lamppost and that one nothing has happened. There was nothing, not a single second of being!
But, suddenly, on this boulevard, there is a sort of second-degree suffocation. We stop and stare. What do we stare at? We don't know, but we stare. All of a sudden we are no longer in the machine; we are no longer in it, we never were! We are no longer Bill Smith or American or New Yorker, the son of our father or the father of our son, our thought, or heart or feelings, or yesterday or tomorrow, or male or female or anything of the kind we are something else altogether. We don't know what, but it stares. We are like a window opening.
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Suppose a man has seen the ocean, and somebody asks him, 'Well, what is the ocean like?' The first man opens his mouth as wide as he can and says: 'What a sight! What tremendous waves and sounds!' The description of Brahman in the sacred books is like that. It is said in the Vedas that Brahman is of the nature of Bliss - It is Satchidananda.
"Suka and other sages stood on the shore of this Ocean of Brahman and saw and touched the water. According to one school of thought they never plunged into it.
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Similarly, in the process of meditation the stages are many, and we may find that practically every day we are in one particular stage. The details of these stages will be known only to one who has started the practice. They cannot be described in books because they are so many, and every peculiar turn of experience will be regarded by us as one stage. Each stage is characterised by a peculiar relation of consciousness to its object and the reaction which the object sets in respect of the consciousness that experiences it. In the beginning it looks very difficult on account of this aforementioned conviction that the object is completely cut off from the mind and that is why there is so much anxiety and heartache in this world. We seem to be completely powerless and helpless in every matter. We are helpless because the world is outside us, and it has no connection with our principle of experience, namely consciousness. To bring into the conscious level the conviction that the objects of experience are not as much segregated as they appear to be, requires very hard effort, philosophical analysis and deep thinking bestowed upon the subject.
But Patanjali says that mere thinking and analysis will not do it requires direct meditation. While analytical techniques are good enough for the purpose of bringing about logical convictions in the mind, direct experience of the reality behind the objects would be possible only by meditation, which is not merely an analytical technique undertaken, but a profound attempt at piercing through the structure of the object by repeatedly hitting upon it by the use of a single technique which is practised regularly every day, so that when the object is bombarded in this manner by a repeated process of meditation, adopting a single technique, without remission of effort the object gives way. The complex structure of the object, which appeared to be a compact substance, is revealed before the mind as made up of bits of matter and little tiny processes of force which can be disintegrated by the power of meditation. The object can be dismembered, and we will find that afterwards there is no object at all.
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "After I had experienced samdhi, my mind craved intensely to hear only about God. I would always search for places where they were reciting or explaining the sacred books, such as the Bhagavata, the Mahabharata, and the Adhytma Rmyana. I used to go to Krishnakishore to hear him read the Adhytma Rmyana.
Krishnakishore's faith
1.04 - ALCHEMY AND MANICHAEISM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
(Cubricus); later he changed it to Manes, a Babylonian word meaning vessel.201 As a four-year-old boy he was sold as a slave to a rich widow. She came to love him, and later adopted him and made him her heir. Together with her wealth he inherited the serpents poison of his doctrine the four books of Scythianos, the original master of his adoptive father Terebinthos, named Budda.202 Of this Scythianos there is a legendary biography which equates him with Simon Magus;203 like him, he is said to have come to Jerusalem at the time of the apostles. He propounded a dualistic doctrine which, according to Epiphanius,204 was concerned with pairs of opposites: white and black, yellow and green, moist and dry, heaven and earth, night and day, soul and body, good and evil, right and wrong. From these books Mani concocted his pernicious heresy which poisoned the nations. Cubricus is very like the alchemical Kybrius,205 Gabricus,206 Kibrich,207 Kybrich, Kibric,208 Kybrig, Kebrick,209 Alkibric,210 Kibrit,211 Kibrith,212 Gabricius, Gabrius,213 Thabritius, Thabritis,214 and so on.215 The Arabic word kibrit means sulphur.
[32] In the Aurora consurgens sulphur nigrum stands side by side with vetula, the first being a synonym for spirit and the second for soul. Together they form a pair roughly comparable to the devil and his grandmo ther. This relationship also occurs in Rosencreutzs Chymical Wedding,216 where a black king sits beside a veiled old woman. The black sulphur is a pejorative name for the active, masculine substance of Mercurius and points to its dark, saturnine nature, which is evil.217 This is the wicked Moorish king of the Chymical Wedding, who makes the kings daughter his concubine (meretrix), the Ethiopian of other treatises,218 analogous to the Egyptian in the Passio Perpetuae,219 who from the Christian point of view is the devil. He is the activated darkness of matter, the umbra Solis (shadow of the sun), which represents the virginal-maternal prima materia. When the doctrine of the Increatum220 began to play a role in alchemy during the sixteenth century, it gave rise to a dualism which might be compared with the Manichaean teaching.221
1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From Kiev to see us! This was something indeed. We were surprised. He thought our silence indicated doubt, and after some hesitation he added in a lower tone, Yes, in Kiev there is a group of students who are deeply interested in great philosophical ideas. Your books have fallen into our hands, and we were happy to find at last a synthetical teaching which does not limit itself to theory, but encourages action. So my comrades, my friends, told me, Go and seek their advice on what is preoccupying us. And I have come.
It was clearly expressed, in correct if not elegant language, and we immediately knew that if, perhaps out of caution, he was withholding something from us, what he was telling us at least was the truth.
--
I have been able to make my friends understand these things; they trusted me and we began to study. That is how we came to read your books. And now I have come to ask your help in adapting your ideas to our present situation and with them to draw up a plan of action, and also write a small pamphlet which will become our new weapon and which we shall use to spread these beautiful thoughts of solidarity, harmony, freedom and justice among the people.
He remained thoughtful a moment, then continued in a lower tone:
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning.
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create.
--
You all have a share in the murder. 94 In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory. 95
But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. They themselves are sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of sacrifice. They must all sacrifice each other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself in order to sacrifice the one he kills in his brother.
--
6, 329). There is a line in the margin of Jung's copy by these verses in the Sacred books of the
The Red Book
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 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
2 Psalm xciv, 6 and Church Service books.
3 Palm leaves were used for making baskets.
1.04 - Religion and Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And yet there is an analogy. Just as you may read all the books possible on the art of playing the piano, but if you do not play it yourself you will never be a pianist, so too you may read everything that has been written on occultism, but if you do not practise it yourself you will never be an occultist.
November 1957
1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
--
Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsys pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads,because they once stood in their midst.
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, the sand-cherry (_Cerasus pumila_,) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (_Rhus glabra_,) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.
--
Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And heres your pay for them! screams the countrymans whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the citys walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.
When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion,or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve,with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light,as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I dont know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmers fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort.
--
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-load of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done?
They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar,first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress,of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles,
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
occupied with my Samara estate, with the education of my son, or with the writing of books, I had to
know why I was doing these things. As long as I do not know the reason why, I cannot do anything. In
1.04 - The Control of Psychic Prana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Of the three processes for the purification of the nerves, described above, the first and the last are neither difficult nor dangerous. The more you practice the first one the calmer you will be. Just think of "Om," and you can practice even while you are sitting at your work. You will be all the better for it. Some day, if you practice hard, the Kundalini will be aroused. For those who practice once or twice a day, just a little calmness of the body and mind will come, and beautiful voice; only for those who can go on further with it will Kundalini be aroused, and the whole of nature will begin to change, and the book of knowledge will open. No more will you need to go to books for knowledge; your own mind will have become your book, containing infinite knowledge. I have already spoken of the Ida and Pingala currents, flowing through either side of the spinal column, and also of the Sushumna, the passage through the centre of the spinal cord. These three are present in every animal; whatever being has a spinal column has these three lines of action. But the Yogis claim that in an ordinary man the Sushumna is closed; its action is not evident while that of the other two is carrying power to different parts of the body.
The Yogi alone has the Sushumna open. When this Sushumna current opens, and begins to rise, we get beyond the sense, our minds become supersensuous, superconscious we get beyond even the intellect, where reasoning cannot reach. To open that Sushumna is the prime object of the Yogi. According to him, along this Sushumna are ranged these centres, or, in more figurative language, these lotuses, as they are called. The lowest one is at the lower end of the spinal cord, and is called Muldhra, the next higher is called Svdhishthna, the third Manipura, the fourth Anhata, the fifth Vishuddha, the sixth jn and the last, which is in the brain, is the Sahasrra, or "the thousand-petalled". Of these we have to take cognition just now of two centres only, the lowest, the Muladhara, and the highest, the Sahasrara. All energy has to be taken up from its seat in the Muladhara and brought to the Sahasrara. The Yogis claim that of all the energies that are in the human body the highest is what they call "Ojas". Now this Ojas is stored up in the brain, and the more Ojas is in a man's head, the more powerful he is, the more intellectual, the more spiritually strong. One man may speak beautiful language and beautiful thoughts, but they, do not impress people; another man speaks neither beautiful language nor beautiful thoughts, yet his words charm. Every movement of his is powerful. That is the power of Ojas.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Though all of us knew the Mother had taken charge of the Ashram and that hers was the guiding Hand, the truth and bearing of it came fully home to me after the accident when we met her face to face and saw some of her manifold activities close at hand. Then I realised to what an extent her wisdom, power and influence worked in the material field. The greatest wonder to me was the thoroughness and precision with which she had provided for all the daily physical requirements of Sri Aurobindo. He had to ask for nothing, look for nothing; everything would be in its place at the right time. Her activities were a thousand and one; yet she always found time to think of his needs, even as Sri Aurobindo always kept in mind hers. The two consciousnesses were one so that when Sri Aurobindo met with the accident, the Mother felt at once the vibration in her sleep. All things required for him were kept in stock in sufficient quantity: his writing materials, his toilet things, mosquito-coils, mosquito cream and other necessities. Several clocks were kept at various places, for Sri Aurobindo had the habit of seeing the time.[1] Hot water for his bath at midnight was prepared by one particular person, his dhotis were washed and pressed daily by another, his bed made by a third, his meals cooked by a special group. And not only would she serve him, but what dish to be prepared, in what way, what vegetables were to be grown in the field, what fruits to be ordered all came under her direct supervision. To serve and please him was her sole concern, for he was her Lord. That was how she addressed him. Dry fruits were ordered from Peshawar, and special ripe seasonal fruits from different places. When, owing to the war emergency, good vegetables were not available in the local market, the Mother had them brought from Bangalore and had a cold storage room built in order to keep them fresh. Also a refrigerator was bought separately to store other food stuff. All these details illustrate how the Mother was also an ideal home economist, if I may use that expression in this context. Once Sri Aurobindo asked for some exercise books to copy out Savitri. Instantly I went to the market and fetched two and offered them. When the Mother came to know about it, she said, "Why? I have any number of them stored for his use." Of course, being a new-comer, I was ignorant of this; besides, I had a grand occasion, I thought, to offer something.
The Mother
--
Next in magnitude comes the Press. Today the Ashram Printing Press holds a premier place in India. That is because the Mother set from the very start the ideal of perfection before her and exacted from the workers that ideal. Kinds of business run on a commercial basis there are many outside, but here the ideal is quite different, as I have stated. This is what the Mother recently told the manager of the Press, "If any part of the world makes a demand for perfection in printing, it should be able to say to itself, The Pondicherry Ashram Press fulfils the ideal." Yet this Press began as some big establishments have done, in a very humble way; I don't know how the proposal was mooted that we must have a Press of our own to publish mainly Sri Aurobindo's books. The Mother caught the idea at once. But how to start, was the question. It was not so much the money that was wanting, as men of knowledge and experience in this field. She would not engage workers from outside; it must be run by the Ashram inmates. We had at that time made some connection with the Hyderabad Government through Sir Akbar Hydari who was instrumental in, procuring a donation from the Nizam's Government for Golconde, hence the name[3]. This connection opened the channel for an experienced officer of the Government to come and give a start to our Press. As soon as things began moving, the Mother put all her available force into it and bundled off sadhaks and sadhikas old and young, philosopher, scholar, professor, whoever was at hand, to the Press. Naturally, many difficulties cropped up; quarrels, disharmony, complaints human conflicts instead of natural calamities. The Mother was certainly prepared for them, for she knows our human nature, also that it is through work that it has to be changed, not through the escape-gate of inaction. We heard from time to time the Mother reporting about these troubles to Sri Aurobindo. With his silent Purusha-like support, and her regular visits to the Press, the initial difficulties were gradually overcome and a modicum of harmony established. One after another, Sri Aurobindo's books began to come out. Thus with our raw but energetic young band and a handful of trained paid workers, this institution was built up piecemeal, illustrating the Mother's method of working, the ideal to be achieved, and Sri Aurobindo's dictum that things must grow out of life itself, not according to a set mental pattern. In our case, of course, the process was sustained by a directly acting Divine Force. "All can be done if the God-touch is there." In fact all our institutions, the Ashram itself, have grown up in this way, from scratch, and Auroville is the latest example. We must remember, however, that activity by itself, of whatever kind, is of secondary importance, but "taken as pan of the sadhana offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power" that is the important point.
Now we come to a different field of activity altogether, one whose place in Yoga will be strongly challenged, especially when the Mother herself used it as a means of sadhana: her playing tennis. I won't discuss the issue, for the quotation cited above gives the answer. Before she started playing tennis the Mother joined our young group in playing table-tennis. When a young boy asked her if he could install a table in his house for the game, the Mother replied, "Why not at Nanteuil?[4] then I can come and play too." He was much surprised and delighted at the divine proposal! She must have found it a good light exercise as well as an admirable means of contact with the young set which was gradually increasing; it was perhaps also her yogic means of action upon them. After a year or so the Mother decided to have a tennis court. She might have felt that she needed some more brisk exercise in the open air. She often talked of her project to Sri Aurobindo. One day we heard that the entire wasteland along the north-eastern seaside was taken on a long lease from the Government and a part of it would be made into tennis courts and the rest into a playground. One cannot imagine now what this place was like before. It was one of the filthiest spots of Pondicherry, full of thistles and wild undergrowth, an open place for committing nuisance as well as a pasture for pigs! The stink and the loathsome sight made the place a Stygian sore and a black spot on the colonial Government. The Mother changed this savage wasteland into a heavenly playground, almost a supramental transformation of Matter. The sea-front was clothed in a vision of beauty and delight. If for nothing else, for this transformation at least, Pondicherry should be eternally grateful to the Mother. But who remembers the past? Gratitude is a rare human virtue. I was particularly very happy, first, because I was fond of tennis; secondly, I fancied that Yoga would be now made easy. Who could ever think of tennis in Yoga! But woe to me, how it completely upset my balance!
1.04 - The Need of Guru, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
This quickening impulse cannot be derived from books. The soul can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually. It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in Man. In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such studies, and not our inner spirit.
This inadequacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul.
The person from whose soul such impulse comes is called the Guru the teacher; and the person to whose soul the impulse is conveyed is called the Shishya the student. To convey such an impulse to any soul, in the first place, the soul from which it proceeds must possess the power of transmitting it, as it were, to another; and in the second place, the soul to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it. The seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed; and when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of genuine religion takes place. "The true preacher of religion has to be of wonderful capabilities, and clever shall his hearer be" ; and when both of these are really wonderful and extraordinary, then will a splendid spiritual awakening result, and not otherwise. Such alone are the real teachers, and such alone are also the real students, the real aspirants. All others are only playing with spirituality. They have just a little curiosity awakened, just a little intellectual aspiration kindled in them, but are merely standing on the outward fringe of the horizon of religion. There is no doubt some value even in that, as it may in course of time result in the awakening of a real thirst for religion; and it is a mysterious law of nature that as soon as the field is ready, the seed must and does come; as soon as the soul earnestly desires to have religion, the transmitter of the religious force must and does appear to help that soul. When the power that attracts the light of religion in the receiving soul is full and strong, the power which answers to that attraction and sends in light does come as a matter of course.
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Russia, where anti-Semitism was rife in her day, any and everything that smacked of Jewish savour was thoroughly objectionable. Her repeated attacks on the Zoharists, plus her real ignorance of the books of the Qabalah - corro- borated by the fact that she quotes mainly from Levi (who knew but little of it) and Knorr von Rosenroth, both of whom were Roman Catholics - may perhaps be explained in this manner.
Phallic symbolism was used very largely because it was conceived that the creative process in the Macrocosm is parallel, in a marked degree, to that in the little world of man. Nicholas Roerich's excellent travel book entitled
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
are rarely found in books on spirituality and yoga. Still the
truth is that the world can only be changed by confronting it
--
ple today but vaguely remembered. Countless books have
23 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, pp. 458, 227.w h at ar j una saw: t he dar k si de of the force
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Pursuit of the Millennium: Already in the Prophetical books
there are passages that foretell how, out of an immense
--
11 The quotations in this section are from the following books by
Ervin Laszlo: The Reenchanted Cosmos Welcome Home in the Universe
--
in most popularizing books, should be taken with a sub-
stantial grain of salt. For example, the explanation that our
1.054 - The Moon, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
52. Everything they have done is in the books.
53. Everything, small or large, is written down.
1.05 - Bhakti Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
10. Japa, Kirtan, prayer, service of saints, study of books on Bhakti are all aids to devotion.
11. Sattvic food is a help to devotion. Take milk, fruits, etc.
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
1.05 - Pratyahara and Dharana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
When one begins to concentrate, the dropping of a pin will seem like a thunderbolt going through the brain. As the organs get finer, the perceptions get finer. These are the stages through which we have to pass, and all those who persevere will succeed. Give up all argumentation and other distractions. Is there anything in dry intellectual jargon? It only throws the mind off its balance and disturbs it. Things of subtler planes have to be realised. Will talking do that? So give up all vain talk. Read only those books which have been written by persons who have had realisation.
Be like the pearl oyster. There is a pretty Indian fable to the effect that if it rains when the star Svti is in the ascendant, and a drop of rain falls into an oyster, that drop becomes a pearl. The oysters know this, so they come to the surface when that star shines, and wait to catch the precious raindrop. When a drop falls into them, quickly the oysters close their shells and dive down to the bottom of the sea, there to patiently develop the drop into the pearl. We should be like that. First hear, then understand, and then, leaving all distractions, shut your minds to outside influences, and devote yourselves to developing the truth within you. There is the danger of frittering away your energies by taking up an idea only for its novelty, and then giving it up for another that is newer. Take one thing up and do it, and see the end of it, and before you have seen the end, do not give it up. He who can become mad with an idea, he alone sees light. Those that only take a nibble here and a nibble there will never attain anything. They may titillate their nerves for a moment, but there it will end. They will be slaves in the hands of nature, and will never get beyond the senses.
1.05 - Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
No impure soul can be really religious. Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for any one to be religious. As to the thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon. To pant for religion truly is a very difficult thing, not at all so easy as we generally imagine. Hearing religious talks or reading religious books is no proof yet of a real want felt in the heart; there must be a continuous struggle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and the victory is achieved. It is not a question of one or two days, of years, or of lives; the struggle may have to go on for hundreds of lifetimes. The success sometimes may come immediately, but we must be ready to wait patiently even for what may look like an infinite length of time. The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance will surely find success and realisation at last.
In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas, and Korans; but they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology, the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of words loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true religious teacher. The network of the words of the scriptures is like a huge forest in which the human mind often loses itself and finds no way out.
--
Religion, which is the highest knowledge and the highest wisdom, cannot be bought, nor can it be acquired from books. You may thrust your head into all the corners of the world, you may explore the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Caucasus, you may sound the bottom of the sea and pry into every nook of Tibet and the desert of Gobi, you will not find it anywhere until your heart is ready for receiving it and your teacher has come. And when that divinely appointed teacher comes, serve him with childlike confidence and simplicity, freely open your heart to his influence, and see in him God manifested.
Those who come to seek truth with such a spirit of love and veneration, to them the Lord of Truth reveals the most wonderful things regarding truth, goodness, and beauty.
1.05 - Splitting of the Spirit, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
110. The Draft continues: "Those who wander in the desert experience everything that belongs to the desert. The ancients have described this to us. From them we can learn. Open the ancient books and learn what will come to you in solitude. Everything will be given to you and you will be spared nothing, the mercy and the torment" (p. 72).
The Red Book
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
France. This ironical response was, of course, made in reference to the Catholic Index of books a listing
of readings forbidden to devout followers of that creed.
--
Adler, A. (1958). What life should mean to you. New York: Capricorn books.
Aggleton, J.P. (Ed.). (1993). The amygdala: Neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory, and mental
--
Binswanger, L. (1963). Being in the world. New York: Basic books.
Blake, W. (1946). The marriage of heaven and hell. In A. Kazin (Ed.), The portable Blake (pp. 249-266).
--
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1 Attachment. New York: Basic books.
Brooks, A. (1991). Intelligence without Reason. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: Artificial
--
Campbell, J. (1964). Occidental mythology: The masks of God. London: Penguin books.
Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Campbell, J. (1973). Myths to live by. New York: Bantam books.
Campbell, J. (1987). The masks of God: Vol. 1. Primitive mythology. New York: Penguin.
--
York: Mentor books.
Davidson, R.J. (1984a). Affect, cognition, and hemispheric specialization. In C.E. Izard, J.Kagan, & R.
--
Dostoevsky, F. (1981). The brothers Karamazov (A.H. MacAndrew, Trans.). New York: Bantam books.
Dostoevsky, F. (1993). Crime and punishment. New York: Vintage Classics.
--
New York: Basic books.
Ervin, F. & Smith, M. (1986). Neurophysiological bases of the primary emotions. In R. Plutchik & H.
--
Frankl, V. (1971). Mans search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Pocket books.
Frazier, J.G. (1994). The golden bough: A study in magic and religion (the worlds classics). Oxford:
--
Fukuyama, F. (1993). The end of history and the last man. New York: Avon books.
Gabrieli, J.D.E., Fleischman, D.A., Keane, M., Reminger, M., Sheryl, L., et al. (1995). Double dissociation
--
Goethe, J.W. (1979a). Faust, part one (P. Wayne, Trans.). London: Penguin books.
Goethe, J.W. (1979b). Faust, part two (P. Wayne, Trans.). London: Penguin books.
Goldberg, E. (1995). Rise and fall of modular orthodoxy. Journal of Clinical and Experimental
--
Heidel, A. (1965). The Babylonian genesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press (Phoenix books).
Hodson, G. (1963). The hidden wisdom in the Holy Bible: Vol. 1. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing
--
Luria, A.R. (1980). Higher cortical functions in man. New York: Basic books.
MacRae, G.W. (Trans.). (1988). The thunder: Perfect mind. In J.M. Robinson (Ed.), The Nag Hammadi
--
Melzack, R. (1973). The puzzle of pain. New York: Basic books.
Melzack, R. & Wall, P.D. (1983). The challenge of pain. New York: Basic books.
Milner, B. (1963). Effects of different brain lesions on card sorting. Archives of Neurology, 9, 100-110.
--
Pantheon books.
Neumann, E. (1968). Mystical man. In J. Campbell (Ed.), Papers from the Eranos year books (Vol. 6. The
--
New York: Vintage books.
Nietzsche, F. (1967a). On the genealogy of morals/Ecce homo (W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingdale, Trans.).
New York: Vintage books.
Nietzsche, F. (1967b). The birth of tragedy/The case of wagner (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York:
Vintage books.
372
--
New York: Vintage books.
Nietzsche, F. (1981). Twilight of the idols/The anti-Christ (R.J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Penguin
--
Plato (1952). The apology (B. Jowett, Trans.). In R.M. Hutchins (Ed.). Great books of the western world:
Vol. 7. Plato (pp. 200-212). Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica.
--
Shakespeare (1952a). King Henry VI. In R.M. Hutchins (Ed.), Great books of the western world: Vol. 26. I.
(pp. 69-104). Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica.
--
Shakespeare (1952b). Richard III. In R.M. Hutchins (Ed.), Great books of the western world: Vol. 26. I.
(pp. 105-148). Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Shakespeare (1952c). Titus Andronicus. In R.M. Hutchins (Ed.), Great books of the western world: Vol. 26.
I. (pp. 170-198). Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica.
--
Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology (pp. 670-704). New York: Basic books.
Solzhenitsyn, A.I. The gulag archipelago, 1918-1956: An experiment in literary investigation (T.P.
--
Von Franz, M.L. (1980). Alchemy. Toronto: Inner City books.
Waley, A. (1934). The way and its power. London: Allen and Unwin.
--
Massachussetts: Addison-Wesley Advanced books Program.
Wheeler, R.E., Davidson, R.J., & Tomarken, A.J. (1993). Frontal brain asymmetry and emotional
--
...there is one theme that recurs frequently in the early books of the Bible: the passing over of the firstborn son,
who normally has the legal right of primogeniture, in favor of a young one. The firstborn son of Adam, Cain, is sent
1.066 - Prohibition, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
12. And Mary, the daughter of Imran, who guarded her womb, and so We breathed into her of Our Spirit; and she believed in the truth of her Lord’s Words and His books, and was one of the devout.
1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Sanhita of the Rig Veda, as we possess it, is arranged in ten books or Mandalas. A double principle is observed in the arrangement. Six of the Mandalas are given each to the hymns of a single Rishi or family of Rishis. Thus the second is devoted chiefly to the Suktas of the Rishi Gritsamada, the third and the seventh similarly to the great names of Vishwamitra and Vasishtha respectively, the fourth to Vamadeva, the sixth to
The Secret of the Veda
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
defend verities contained in the books of the Ancient Testa-
ment. Did one not read there: On that day when the Lord
--
(titles of books by Desmond Morris).
The human media repeat day by day how animal-like
--
In one of his first though least known books, Quantum
Questions, Ken Wilber examines the metaphysics of the
1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
All the different steps in Yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state, or Samadhi. Furthermore, this is a most vital point to understand, that inspiration is as much in every man's nature as it was in that of the ancient prophets. These prophets were not unique; they were men as you or I. They were great Yogis. They had gained this superconsciousness, and you and I can get the same. They were not peculiar people. The very fact that one man ever reached that state, proves that it is possible for every man to do so. Not only is it possible, but every man must, eventually, get to that state, and that is religion. Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves. You cannot hope to make a man a surgeon by simply giving him a few books. You cannot satisfy my curiosity to see a country by showing me a map; I must have actual experience. Maps can only create curiosity in us to get more perfect knowledge. Beyond that, they have no value whatever. Clinging to books only degenerates the human mind. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book! Millions of people have been killed because they did not believe what the books said, because they would not see all the knowledge of God within the covers of a book. Of course this killing and murdering has gone by, but the world is still tremendously bound up in a belief in books.
In order to reach the superconscious state in a scientific manner it is necessary to pass through the various steps of Raja-Yoga I have been teaching. After Pratyhra and Dhran, we come to Dhyna, meditation. When the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point. This state is called Dhyana. When one has so intensified the power of Dhyana as to be able to reject the external part of perception and remain meditating only on the internal part, the meaning, that state is called Samadhi. The three Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi together, are called Samyama. That is, if the mind can first concentrate upon an object, and then is able to continue in that concentration for a length of time, and then, by continued concentration, to dwell only on the internal part of the perception of which the object was the effect, everything comes under the control of such a mind.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
I wish I could join the Solitaries (on Caldey Island), instead of being Superior and having to write books. But I dont wish to have what I wish, of course.
Abbot John Chapman
--
Because it was German and spelt with a K, Kultur was an object, during the first World War, of derisive contempt. All this has now been changed. In Russia, Literature, Art and Science have become the three persons of a new humanistic Trinity. Nor is the cult of Culture confined to the Soviet Union. It is practised by a majority of intellectuals in the capitalist democracies. Clever, hard-boiled journalists, who write about everything else with the condescending cynicism of people who know all about God, Man and the Universe, and have seen through the whole absurd caboodle, fairly fall over themselves when it comes to Culture. With an earnestness and enthusiasm that are, in the circumstances, unutterably ludicrous, they invite us to share their positively religious emotions in the face of High Art, as represented by the latest murals or civic centres; they insist that so long as Mrs. X. goes on writing her inimitable novels and Mr. Y. his more than Coleridgean criticism, the world, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, makes sense. The same overvaluation of Culture, the same belief that Art and Literature are ends in themselves and can flourish in isolation from a reasonable and realistic philosophy of life, have even invaded the schools and colleges. Among advanced educationists there are many people who seem to think that all will be well, so long as adolescents are permitted to express themselves, and small children are encouraged to be creative in the art class. But, alas, plasticine and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance; nor the classics and the Hundred Best books. The following criticisms of education were made more than two and a half centuries ago; but they are as relevant today as they were in the seventeenth century.
He knoweth nothing as he ought to know, who thinks he knoweth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.
1.06 - Of imperfections with respect to spiritual gluttony., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
Through these efforts they lose true devotion and spirituality, which consist in perseverance, together with patience and humility and mistrust of themselves, that they may please God alone. For this reason, when they have once failed to find pleasure in this or some other exercise, they have great disinclination and repugnance to return to it, and at times they abandon it. They are, in fact, as we have said, like children, who are not influenced by reason, and who act, not from rational motives, but from inclination.48 Such persons expend all their effort in seeking spiritual pleasure and consolation; they never tire therefore, of reading books; and they begin, now one meditation, now another, in their pursuit of this pleasure which they desire to experience in the things of God. But God, very justly, wisely and lovingly, denies it to them, for otherwise this spiritual gluttony and inordinate appetite would breed in numerable evils. It is, therefore, very fitting that they should enter into the dark night, whereof we shall speak,49 that they may be purged from this childishness.
7. These persons who are thus inclined to such pleasures have another very great imperfection, which is that they are very weak and remiss in journeying upon the hard 50 road of the Cross; for the soul that is given to sweetness naturally has its face set against all self-denial, which is devoid of sweetness.51
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The role of the teacher is to put the child upon the right road to his own perfection and encourage him to follow it watching, suggesting, helping, but not imposing or interfering. The best method of suggestion is by personal example, daily conversation, and books read from day-to-day.
These books should contain, for younger students, the loftiest examples of the past, given not as moral lessons but as things of supreme human interest, and for elder students, the great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which can set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and inspiring ideals.
Opportunity should be given to students to emulate in action the deeper and nobler impulses which rise within them.
1.06 - Raja Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
7. Niyama is observance of five canons, viz., Saucha (internal and external purity), Santosha (contentment), Tapas (austerity), Svadhyaya (study of religious books and repetitions of Mantras), and Ishvarapranidhana (self-surrender to God, and His worship).
8. Ahimsa is perfect harmlessness and positive love also. This removes the brutal nature in man and streng thens the will.
1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
life. Few books have been so widely read, and to this day many thousand
copies of it are still printed annually in England. I do not doubt that
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"After attaining samdhi, I once went to the Ganges to perform tarpan. But as I took water in the palm of my hand, it trickled down through my fingers. Weeping, I said to Haladhri, 'Cousin, what is this?' Haladhri replied, 'It is called galitahasta in the holy books.' After the vision of God, such duties as the performance of tarpan drop away.
"In the kirtan the devotee first sings, 'Nitai amar mata hati.' As the devotional mood deepens, he simply sings, 'Hati! Hati!' Next, all he can sing is 'Hati'. And last of all he simply sings, 'Ha!' and goes into samdhi. The man who has been singing all the while then becomes speechless.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
expenses included rent for the center, utilities, publicity, bookshelves, cushions, and the teachers food, rent, and health insurance. But unless people
were charged or asked directly for money, it seems many of them didnt consider from where the money came to meet these expenses.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Tibetan books of the dead.) It is infernal. So I built that.
That was perhaps in 1902-1903 or 1904, I do not remember
--
the first books on NDE, her narrative of what she had ac-
complished in the beginning of the 20th century might have
--
entifically argued books like Rare Earth by Peter Ward and
Donald Brownlee, The Eerie Silence and The Goldilocks Enig-
--
find popular science books with a title such as The Matter
Myth, and physicists who say: Speaking as a physicist, I
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology
that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general
1.07 - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
All pure mathematics is _a priori_, like logic. This was strenuously denied by the empirical philosophers, who maintained that experience was as much the source of our knowledge of arithmetic as of our knowledge of geography. They maintained that by the repeated experience of seeing two things and two other things, and finding that altogether they made four things, we were led by induction to the conclusion that two things and two other things would _always_ make four things altogether. If, however, this were the source of our knowledge that two and two are four, we should proceed differently, in persuading ourselves of its truth, from the way in which we do actually proceed. In fact, a certain number of instances are needed to make us think of two abstractly, rather than of two coins or two books or two people, or two of any other specified kind. But as soon as we are able to divest our thoughts of irrelevant particularity, we become able to see the general principle that two and two are four; any one instance is seen to be _typical_, and the examination of other instances becomes unnecessary.(1)
(1) Cf. A. N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (Home University
--
But the newness of the knowledge is much less certain if we take the stock instance of deduction that is always given in books on logic, namely, 'All men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.' In this case, what we really know beyond reasonable doubt is that certain men, A, B, C, were mortal, since, in fact, they have died.
If Socrates is one of these men, it is foolish to go the roundabout way through 'all men are mortal' to arrive at the conclusion that _probably_
1.07 - Raja-Yoga in Brief, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
We have spoken about Yama and Niyama. The next is Asana (posture). The only thing to understand about it is leaving the body free, holding the chest, shoulders, and head straight. Then comes Pranayama. Prana means the vital forces in one's own body, yma means controlling them. There are three sorts of Pranayama, the very simple, the middle, and the very high. Pranayama is divided into three parts: filling, restraining, and emptying. When you begin with twelve seconds it is the lowest Pranayama; when you begin with twenty-four seconds it is the middle Pranayama; that Pranayama is the best which begins with thirty-six seconds. In the lowest kind of Pranayama there is perspiration, in the medium kind, quivering of the body, and in the highest Pranayama levitation of the body and influx of great bliss. There is a Mantra called the Gyatri. It is a very holy verse of the Vedas. "We meditate on the glory of that Being who has produced this universe; may He enlighten our minds." Om is joined to it at the beginning and the end. In one Pranayama repeat three Gayatris. In all books they speak of Pranayama being divided into Rechaka (rejecting or exhaling), Puraka (inhaling), and Kurnbhaka (restraining, stationary). The Indriyas, the organs of the senses, are acting outwards and coming in contact with external objects. Bringing them under the control of the will is what is called Pratyahara or gathering towards oneself. Fixing the mind on the lotus of the heart, or on the centre of the head, is what is called Dharana. Limited to one spot, making that spot the base, a particular kind of mental waves rises; these are not swallowed up by other kinds of waves, but by degrees become prominent, while all the others recede and finally disappear. Next the multiplicity of these waves gives place to unity and one wave only is left in the mind. This is Dhyana, meditation. When no basis is necessary, when the whole of the mind has become one wave, one-formedness, it is called Samadhi. Bereft of all help from places and centres, only the meaning of the thought is present. If the mind can be fixed on the centre for twelve seconds it will be a Dharana, twelve such Dharanas will be a Dhyana, and twelve such Dhyanas will be a Samadhi.
Where there is fire, or in water or on ground which is strewn with dry leaves, where there are many ant-hills, where there are wild animals, or danger, where four streets meet, where there is too much noise, where there are many wicked persons, Yoga must not be practiced. This applies more particularly to India. Do not practice when the body feels very lazy or ill, or when the mind is very miserable and sorrowful. Go to a place which is well hidden, and where people do not come to disturb you. Do not choose dirty places. Rather choose beautiful scenery, or a room in your own house which is beautiful. When you practice, first salute all the ancient Yogis, and your own Guru, and God, and then begin.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy,[1] was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond. The first part had four books and the second had three books and an epilogue.
Afterwards there came to be three parts but without names. Each part had a series of books. The first Book was called Love. Then it was named Quest, and Love became the second Book. In some early versions we have instead of books, Cantos. Later the books came to contain the Cantos.
Sri Aurobindo made a good number of recasts before the final form was reached. The first form was begun and completed in Baroda. Other recasts were made in Pondicherry. One of the early ones is subtitled A Tale and a Vision. Later the subtitle was A Legend and a Symbol. It was after several recasts that the present opening line was struck upon: "It was the hour before the Gods awake."
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The position arrived at in 1946 can be apprehended from a letter written in that year. Sri Aurobindo says: "You will see when you get the full typescript [of the first three books] that Savitri has grown to an enormous length so that it is no longer quite the same thing as the poem you saw then. There are now three books in the first part. The first, The Book of Beginnings, comprises five Cantos which cover the same ground as what you typed but contains also much more that is new. The small passage about Aswapathy and the other worlds has been replaced by a new Book, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, in fourteen Cantos with many thousand lines. There is also a third sufficiently long Book, The Book of the Divine Mother. In the new plan of the poem there is a second part consisting of five books: two of these, The Book of Birth and Quest and The Book of Love, have been completed and another, The Book of Fate, is almost complete. Two others, The Book of Yoga and The Book of Death, have still to be written, though a part needs only a thorough recasting. Finally, there is the third part consisting of four books, The Book of Eternal Night, The Book of the Dual Twilight, The Book of Everlasting Day and The Return to Earth, which have to be entirely recast and the third of them largely rewritten. So it will be a long time before Savitri is complete...." Again, on July 20, 1948 he writes to Amal: "I am afraid I am much preoccupied with constant clashes with the world and the devil... even Savitri has very much slowed down and I am only making the last revisions of the first Part already completed; the other two parts are just now in cold storage."
Here then we get a brief survey of the work accomplished and what still remained to be done. During the last four years, from 1946 to 1950, he laboured constantly on the unfinished parts and gave them an almost new birth, with the exception of The Book of Death and The Epilogue, which, for some inscrutable reason, he left practically unrevised.
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In each succeeding version after the first, there is a growing expansion in which old lines are taken up into a new framework. The development into separate books from what was originally all contained within Book I and Book II takes place after the second or third version of the opening matter. This matter now becomes The Book of Quest, followed by The Book of Love, The Book of Fate, The Book of Death. Thus Part I, Earth, is completed. Then starts Part II, Beyond, with The books of Night, Twilight, Day and The Epilogue.
Each version of Book I runs approximately to one exercise book of 40-80 pages, though the stage of the story differs from exercise book to exercise book when their end is reached.
--
I had no access to the work or to any of his other writings till that year. Though all the works must have been lying on the table or in the drawers, I had to curb my strong impulse to have a peep into the legend of Savitri. For we were in his room for a different purpose and it would have been a breach of trust on our part to lay hands on his sacred private property. The chance came in 1940, first only to place the requisite manuscripts before him, then gradually to work as a scribe. I still distinctly remember the day when, sitting on the bed with the table in front of him, he remarked: "You will find in the drawers long exercise books with coloured covers. Bring them." I think I went wrong in the first attempt, the second one met with his smiling approval. What he actually did with them, I cannot say, for he was working all alone, and we were sitting behind. I guess that he must have been giving a first reading to all the versions, for there were quite a number. He had already written to us before his accident that he had recast the first Book about ten times. Perhaps he was going through these and making a selection of the lines and passages for the final version. Then a few months after and at this time he was sitting in the morning in a chair he told me that he needed some exercise books. Without informing the Mother about it, I at once ran to the market and bought two or three exercise books from Manikachetty. He accepted them with a smile and I was happy to find that he used them for copying Savitri. At the end of one of the books he has written: "Last draft of Savitri, Sep.6, 1942." In another exercise book, containing matter up to the end of The Book of the Divine Mother, only at the end of Canto V of Book I, the date written is: April 24, 1944. (This, as you see, was the morning of the Darshan day). From these two dates we can surmise that from 1940, the year in which we presume he took up the work on Savitri, to 1944, he continued working on the first three books. Now, how much new material did he add to them? We know from his letter to Amal that Book II at any rate, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, was just a small passage. Here now we find the fully lengthened and developed Book running into 15 Cantos. The third Book, The Book of the Divine Mother, was also written probably for the first time, for he wrote to Amal in 1946: "...there is also a third sufficiently long Book, The Book of the Divine Mother."
The next step in the development was his re-copying the entire three books on big white sheets of paper, in two columns in fine handwriting. There is one date at the end of The Book of the Divine Mother: May 7, 1944, which suggests that the copying of the entire three books had taken about a year. When this was completed I was called in. Perhaps because his eye-sight was getting dim, I was asked to read to him this final copy. Now began alterations and additions in my hand on the manuscript itself. I regret to say that they marred the clean beauty of the original, and I realise now that it was a brutal act of sacrilege on my part, tantamount to desecration of the carved images on the temple wall. But I cannot imagine either how else I could have inserted so many corrections and additions, one line, one word here, two there, more elsewhere, throughout the entire length. We know how prodigious were the corrections and revisions in so far as Savitri was concerned. One is simply amazed at the enormous pains he has taken to raise Savitri to his ideal of perfection. I wonder if any other poet can be compared with him in this respect. He gave me the example of Virgil who, it seems, wrote six lines in the morning, and went on correcting them during the rest of the day. Even so, his Aeneid runs not even half the length of the first three books of Savitri. Along with all these revisions, Sri Aurobindo added, on separate small sheets of paper, long passages written in his own hand up to the Canto, The Kingdom of the Greater Mind, Book II. All this work was completed, I believe, by the end of 1944.
The next step was to make a fair copy of the entire revised work. I don't know why it was not given straightaway for typing. There was a talk between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo about it; Sri Aurobindo might have said that because of copious additions, typing by another person would not be possible. He himself could not make a fair copy. Then the Mother suggested my name and brought a thick blue ledgerlike book for the purpose. I needed two or three reminders from the Mother before I took up the work in right earnest. Every morning I used to sit on the floor behind the head of the bed, and leaning against the wall, start copying like a student of our old Sanskrit tols. Sri Aurobindo's footstool would serve as my table. The Mother would not fail to cast a glance at my good studentship. Though much of the poetry passed over my head, quite often the solar plexus would thrill at the sheer beauty of the images and expressions. The very first line made me gape with wonder. I don't remember if the copying and revision with Sri Aurobindo proceeded at the same time, or revision followed the entire copying. The Mother would make inquiries from time to time either, I thought, to make me abandon my jog-trot manner or because the newly started Press was clamouring for some publication from Sri Aurobindo. Especially now that people had come to know that after The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo was busy with Savitri, they were eagerly waiting for it. But they had to wait quite a long time, for after the revision, when the whole book was handed to the Mother, it was passed on to Nolini for being typed out. Then another revision of the typescript before it was ready for the Press! Again, I cannot swear if the typing was completed first before its revision or both went on at the same time. At any rate, the whole process went very slowly, since Sri Aurobindo would not be satisfied with Savitri done less than perfectly. Neither could we give much time to it, not, I think, more than an hour a day, sometimes even less. The Press began to bring it out in fascicules by Cantos from 1946. At all stages of revision, even on Press proofs, alterations, additions never stopped. It may be mentioned that the very first appearance of anything from Savitri in public was in the form of passages quoted in the essay "Sri Aurobindo: A New Age of Mystical Poetry" by Amal, published in the Bombay Circle and later included as Part III in Amal's book: The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo.
So far the account of the procedure which was followed for working on the three books seems approximately correct. We have been considerably helped by some dates mentioned before in the account. But in what follows about the rest of the epic, I am afraid that the report cannot claim as much exactness owing to my lapse of memory. I can sum up the position obtained at this stage by quoting Sri Aurobindo's letter to Amal in 1946. After investigating all the documents available, we have come to the following conclusions about the rest of the books. Book IV, The Book of Birth and Quest, is fairly revised by Sri Aurobindo. Several versions before the end of 1938 have been worked upon these versions are expansions of much older drafts, one of them possibly dating back to Baroda. The revised version was later corrected and amplified with my help as scribe and has been divided into four Cantos. In re-doing Book V, The Book of Love, Sri Aurobindo took up, at a certain point, an earlier version than that of 1936. There are quite a number of versions with various titles before 1936. Here too, originally there were no different Cantos. There are three old versions of The Book of Fate of equal length. They were called Canto II, and fairly short. One of these versions was expanded into enormous length and developed into two Cantos, the very last touches given almost during the final month of Sri Aurobindo's life. An instance of the expansion is the passage "O singer of the ultimate ecstasy... will is Fate." There was no Book of Yoga in the original scheme of the poem. One old version called Book III, Death, has been changed into The Book of Yoga. It was enormously expanded and named Canto I. All the rest of the six Cantos were totally new and dictated. They were all at first divided into Cantos with different titles. Apparently all these Cantos except the first one are entirely new. I could get no trace of any old versions from which they could have been developed. I am now amazed to see that so many lines could have been dictated day after day, like The Book of Everlasting Day. The Book of Death contains three old versions all called Canto III; the final version is constructed from one of these and from another version some lines are taken to be inserted into The Book of Eternal Night, Canto IV, Night, of the early version served as the basis of The Book of Eternal Night. It was revised, lines were added and split into two Cantos. Then in the typescript further revisions took place. Canto I, first called The Passage into the Void of Night, was changed into Towards the Black Void. Book X, The Book of the Double Twilight, called only Twilight, Canto V in the earlier versions of which there are four or five, had no division into Cantos. From these early versions a fair number of lines have been taken and woven into a larger version. The old lines are now not always in their original form. Book XI had three old drafts. One which was larger than the other two has been used for the final version and was enormously expanded; even whole passages running into hundreds of lines have been added, as I have mentioned before. About The Epilogue, except for a few additions, it almost reproduces the single old version.
Now we can go into the detailed working procedure of all these later books. I had to take now a more and more prominent part as scribe, for after the completion of the fourth Book, The Book of Birth and Quest, from 1944 or so, Sri Aurobindo's eyesight began to grow dim and he didn't want to strain his eyes by going through all the old manuscripts with their faint, small handwriting. So I was asked to bring out these old versions from the drawer; I now had access to all the manuscripts. Most of them were in loose sheets of notebook size written on one side. Unfortunately no dates were given to suggest when they were written. I was asked to read aloud Book by Book before him, but I don't remember by what method we proceeded. Did we give a general reading to all the books before we started with the actual working on them individually? Or did we go about systematically finishing one Book after another? Perhaps the latter. Taking this procedure to be probable, I was asked when there were more than one version of a Book, to read them, sometimes all, sometimes one or two and selecting out of them the best one, he indicated the lines to be marked in the margin for inclusion; sometimes lines or passages were taken from other versions too. As I have shown, and as Sri Aurobindo's dictated letter has already hinted, all these books were either thoroughly revised or almost entirely rewritten.
As far as I remember, we worked on these drafts in the evening for an hour or so after all the correspondence work was over. He would sit in a small straight-backed armchair where the big armchair now stands, and listen to my reading. The work proceeded very slowly to start with, and for a long time, either because he didn't seem to be in a hurry or because there was not much time left after attending to the miscellaneous correspondence I have mentioned elsewhere. Later on, the time was changed to the morning. After the selections had been made from one or two versions of a Book, let us say The Book of Fate, we were occupied with it. Never was any Book, except The Book of Death and The Epilogue, taken intact. He would dictate line after line, and ask me to add selected lines and passages in their proper places, but which were not always kept in their old order. I wonder how he could go on dictating lines of poetry in this way, as if a tap had been turned on and the water flowed, not in a jet, of course, but slowly, very slowly indeed. Passages sometimes had to be reread in order to get the link or sequence, but when the turn came of The Book of Yoga and The Book of Everlasting Day, line after line began to flow from his lips like a smooth and gentle stream and it was on the next day that a revision was done to get the link for further continuation. In the morning he himself would write out new lines on small note books called 'bloc' notes which were incorporated in the text. This was more true as regards The Book of Fate. Sometimes there were two or even three versions of a passage. As his sight began to fail, the letters also became gradually indistinct, and I had to decipher and read them all before him. I had a good sight and, more than that, the gift of deciphering his "hieroglyphics", thanks to the preparatory training I had received during my voluminous correspondence with him before the accident. At times when I got stuck he would help me out, but there were occasions when both of us failed. Then he would say, "Give it to me, let me try." Taking a big magnifying glass, he would focus his eyes but only to exclaim, "No, can't make out!"
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This is roughly the story of the grand epic Savitri traced from the earliest conception to its final consummation. Undoubtedly the first three books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest, for with ample leisure, and working by himself he could devote more time and care to that end, which unfortunately could not be said about the rest of the books. Apart from the different versions I have mentioned, there is a huge mass of manuscripts which we have left unclassified since they are in fragments[4] all of which testifies to the immense labour of a god that has gone into the building of the magnificent epic. For a future research scholar, when Savitri earns as wide a recognition as, for instance, Dante's or Homer's epic, if not more, a very interesting work remains to be done; going into the minutest detail, he would show where new lines or passages have been added, or where one line slightly changed becomes an overhead line, or how another line after various changes comes back to its original version, etc., etc. I was chosen as a scribe probably because I didn't have all these gifts, so that I could, like a passive instrument, jot down faithfully whatever was dictated while Amal would have raised doubts, argued with him or been lost in sheer admiration of the beauty and the grandeur! Dilip would have started quoting line after line in rapturous ecstasy before the poem had come out! I submit no apology, nor am I conscience-stricken for my failures, for he knew what was the worth of his instrument. I am only grateful to him for being able to serve him with the very faculty which he had evolved and developed in me.
We can at last see how from among scattered seeds a single huge banyan tree has grown and spread itself to the transcendent and the cosmic infinite and excites our perpetual wonder. I wish I could provide a more faithful and vivid picture of its daily growth, a branch here, an offshoot there, trimming the old twigs, reviving the dying ones, discarding the outworn crowding branches till there soared up into the sky a majestic vision under whose perennial shade the world can repose awhile, in its long journey to the Eternal. To show how he expanded the poem I may quote one long new passage which he appended to the end of Book II, Canto VI, The Kingdoms and the Godheads of the Greater Life:
1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But where is the mysterious key to that third level? In reality, it is not mysterious after all, although it is full of mysteries. It does not depend on complicated instruments, does not hide under a secret knowledge, does not fall from the sky for the elect it is there, almost visible to the naked eye, utterly simple and natural. It has been there since the beginning of time, in that seed harboring a smoldering fire: a need to reach out and take; in that great nebula gathering its grains of atoms: a need to grow and be; under those sleeping waters already simmering with an impatient fire of life: a need for air and open space. And everything began to move, impelled by the same fire: the heliotrope toward the sun, the dove toward its companion and man toward we know not what. An immense Need in the heart of the worlds, all the way to the galaxies out there, to the limits of Andromeda, which drew each other into a mortal gravitational embrace. That need we see at our own level; it is small or less small, it asks for air or sunlight, a companion and children, books, art and music, objects by the millions but it has really only one object, it asks for only one music, a single sun and a single air. It is a need for infinity. For it was born out of infinity. And so long as it does not meet its one object, it will not stop, nor will the galaxies stop devouring each other, nor men struggling and toiling to seize the one thing they think they do not have, but which pushes and prods inside, poking its unsatisfied fire until we attain the ultimate satisfaction and at once the plenitude of millions of vain objects, of an ephemeral rose and a trivial little gesture. It is this Fire that is the key, because it is born out of the supreme Power that set the world on fire; it is this Fire that sees, because it is born out of the supreme Vision that conceived this seed; it is this Fire that knows, because it recognizes itself everywhere, in things and beings, in the pebble and the stars. This is the Fire of the new world which burns in the heart of man, This that wakes in the sleepers, says the Upanishad.14 And it will not rest until everything is restored to its full truth, and the world to its joy, for it is born of Joy and for Joy.
But, at first, this self of fire is mixed with its obscure undertakings; it toils and desires, struggles and strains; it crawls with the worm, sniffs the wind for the scent of its prey. It has to keep alive, to survive. It feels the world with its small antennae; it sees in fragments, according to its needs. In man, the conscious animal, it widens its scope; it still feels, adds up its pieces, systematizes its data: it makes laws, scholarly treatises, gospels. Yet, behind, there is that self of fire pushing, the something that will not quit, that grows impatient with laws and systems and gospels, that senses a wall behind each captured truth, each framed law, that senses a trap closing on each discovery, as if capturing were to be captured, trapped; there is the something that directs the antenna, which grows impatient even with the antenna, impatient with levers and all the machinery for apprehending the world, as if that machinery and that antenna and that look draped one last veil over the world and prevented it from attaining its naked reality. There is that cry of being in the depths which yearns to see, which really so much needs to see and come out in the open at last: the master of the antenna and not its slave. As if, really, a master had been confined there forever, arduously casting out its pseudopods, its tentacles and all its multicolored nets to try to join with the outside. Then, one day, under the pressure of that fire of need, the machinery begins to crack. Everything cracks: laws, gospels, knowledge and all the jurisprudence of the world. We've had enough! Even of the best we've had enough. It is still a prison, a trap thoughts, books, art and our-Father-which-art-in-heaven. Something else, something else! Oh, something we so much need, which is without a name, except for its blind need!... So we demechanize with the same fury with which we had mechanized. Everything is burned, nothing is left, save that pure fire. That fire which does not know, does not see anything, nothing at all anymore, not even the little fragments it had so conscientiously gathered together. It is an almost painful fire. It struggles and toils and searches and bumps into things; it wants truth, it wants the other thing, as once it wanted objects, the millions of objects of this world, and strained to get. And little by little, everything is consumed. Even the desire for the other thing, even the hope of ever clasping that impossible pure truth, even personal effort melts away; everything slips between our fingers.
A pure little flame is left.
1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The documents of the Black School of Magick have already been indicated. They are, for the most part, tedious to the last degree and repulsive to every wholesome-minded man; yet it can hardly be denied that such books as The Dhammapada and Ecclesiastes are masterpieces of literature. They represent the agony of human despair at its utmost degree of intensity, and the melancholy contemplation which is induced by their perusal is not favourable to the inception of that mood which should lead every truly courageous intelligence to the determination to escape from the ferule of the Black Schoolmaster to the outstretched arms of the White Mistress of Life.
Let us leave the sinister figure of Schopenhauer for the mysteriously radiant shape of Spinoza! This latter philosopher, in respect at least of his Pantheism, represents fairly enough the fundamental thesis of the White tradition. Almost the first observation that we have to make is that this White tradition is hardly discoverable outside Europe. It appears first of all in the legend of Dionysus. (In this connection read carefully Browning's Apollo and the Fates.)
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The purest documents of the White School are found in the Sacred books of Thelema. The doctrine is given in excellent perfection both in the book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent and the book of Lapis Lazuli. A single passage is adequate to explain the formula.
Moreover I behld a vision of a river. There was a little boat thereon; and in it under purple sails was a golden woman, an image of Asi wrought in finest gold. Also the river was of blood, and the boat of shining steel. Then I loved her; and, loosing my girdle, cast myself into the stream.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Against this we must set Dr. Tennants viewnamely, that religious experience is something real and unique, but does not add anything to the experiencers knowledge of ultimate Reality and must always be interpreted in terms of an idea of God derived from other sources. A study of the facts would suggest that both these opinions are to some degree correct. The facts of mystical insight (together with the facts of what is taken to be historic revelation) are rationalized in terms of general knowledge and become the basis of a theology. And, reciprocally, an existing theology in terms of general knowledge exercises a profound influence upon those who have undertaken the spiritual life, causing them, if it is low, to be content with a low form of experience, if it is high, to reject as inadequate the experience of any form of reality having characteristics incompatible with those of the God described in the books. Thus mystics make theology, and theology makes mystics.
A person who gives assent to untrue dogma, or who pays all his attention and allegiance to one true dogma in a comprehensive system, while neglecting the others (as many Christians concentrate exclusively on the humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity and ignore the Father and the Holy Ghost), runs the risk of limiting in advance his direct apprehension of Reality. In religion as in natural science, experience is determined only by experience. It is fatal to prejudge it, to compel it to fit the mould imposed by a theory which either does not correspond to the facts at all, or corresponds to only some of the facts. Do not strive to seek after the true, writes a Zen master, only cease to cherish opinions. There is only one way to cure the results of belief in a false or incomplete theology and it is the same as the only known way of passing from belief in even the truest theology to knowledge or primordial Factselflessness, docility, openness to the datum of Eternity. Opinions are things which we make and can therefore understand, formulate and argue about. But to rest in the consideration of objects perceptible to the sense or comprehended by the understanding is to be content, in the words of St. John of the Cross, with what is less than God. Unitive knowledge of God is possible only to those who have ceased to cherish opinionseven opinions that are as true as it is possible for verbalized abstractions to be.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Purani, the last to be mentioned of our group, was one of the old guards associated with Sri Aurobindo from the twenties. I shall not speak much about him because his own books tell in every line what profound love and adoration he bore for the Master for whose sake he would do anything. Full of life and gusto, he added a liveliness to our company. His choice of the unearthly hours from 2 a.m. to 6.30 a.m. for service was a great relief to us. He would surge up from the bosom of the night and say, "Here I am!" He had the entire period to himself and kept awake while we were contentedly sleeping and snoring by his side. Now and then we used to hear, as if in a dream, Sri Aurobindo's soft voice asking for something and Purani with military steps advancing and responding to the call of the General. If you happened to wake up by some inadvertent noise, you would find a different figure altogether, moving in the penumbra. No longer that lively, youngish spirit, but a very serious face that does not recognise anything else but the work, and brooks no meddling in his duty when Sri Aurobindo is his sole monopoly. I realised then why he chose that hour for service. He could be concentrated, watchful and all alone with the Master. The midnight surely affects all of us with its portentous weight. Another distinctive feature in his service was his physical strength without which it would have been difficult to lift or carry Sri Aurobindo during the early days of the accident. We have seen how he served as a solid human crutch on Sri Aurobindo's right side and later on, his giant manipulation of the large hand-fan was no less an achievement.
His tremendous vital energy would take little account of things big or small. It would either dash against the door or kick at a poor matchbox! The noise would make Sri Aurobindo remark, "What's the matter?" "It is Purani!" we would reply in fun and evoke his smile. He knew Purani's nature very well. Once when Purani hurt his big toe Sri Aurobindo remarked, "You are always dropping things or knocking against them!" He even referred our jokes to the Mother at Purani's cost.
1.08 - Information, Language, and Society, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
bers, these means are the press, both as it concerns books and
as it concerns newspapers, the radio, the telephone system, the
--
means. The book publishers concentrate on books that are likely
to be acceptable to some book club which buys out the whole
1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Eastern books and the translations made of them. Here again my reason is
not that we have nothing equivalent in the West: I recommend yoga
1.08 - Summary, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A Student must possess the following books:
The Equinox,
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These books should be well studied in any case in conjunction with the second part -- Magick -- of this Book IV.
Study of these books will give a thorough grounding in the intellectual side of Their system.
After three months the Student is examined in these books, and if his knowledge of them is found satisfactory, he may become a Probationer, receiving Liber LXI and the secret holy book, Liber LXV. The principal point of this grade is that the Probationer has a master appointed, whose experience can guide him in his work.
He may select any practices that he prefers, but in any case must keep an exact record, so that he may discover the relation of cause and effect in his working, and so that the A.'.A.'. may judge of his progress, and direct his further studies.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the intruders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of Nature beside our native riches.13
It is, in fact, according to Emerson, an allegiance to the senses and nature, in itself, that blinds us to the interior intuition of the Over-Soul and the God within and beyond:
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet the most fundamental and important part of this imperishable Scripture, the actual hymns and mantras of the Sanhitas, has long been a sealed book to the Indian mind, learned or unlearned. The other Vedic books are of minor authority or a secondary formation. The Brahmanas are ritual, grammatical & historical treatises on the traditions & ceremonies of Vedic times whose only valueapart from interesting glimpses of ancient life & Vedantic philosophylies in their attempt to fix and to interpret symbolically the ritual of Vedic sacrifice. The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. Or if they have been understood, if Sayana holds for us their secret, the reverence of the Indian mind for them becomes a baseless superstition and the idea that the modern Indian religions are Vedic in their substance is convicted of egregious error. For the Vedas Sayana gives us are the mythology of the Adityas, Rudras,Maruts, Vasus,but these gods of the Veda have long ceased to be worshipped,or they are a collection of ritual & sacrificial hymns, but the ritual is dead & the sacrifices are no longer offered.
Are we then to conclude that the reverence for the Vedas & the belief in the continued authority of the Vedas is really no more than an ancient superstition or a tradition which has survived its truth? Those who know the working of the human mind, will be loth to hasten to that conclusion. Great masses of men, great nations, great civilisations have an instinct in these matters which seldom misleads them. In spite of forgetfulness, through every misstatement, surviving all cessation of precise understanding, something in them still remembers their origin and holds fast to the vital truth of their being. According to the Europeans, there is a historical truth at the basis of the old persistent tradition, but a historical truth only, a truth of origin, not of present actuality. The Vedas are the early roots of Indian religion, of Indian civilisation; but they have for a long time past ceased to be their present foundation or their intellectual substance. It is rather the Upanishads & the Puranas that are the living Scriptures of mediaeval and modern Hinduism. But if, as we contend, the Upanishads & the Puranas only give us in other language, later symbols, altered forms of thought the same religious truths that we find differently stated in the Rigveda, this shifting of the immediate point of derivation will make no real difference. The waters we drink are the same whether drawn at their clear mountain sources or on their banks in the anchorites forest or from ghats among the faery temples and fantastic domes of some sacred city.The Hindus belief remains to him unshaken.
1.08 - The Magic Sword, Dagger and Trident, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The way in which a magic sword is manufactured depends on the magician's individuality. Several books instruct the magician to use a sword which has formerly been used for cutting off a man's head. This is obviously suggested to raise, in the heart of the magician, a certain feeling of awe, or a certain stress as soon as he takes hold of the sword. Usually those magicians who make use of such a sword are those who need such superficialities to get into the right state of mind. From the hermetic point of view such or similar pre-conditions are not necessary, providing that all other faculties necessarily exist. A sword made of the best kind of steel (refined steel) will fully serve its purpose. If the magician cannot produce such a sword himself he may have it made by a smith or another metal expert. The length of the sword may vary between two or three feet depending on the magician's height.
The handle of the sword may be made of copper, since copper is a very good conductor of fluids.
1.08 - The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
It is for this reason that so much is found in books dealing with these matters concerning the dangers connected with the ascent into higher worlds. The descriptions sometimes given of these dangers may well make timid souls shudder at the prospect of this higher life. Yet the fact is that dangers only arise when the necessary precautions are neglected. If all the measures counseled by true esoteric science are adopted, the ascent will indeed ensue through experiences surpassing in power and magnitude everything the boldest flights of sense-bound fantasy can picture; and yet there can be no question of injury to health or life. The student meets with horrible powers threatening life at every turn and from every side. It will even be possible for him to make use of certain forces and beings existing beyond physical perception, and the temptation is great to control these forces for the furtherance of personal and forbidden interests, or to employ them wrongly out of a deficient knowledge of the higher worlds. Some of
p. 219
1.08 - THINGS THE GERMANS LACK, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
German poets? Are there any good German books?" people ask me abroad. I
blush; but with that pluck which is peculiar to me, even in moments of
--
what books _are_ read to-day? Cursed instinct of mediocrity!--
What might not German intellect have been!--who has not thought sadly
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "At first one should hear books like that and indulge in reasoning. But later on-
Cherish my precious Mother Syama
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preparation hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion. Intellectual assent and intellectual dissent are not religion. The central idea of the Yogis is that just as we come in direct contact with objects of the senses, so religion even can be directly perceived in a far more intense sense. The truths of religion, as God and Soul, cannot be perceived by the external senses. I cannot see God with my eyes, nor can I touch Him with my hands, and we also know that neither can we reason beyond the senses. Reason leaves us at a point quite indecisive; we may reason all our lives, as the world has been doing for thousands of years, and the result is that we find we are incompetent to prove or disprove the facts of religion. What we perceive directly we take as the basis, and upon that basis we reason. So it is obvious that reasoning has to run within these bounds of perception. It can never go beyond. The whole scope of realisation, therefore, is beyond sense-perception. The Yogis say that man can go beyond his direct sense-perception, and beyond his reason also. Man has in him the faculty, the power, of transcending his intellect even, a power which is in every being, every creature. By the practice of Yoga that power is aroused, and then man transcends the ordinary limits of reason, and directly perceives things which are beyond all reason.
50. The resulting impression from this Samadhi obstructs all other impressions.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
"_The Imitation of Christ_" is one of those books which I cannot even
take hold of without physical loathing: it exhales a perfume of the
1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
sented in the text books and by the media as the standard
model (but which is in fact severely questioned).
1.09 - Talks, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
About the range and variety of the talks the readers have now got a fair idea from our books. They show Sri Aurobindo's encyclopaedic knowledge and bear out the truth of his remark that if he wrote all that he knew, it Would be ten times more than what he had already written. He had serious or sublime subjects in mind, but I am referring even to ordinary matters of life. Dr. Ramachandra once told me that he had had a racy discussion with the Guru on horse-racing! Much more striking was the ease and freedom in which the talks were held and on either side there was no feeling of constraint or sanctimonious awe putting a check on our impulses. We forgot the sublime Guru-shishya relationship and became long-standing friends. It was quite a different Sri Aurobindo from what he was at other hours of the day. The high, serene and silent snow on the Himalayan peaks had melted down into a quiet and cool gurgling stream. Hold the pure sanctified waters in your hands, sprinkle them over the body, drink them or play with them like a child. How perennially fresh and diversely rich, sparkling always with his ready wit and humour! But the stream flowed, as I said, only at some particular time and not for a long period. Again the grand, serene and silent Presence on the peaks! One could say that the austere "cloak of a reclining God", the robe of silence had slipped down and brought to our view the body of a human godhead. But he would put on the robe of silence again; yet both the visions had their unfailing charm and grandeur.
The talks of Sri Ramakrishna come naturally to our mind in comparison. Their spirit is perhaps the same, the lightness and vivacity too are there, but his talks were restricted in scope, while all life being yoga for us, no subject was too trivial for our discussions. And in Sri Aurobindo's case always samam brahman, impersonality marked all his utterances, no matter what the subject ofthe discourse. Nevertheless, the warm touch of personality could always be felt from behind the usual frontof impersonality. For instance, though he would, while talking, hardly look at us or address us by our names, for his eyes were cast downwards or looking away in front, still the soft tone of his voice, sparks of personal humour reflected the "sweet rays of a temperate sun."
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
when they are hacked or burned occur very often in Chinese books,
even in Standard Histories. Old peasants in some parts of Austria
1.1.05 - The Siddhis, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Siddhis, but recognised them as a part, though not the most important part of Yogic accomplishment, and used them with an abundant and unhesitating vigour. They are recognised in our sacred books, formally included in Yoga by so devotional a Purana as the Bhagawat, noted and some of their processes carefully tabled by Patanjali. Even in the midnight of the Kali great Siddhas and saints have used them more sparingly, but with power and effectiveness. It would be difficult for many of them to do otherwise than use the siddhis since by the very fact of their spiritual elevation, these powers have become not exceptional movements, but the ordinary processes of their thought and action. It is by the use of the siddhis that the Siddhas sitting on the mountains help the world out of the heart of their solitude and silence. Jesus Christ made the use of the siddhis a prominent feature of his pure, noble and spiritual life, nor did he hesitate to communicate them to his disciples - the laying of hands, the healing of the sick, the ashirvada, the abhishap, the speaking with many tongues were all given to them. The day of Pentecost is still kept holy by the Christian Church. Joan of Arc used her siddhis to liberate France. Socrates had his siddhis, some of them of a very material nature. Men of great genius are usually born with some of them and use them unconsciously. Even in natures far below the power and clarity of genius we see their occasional or irregular operation. The West, always avid of knowledge, is struggling, sadly hampered by misuse and imposture, to develop them and gropes roughly for the truth about them in the phenomena of hypnotism, clairvoyance, telepathy, vouched for by men and women of great intellectuality and sincerity. Returning
Eastwards, where only their right practice has been understood, the lives of our saints northern and southern are full of the record of Siddhis. Sri Ramakrishna, whose authority is quoted against
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Those Samdhis with which we ended our last chapter are very difficult to attain; so we must take them up slowly. The first step, the preliminary step, is called Kriya-yoga. Literally this means work, working towards Yoga. The organs are the horses, the mind is the rein, the intellect is the charioteer, the soul is the rider, and the body is the chariot. The master of the household, the King, the Self of man, is sitting in this chariot. If the horses are very strong and do not obey the rein, if the charioteer, the intellect, does not know how to control the horses, then the chariot will come to grief. But if the organs, the horses, are well controlled, and if the rein, the mind, is well held in the hands of the charioteer, the intellect, the chariot reaches the goal. What is meant, therefore, by this mortification? Holding the rein firmly while guiding the body and the organs; not letting them do anything they like, but keeping them both under proper control. Study. What is meant by study in this case? No study of novels or story books, but study of those works which teach the liberation of the Soul. Then again this study does not mean controversial studies at all. The Yogi is supposed to have finished his period of controversy. He has had enough of that, and has become satisfied. He only studies to intensify his convictions. Vda and Siddhnta these are the two sorts of scriptural knowledge Vada (the argumentative) and Siddhanta (the decisive). When a man is entirely ignorant he takes up the first of these, the argumentative fighting, and reasoning pro and con; and when he has finished that he takes up the Siddhanta, the decisive, arriving at a conclusion. Simply arriving at this conclusion will not do. It must be intensified. books are infinite in number, and time is short; therefore the secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it. There is an old Indian legend that if you place a cup of milk and water before a Rja-Hamsa (swan), he will take all the milk and leave the water. In that way we should take what is of value in knowledge, and leave the dross. Intellectual gymnastics are necessary at first. We must not go blindly into anything. The Yogi has passed the argumentative state, and has come to a conclusion, which is, like the rocks, immovable. The only thing he now seeks to do is to intensify that conclusion. Do not argue, he says; if one forces arguments upon you, be silent. Do not answer any argument, but go away calmly, because arguments only disturb the mind. The only thing necessary is to train the intellect, what is the use of disturbing it for nothing? The intellect is but a weak instrument, and can give us only knowledge limited by the senses. The Yogi wants to go beyond the senses, therefore intellect is of no use to him. He is certain of this and, therefore, is silent, and does not argue. Every argument throws his mind out of balance, creates a disturbance in the Chitta, and a disturbance is a drawback. Argumentations and searchings of the reason are only by the way. There are much higher things beyond them. The whole of life is not for schoolboy fights and debating societies. "Surrendering the fruits of work to God" is to take to ourselves neither credit nor blame, but to give up both to the Lord and be at peace.
- -
--
It is the same with the Samskaras, the fine roots of all our works; they are the causes which will again bring effects, either in this life, or in the lives to come. In exceptional cases when these Samskaras are very strong, they bear fruit quickly; exceptional acts of wickedness, or of goodness, bring their fruits even in this life. The Yogis hold that men who are able to acquire a tremendous power of good Samskaras do not have to die, but, even in this life, can change their bodies into god-bodies. There are several such cases mentioned by the Yogis in their books. These men change the very material of their bodies; they re-arrange the molecules in such fashion that they have no more sickness, and what we call death does not come to them. Why should not this be? The physiological meaning of food is assimilation of energy from the sun. The energy has reached the plant, the plant is eaten by an animal, and the animal by man. The science of it is that we take so much energy from the sun, and make it part of ourselves. That being the case, why should there be only one way of assimilating energy? The plant's way is not the same as ours; the earth's process of assimilating energy differs from our own. But all assimilate energy in some form or other. The Yogis say that they are able to assimilate energy by the power of the mind alone, that they can draw in as much of it as they desire without recourse to the ordinary methods. As a spider makes its web out of its own substance, and becomes bound in it, and cannot go anywhere except along the lines of that web, so we have projected out of our own substance this network called the nerves, and we cannot work except through the channels of those nerves. The Yogi says we need not be bound by that.
Similarly, we can send electricity to any part of the world, but we have to send it by means of wires. Nature can send a vast mass of electricity without any wires at all. Why cannot we do the same? We can send mental electricity. What we call mind is very much the same as electricity. It is clear that this nerve fluid has some amount of electricity, because it is polarised, and it answers all electrical directions. We can only send our electricity through these nerve channels. Why not send the mental electricity without this aid? The Yogis say it is perfectly possible and practicable, and that when you can do that, you will work all over the universe. You will be able to work with any body anywhere, without the help of the nervous system. When the soul is acting through these channels, we say a man is living, and when these cease to work, a man is said to be dead. But when a man is able to act either with or without these channels, birth and death will have no meaning for him. All the bodies in the universe are made up of Tanmtras, their difference lies in the arrangement of the latter. If you are the arranger, you can arrange a body in one way or another. Who makes up this body but you? Who eats the food? If another ate the food for you, you would not live long. Who makes the blood out of food? You, certainly. Who purifies the blood, and sends it through the veins? You. We are the masters of the body, and we live in it. Only we have lost the knowledge of how to rejuvenate it. We have become automatic, degenerate. We have forgotten the process of arranging its molecules. So, what we do automatically has to be done knowingly. We are the masters and we have to regulate that arrangement; and as soon as we can do that, we shall be able to rejuvenate just as we like, and then we shall have neither birth nor disease nor death.
--
According to Yoga philosophy, it is through ignorance that the soul has been joined with nature. The aim is to get rid of nature's control over us. That is the goal of all religions. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy by one or more or all of these and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details. The Yogi tries to reach this goal through psychic control. Until we can free ourselves from nature, we are slaves; as she dictates so we must go. The Yogi claims that he who controls mind controls matter also. The internal nature is much higher than the external and much more difficult to grapple with, much more difficult to control. Therefore he who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his servant. Raja-Yoga propounds the methods of gaining this control. Forces higher than we know in physical nature will have to be subdued. This body is just the external crust of the mind. They are not two different things; they are just as the oyster and its shell. They are but two aspects of one thing; the internal substance of the oyster takes up matter from outside, and manufactures the shell. In the same way the internal fine forces which are called mind take up gross matter from outside, and from that manufacture this external shell, the body. If, then, we have control of the internal, it is very easy to have control of the external. Then again, these forces are not different. It is not that some forces are physical, and some mental; the physical forces are but the gross manifestations of the fine forces, just as the physical world is but the gross manifestation of the fine world.
26. The means of destruction of ignorance is unbroken practice of discrimination.
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Some of the Brahmo ladies sat on chairs, with music books in their hands. The songs of the Brahmo Samaj were sung to the accompaniment of harmonium and piano. Sri Ramakrishna's joy was unbounded. The invocation was followed by a prayer, and then the worship began. The acharyas, seated on the platform, recited from the Vedas: Om. Thou art our Father. Give us right knowledge; do not destroy us! We bow to Thee.
The Brahmo devotees chanted in chorus with the acharyas: Om. Brahman is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity.
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The history of the Veda is one of the most remarkable & paradoxical phenomena of human experience. In the belief of the ancient Indians the three Vedas, books believed to be inspired directly from the source of all Truth, books at any rate of an incalculable antiquity and of a time-honoured sanctity, were believed to be the repositories of a divine knowledge. The man who was a Veda knower, Vedavid, had access to the deepest knowledge about God and existence. He knew the one thing that was eternally true, the one thing thoroughly worth knowing. The right possession of the ancient hymns was not supposed to be possible by a superficial reading, not supposed to result directly even from a mastery of the scholastic aids to a right understanding,grammar, language, prosody, astronomy, ritual, pronunciation,but depended finally and essentially on explanation by a fit spiritual teacher who understood the inner sense that was couched in the linguistic forms & figures of the Scriptures. The Veda so understood was held to be the fountain, the bedrock, the master-volume of all true Hinduism; that which accepted not the Veda, was and must be instantly departure from the right path, the true truth. Even when the material & ritualistic sense of the Veda had so much dominated & hidden in mens ideas of it its higher parts that to go beyond it seemed imperative, the reverence for this ancient Scripture remained intact. At the time when the Gita in its modern form was composed, we find this double attitude dominant. There is a strong censure of the formalists, the ritualists, who constantly dispute about the Veda and hold it as a creed that there is no other truth and who apply it only for the acquisition of worldly mastery and enjoyments, but at the same time the great store of spiritual truth in the old sacred writings and their high value are never doubted or depreciated. There is in all the Vedas as much utility to the Brahma-knower as to one who would drink there is utility in a well flooded with water on all its sides. Krishna speaking as God Himself declares I alone am He who is to be known by all the Vedas; I am He who made Vedanta and who know the Veda. The sanctity and spiritual value of the Vedas could not receive a more solemn seal of confirmation. It is evident also from this last passage that the more modern distinction which grew upon the Hindu mind with the fading of Vedic knowledge, the distinction by which the old Rigveda and Sama and Yajur are put aside as ritualistic writings, possessing a value only for ceremonial of sacrifice, and all search for spiritual knowledge is confined to the Vedanta, was unrecognised & even unknown to the writer of the Gita. To him the Vedas are writings full of spiritual truth; the language of the line Vedaish cha sarvair aham eva vedyo, the significance of the double emphasis in the etymological sense of knowledge in Vedavid, the knower of the book of knowledge as well as in vedair vedyo are unmistakable. Other means of knowledge even more powerful than study of the Vedas the Gita recognises; but in its epoch the Veda even as apart from the Upanishads still held its place of honour as the repository of the high and divine knowledge; it still bore upon it the triple seal of the Brahmavidya.
When was this traditional honour first lost or at least tarnished and the ancient Scripture relegated to the inferior position it occupies in the thought of Shankaracharya? I presume there can be little doubt that the chief agent in this work of destruction was the power of Buddhism. The preachings of Gautama and his followers worked against Vedic knowledge by a double process. First, by entirely denying the authority of the Veda, laying a violent stress on its ritualistic character and destroying the general practice of formal sacrifice, it brought the study of the Veda into disrepute as a means of attaining the highest good while at the same time it destroyed the necessity of that study for ritualistic purposes which had hitherto kept alive the old Vedic studies; secondly, in a less direct fashion, by substituting for a time at least the vernacular tongues for the old simple Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, a Scripture of ritual and of animal sacrifice, persisted in the popular mind even after the decline of Buddhism and the revival of great philosophies ostensibly based on Vedic authority. It was under the dominance of this ritualistic conception that Sayana wrote his great commentary which has ever since been to the Indian Pundit the one decisive authority on the sense of Veda. The four Vedas have definitely taken a subordinate place as karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier Scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda.
But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefa thers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, the anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.
1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, gun.as, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality
The Three Modes of Nature
1.10 - THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of whole cultures; it is true of books,--it is also true of places
and of landscapes. Truth to tell, the number of ancient books that
count for something in my life is but small; and the most famous are
--
between books, crawled into this world of mysterious states, succeeded
inconvincing himself that he was scientific, whereas he was simply
1.11 - Correspondence and Interviews, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
All the communications were, however, mostly made orally and did not interfere with Sri Aurobindo's personal work. But gradually correspondence of another sort began to demand his attention. I mean writings on various aspects of his work, either by sadhaks, visitors or outsiders, were sent to him for approval, comment or suggestion, such as Prof. Sisir Maitra's series of articles, Prof. Haridas Chowdhury's thesis on his philosophy, Prof. Sisir Mitra's book on history, books by Prof. Langley, Morwenna Donnelly, Prof. Monod-Herzen, Dr. Srinivas Iyengar, and Lizelle Raymond on Sister Nivedita, to mention a few. In the last three books Sri Aurobindo made extensive additions and changes. Even casual articles from young students were read and received encouragement from him. Arabinda Basu was one of these writers. Poems written by sadhaks, for instance, Dilip, Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna), Nishikanto, Pujalal and Tehmi, or a Goan poet, Prof. Menezies, were also read out. Then came the journals, The Advent and Mother India, the latter particularly, being a semi-political fortnightly, needed his sanction before the matter could be published. Most of the editorial articles of Mother India written by Amal Kiran were found impeccable. But on a few occasions small but significant changes were telegraphically made. Sri Aurobindo's famous message on Korea with its prediction of Stalinist communism's designs on South East Asia and India through Tibet, was originally sent in private to Amal Kiran for his guidance. One of the editorials was based on it. Sri Aurobindo declared privately that Mother India was his paper. When the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education was launched, the Mother wanted to initiate it with an article from Sri Aurobindo. Some days passed. She asked him if he had started writing it. He answered with a smile, "No." After a few days, she reminded him of the urgency. Then he began dictating on the value of sports and physical gymnastics. Quite a series commenced and the most memorable of the lot was the article "The Divine Body". It was a long piece and took more than a week, since we daily had just about an hour to spare. As he was dictating, I marvelled at so much knowledge of Ancient Greece and Ancient India stored up somewhere in his superconscious memory and now pouring down at his command in a smooth flow. No notes were consulted, no books were needed, yet after a lapse of so many decades everything was fresh, spontaneous and recalled in vivid detail! This article, like his others, was then read out to the Mother in front of Sri Aurobindo. She exclaimed, "Magnificent!" Sri Aurobindo simply smiled. All of them have appeared in book-form called The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.
About some of the articles by others which were being read out to him, he asked, "Have you not read them before?" "No!" I replied. He repeated, "Are you sure?" "How could I? I received them only yesterday," I answered. "Very strange!" he added, "They seem so familiar, as if I had heard them already." He appeared much intrigued by this phenomenon and I wonder if he found an explanation of the mystery. Some articles by a former sadhak were filled with so many quotations from Sri Aurobindo's writings that I muttered my protest, "There is hardly anything here except quotations." He smiled and answered, "It doesn't matter." Once he asked me about a long abstruse article, "Probability in Micro-Physics", written by Amal. It was read out to Sri Aurobindo shortly before he passed away. He asked me, "Do you understand anything of it?" I said, "No!" He smiled and said, "Neither do I." Readings and dictated correspondence, as I have stated before, began to swell in volume and absorbed much of his limited time. Consequently the revision of Savitri suffered and had to be, shelved again and again till one day he declared, "My main work is being neglected."
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"I loved to hear the reading of sacred books such as the Ramayana and Bhagavata. If the readers had any affectations, I could easily imitate them and would entertain others with my mimicry.
"I understood the behaviour of women very well and imitated their words and intonations. I could easily recognize immoral women. Immoral widows part their hair in the middle and perform their toilet with great care. They have very little modesty. The way they sit is so different! But let's not talk of worldly things any more."
--
"There are two schools of thought: the Vednta and the Purana. According to the Vednta this world is a 'framework of illusion', that is to say, it is all illusory, like a dream. But according to the Purana, the books of devotion, God Himself has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. Worship God both within and without.
"As long as God keeps the awareness of 'I' in us, so long do sense-objects exist; and we cannot very well speak of the world as a dream. There is fire in the hearth; therefore the rice and pulse and potatoes and the other vegetables jump about in the pot. They jump about as if to say: 'We are here! We are jumping!' This body is the pot. The mind and intelligence are the water. The objects of the senses are the rice, potatoes, and other vegetables. The 'I-consciousness' identified with the senses says, 'I am jumping about.' And Satchidananda is the fire.
1.11 - Woolly Pomposities of the Pious Teacher, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Well, then! You realize, of course, how many millions or billions of memories there must be to compose any average well-trained mind. Those strings of adjectives all sprang spontaneously; I did not look them up in books of reference; so imagine the extent of my full vocabulary! And words are but the half-baked bricks with which one constructs. Millions, yes: billions probably: but there is a limit.
See to it, then, that you accept no worthless material; that you select, and select again, always in proper order and proportion; organize, structuralize your thought, always with the one aim in view of accomplishing the Great Work.
1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The work on Savitri proceeded as usual, but slowed down in pace, especially when we came to a mighty confrontation with the two big Cantos of The Book of Fate. Revision after revision, addition of lines, even punctuations changed so many times! It seemed like a veritable "God's labour" against a rock of resistance. At his time the Press sent up a demand for a new book from him. The Future Poetry was given preference and some passages which were meant to be dovetailed into the text of the chapters were written. But since he wanted to write something on modern poetry and for his works of modern poets were needed, orders were sent to Madras for them while whatever few books were available from our small library were requisitioned. As I read them out, he said, "Mark that passage," or "These lines have a striking image" (once the lines referred to were, I think, from C. Day Lewis' Magnetic Mountain).He himself read out a poem of Eliot's to me I don't remember exactly which, and remarked, "This is fine poetry." In this way we proceeded. Since we had to wait for the arrival of the books, he said, "Let us go back to Savitri." His whole attention seemed to be focussed on Savitri, but again, the work had to be suspended owing to the pressure of various extraneous demands. They swelled up to such an extent that he was obliged to remark, "I find no more time for my real work." When the path was fairly clear and I was wondering what his next choice would be, he said in a distant voice, "Take up Savitri. I want to finish it soon." This must have been about two months before his departure. The last part of the utterance startled me, though it was said in a subdued tone. I wondered for a moment if I had heard rightly. I looked at him; my bewildered glance met an impassive face. In these twelve years this was the first time I had heard him reckoning with the time factor. An Avatar of poise, patience and equanimity, this was the picture that shone before our eyes whenever we had thought or spoken about him. Hence my wonder. We took up the same two Cantos that had proved so intractable. The work progressed slowly; words, ideas, images seemed to be repeated; the verses themselves appeared to flow with reluctance. Once a punctuation had to be changed four or five times. When the last revision was made and the Cantos were wound up, I said, "It is finished now." An impersonal smile of satisfaction greeted me, and he said, "Ah, it is finished?" How well I remember that flicker of a smile which all of us craved for so long! "What is left now?" was his next query. "The Book of Death and The Epilogue." "Oh, that? We shall see about that later on." That "later on" never came and was not meant to come. Having taken the decision to leave the body, he must have been waiting for the right moment to go, and for reasons known to himself he left the two last-mentioned books almost as they were. Thus on Savitri was put the seal of incomplete completion about two weeks before the Darshan of November 24th. Other literary works too came to an end.
And significantly The Book of Fate was the last Book to be revised. What I deemed to be minor flaws or unnecessary repetitions, and thought that a further revision would remove them, appeared, after his passing, to be deliberate and prophetic:
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
NAVADVIP: "He studies the scriptures at home. Previously one hardly saw a copy of the Vedas in this country. Max Muller has translated them; so people can now read these books."
Essence of the scriptures
MASTER: "Too much study of the scriptures does more harm than good. The important thing is to know the essence of the scriptures. After that, what is the need of books?
One should learn the essence and then dive deep in order to realize God.
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, this cannot be the meaning of the Gita, for it would be in contradiction with all the rest of the book. Even in the passage itself, without the illumining interpretation afterwards given to it in the fourth chapter, we have already an indication of a wider sense where it is said that sacrifice is born from work, work from brahman, brahman from the Akshara, and therefore the all-pervading Brahman, sarvagatam brahma, is established in the sacrifice. The connecting logic of the "therefore" and the repetition of the word brahma are significant; for it shows clearly that the brahman from which all work is born has to be understood with an eye not so much to the current Vedic teaching in which it means the Veda as to a symbolical sense in which the creative Word is identical with the all-pervading Brahman, the Eternal, the one Self present in all existences, sarvabhutes.u, and present in all the workings of existence. The Veda is the knowledge of the Divine, the Eternal, - "I am He who is to be known in all the books of the Knowledge," vedais ca vedyah.,
Krishna will say in a subsequent chapter; but it is the knowledge of him in the workings of Prakriti, in the workings of the three
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We have been so thoroughly mechanized, exteriorized, projected outside ourselves by our habit of depending on one mechanical device or another that our very first reflex is always to look for the external means, that is, an artifice, for all external means are artificial, part of the old falsehood. We will therefore be tempted to spread the idea, the Enterprise, through all the existing publicity channels, in short, to attract as many supporters of the new hope as possible which will quickly become a new religion. Here it may be appropriate to quote Sri Aurobindo and to drive home positively and forcefully his categorical statement: I don't believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their chest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy or silence. It is what has happened to the religions and is the reason of their failure.31 True, ultimately all men, the entire earth belong to supermanhood, but the ABC's of the new consciousness, its governing principle, is diversity in Unity and to try to confine the superman in advance to a ready-made setting, a privileged environment, an allegedly unique and more enlightened location is to fall back into the old farce and once again inflate the old human ego. To be sure, the law of Harmony will work in thousands of ways and in thousands of disguises, ultimately gathering the myriad notes of its great indivisible flow into a vaster space without boundaries. The Enterprise will be born everywhere at once it is already born, whispering here and there, blindly banging against walls and will gradually unveil its true face only when men are no longer able to trap it in a system, logic or shrine when everything here below is a shrine, in every heart and every country. And men shall not even know how they were prepared for such a Marvel.
Those who know a little, who feel, who have begun to perceive the great Wave of Truth, will therefore not fall into the trap of superman recruiting. The earth is unequally prepared; men are spiritually unequal despite all our democratic protests to the contrary though they are essentially equal and vast in the great Self, and only one body with millions of faces they have not all become the greatness that they are. They are on the way, and some dawdle while others seem to travel more swiftly, but the detours of the former are also part of the great geography of our indivisible domain, their delay or the brake they seem to apply to our motion is part of the fullness of perfection that we seek and which compels us to a greater meticulousness of truth. They too are going there, by their own way and what is outside the way, in the end, since everything is the Way? He who knows a little, who feels, knows first and foremost, from having experienced it in his own flesh, that men are never truly brought together by artifices and when they persist in their artifice, everything finally collapses and the meeting is brief; the beautiful school, the lovely sect, the little iridescent bubble of a moment's enthusiasm or faith is short-lived they are brought together through a finer and more discreet law, a tiny little searchlight across time and space, and touches a similar ray here and there, a twin frequency, a light source with the same intensity and he goes. He goes haphazardly, takes a train, a plane, travels to this country and that one, believes he is searching for this or that, that he is in quest of adventure, the exotic, drugs or philosophy he believes. He believes a lot of things. He thinks he has to have this power or that solution, this panacea or that revolution, this slogan or that one. He thinks he set out because of that thirst or revolt, that unhappy love affair or need for action, this hope or that old insoluble discord in his heart. But then, there is none of that! One day he stops, without knowing why, without planning to be there, without having looked for that place or that face, that insignificant village under the stars of one hemisphere or the other and there it is. He has arrived. He has opened his one door, found his kindred fire, that look forever known; and he is exactly at the right place, at the right time, to do the right work. The world is a fabulous clockwork, if only we knew the secret of those little fires glowing in another space, dancing on a great inner sea where our skiffs sail as if guided by an invisible beacon.
--
The child of that City will be born with a flame, consciously, voluntarily, without having to undo millennia of animality or abysses of prejudice. He will not be told incessantly that he has to earn a living, for nobody will earn a living in the City of the Future, nobody will have money. Living will be devoted to serving the Truth, each according to his capacity or talent, and the only earnings will be joy. He will not be deluged with musts and must-nots; he will only be shown the immediate sadness of not listening to the right little note. He will not be tormented with the idea of finding a job, being a success, outranking others, passing or failing grades, for nobody succeeds or fails in the City of the Future, nobody has a job, nobody takes precedence over anybody; one does the one job of pursuing a clear little note that lights up everything, does everything for one, takes care of everything for one, unites everything in its tranquil harmony, and whose only success is to be in accord with itself and with the whole. He will not learn to depend on a teacher, a book or a machine, but to rely on that little flame inside, that sprightly little flowing that guides his steps, prompts a discovery, leads by chance to an experience and brings out knowledge effortlessly. And he will learn to cultivate the powers of his body the way others today cultivate the powers of push buttons. His faculties will not be confined in ready-made forms of vision and comprehension; in him will be fostered a vision that has nothing to do with the eyes, a comprehension that is not from books, dreams of other worlds that prepare tomorrow's, direct communications and instant intuitions and subtle senses. And if machines are still used in the City of the Future, he will be told that they are temporary crutches until we find in our own heart the source of the pure Power which will one day transmute matter as we now transmute a blank sheet of paper into a green prairie with the stroke of a pencil. He will be taught the Look, the true and potent look, the look that creates, that changes everything he will be taught to use his own powers and to believe in his power of truth, and that the purer and clearer he is, in harmony with the Law, the more matter responds to Truth. And, instead of entering a prison, the child will grow up in an atmosphere of natural oneness, free of you, me, yours or mine, where he will not have been taught constantly to put up screens and mental barriers, but to be consciously what he unconsciously has been since the beginning of time: to extend himself into all that is and lives, to feel in all that feels, to comprehend through an identical more profound breathing, through a silence that carries everything, to recognize the same little flame everywhere, to love the same clear little flowing everywhere, and to be the self everywhere, behind a thousand different faces and in a thousand musics that are a single music.
Then there will be no more boundaries inside or outside, no more I want, I take, no more lack or absence, no more confined and lonely self, no more against or for, good or evil. There will be one single supreme Harmony in thousands of bodies, plucking its chord in this one and that one, this circumstance and that accident, this gesture and that one, unifying everything in one single movement whose every second is perfect and every act true, every word exact, every thought right, every line rhythmical, every heart in unison and Truth will mold matter according to its right vision. And this little city without boundaries will radiate by its simple power of truth, attracting what must be attracted, discarding what must be discarded, simply by its own force of concentration, touching this point of the universe or that one, this soul or that one, answering thousands of invisible calls, continuously emitting its high, clear note which will brighten the world and lighten hearts, unbeknownst to all.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world; but in the doctrines of religion they are of a baser nature. Now, this is the greatest evil that the division of the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish, partial orthodoxy, which consists in courageously defending all that it has, and condemning all that it has not. And thus every champion is trained up in defense of their own truth, their own learning and their own church, and he has the most merit, the most honour, who likes everything, defends everything, among themselves, and leaves nothing uncensored in those that are of a different communion. Now, how can truth and goodness and union and religion be more struck at than by such defenders of it? If you ask why the great Bishop of Meaux wrote so many learned books against all parts of the Reformation, it is because he was born in France and bred up in the bosom of Mother Church. Had he been born in England, had Oxford or Cambridge been his Alma Mater, he might have rivalled our great Bishop Stillingfleet, and would have wrote as many learned folios against the Church of Rome as he has done. And yet I will venture to say that if each Church could produce but one man apiece that had the piety of an apostle and the impartial love of the first Christians in the first Church at Jerusalem, that a Protestant and a Papist of this stamp would not want half a sheet of paper to hold their articles of union, nor be half an hour before they were of one religion. If, therefore, it should be said that churches are divided, estranged and made unfriendly to one another by a learning, a logic, a history, a criticism in the hands of partiality, it would be saying that which each particular church too much proves to be true. Ask why even the best amongst the Catholics are very shy of owning the validity of the orders of our Church; it is because they are afraid of removing any odium from the Reformation. Ask why no Protestants anywhere touch upon the benefit or necessity of celibacy in those who are separated from worldly business to preach the gospel; it is because that would be seeming to lessen the Roman error of not suffering marriage in her clergy. Ask why even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, the necessity of seeking only the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; it is because the Quakers, who have broke off from the church, have made this doctrine their corner-stone. If we loved truth as such, if we sought for it for its own sake, if we loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we desired nothing by our religion but to be acceptable to God, if we equally desired the salvation of all men, if we were afraid of error only because of its harmful nature to us and our fellow-creatures, then nothing of this spirit could have any place in us.
There is therefore a catholic spirit, a communion of saints in the love of God and all goodness, which no one can learn from that which is called orthodoxy in particular churches, but is only to be had by a total dying to all worldly views, by a pure love of God, and by such an unction from above as delivers the mind from all selfishness and makes it love truth and goodness with an equality of affection in every man, whether he is Christian, Jew or Gentile. He that would obtain this divine and catholic spirit in this disordered, divided state of things, and live in a divided part of the church without partaking of its division, must have these three truths deeply fixed in his mind. First, that universal love, which gives the whole strength of the heart to God, and makes us love every man as we love ourselves, is the noblest, the most divine, the Godlike state of the soul, and is the utmost perfection to which the most perfect religion can raise us; and that no religion does any man any good but so far as it brings this perfection of love into him. This truth will show us that true orthodoxy can nowhere be found but in a pure disinterested love of God and our neighbour. Second, that in this present divided state of the church, truth itself is torn and divided asunder; and that, therefore, he can be the only true catholic who has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any divided part. This truth will enable us to live in a divided part unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in any other part of the church. Thirdly, he must always have in mind this great truth, that it is the glory of the Divine Justice to have no respect of parties or persons, but to stand equally disposed to that which is right and wrong as well in the Jew as in the Gentile. He therefore that would like as God likes, and condemn as God condemns, must have neither the eyes of the Papist nor the Protestant; he must like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very zealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error, because Dr. Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth.
--
Such was the conclusion to which the most celebrated of Indian converts was forced after some years of association with his fellow Christians. There are many honourable exceptions, of course; but the rule even among learned Protestants and Catholics is a certain blandly bumptious provincialism which, if it did not constitute such a grave offence against charity and truth, would be just uproariously funny. A hundred years ago, hardly anything was known of Sanskrit, Pali or Chinese. The ignorance of European scholars was sufficient reason for their provincialism. Today, when more or less adequate translations are available in plenty, there is not only no reason for it, there is no excuse. And yet most European and American authors of books about religion and metaphysics write as though nobody had ever thought about these subjects, except the Jews, the Greeks and the Christians of the Mediterranean basin and western Europe. This display of what, in the twentieth century, is an entirely voluntary and deliberate ignorance is not only absurd and discreditable; it is also socially dangerous. Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is a menace to permanent world peace. The reign of violence will never come to an end until, first, most human beings accept the same, true philosophy of life; until, second, this Perennial Philosophy is recognized as the highest factor common to all the world religions; until, third, the adherents of every religion renounce the idolatrous time-philosophies, with which, in their own particular faith, the Perennial Philosophy of eternity has been overlaid; until, fourth, there is a world-wide rejection of all the political pseudo-religions, which place mans supreme good in future time and therefore justify and commend the commission of every sort of present iniquity as a means to that end. If these conditions are not fulfilled, no amount of political planning, no economic blue-prints however ingeniously drawn, can prevent the recrudescence of war and revolution.
next chapter: 1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In what does salvation consist? Not in any historic faith or knowledge of anything absent or distant, not in any variety of restraints, rules and methods of practising virtue, not in any formality of opinion about faith and works, repentance, forgiveness of sins, or justification and sanctification, not in any truth or righteousness that you can have from yourself, from the best of men and books, but solely and wholly from the life of God, or Christ of God, quickened and born again in you, in other words in the restoration and perfect union of the first twofold life in humanity.
William Law
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"You must do 'this' as well as 'that'. Do your duties in the world, and also fix your mind on the Lotus Feet of the Lord. Read books of devotion like the Bhagavata or the life of Chaitanya when you are alone and have nothing else to do."
It was about ten o'clock. Sri Ramakrishna finished a light supper of farina pudding and one or two luchis. After saluting him, M. and his friend took their leave.
1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
. The Confessions: books I-X. Translated by F. J. Sheed. Lon-
don, 1951. (Original: Confessiones. See Migne, P.L., vol. 32, cols.
--
(Sacred books of the East, 5.) Oxford, 1880.
278
--
Shatapatha Brahmana. Translated by Julius Eggeling. (Sacred books
of the East, 12, 26, 41, 43, 44.) Oxford, 1882-1900. 5 vols.
--
239-526. For translation, see: The Five books of Tertullianus
against Marcion. Translated by Peter Holmes. (Ante-Nicene
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Balarm's father): "Don't read books any more. But you may read books on devotion, such as the life of Chaitanya.
"The whole thing is to love God and taste His sweetness. He is sweetness and the devotee is its enjoyer. The devotee drinks the sweet Bliss of God. Further, God is the lotus and the devotee the bee. The devotee sips the honey of the lotus.
--
"It is written in the books of the Vaishnavas: 'God can be attained through faith alone; reasoning pushes Him far away.' Faith alone!
"What faith Krishnakishore had! At Vrindvan a low-caste man drew water for him from a well. Krishnakishore said to him, 'Repeat the name of iva.' After the man had repeated the name of iva, Krishnakishore unhesitatingly drank the water. He used to say, 'If a man chants the name of God, does he need to spend money any more for the atonement of his sins? How foolish!' He was amazed to see people worshipping God with the sacred tulsi-leaf in order to get rid of their illnesses. At the bathing-ghat here he said to us, 'Please bless me, that I may pass my days repeating Rma's holy name.'
1.14 - Noise, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
They boast of the freedom of religious thought; yet only the narrowest sectarian propaganda is allowed to approach the microphone. I quite expect censorship of books that of the newspapers, however vehemently denied, is actually effective and even of private letters. This will mean an enormous increase in parasitic functionaries who can be trusted to vote for the rascals that invented their sinecures. That was, in fact, the poison ivy that strangled the French poplar!
But these soul-suffocationg scoundrels know well their danger. There are still a few people about who have learnt to think; and they are palsied with terror lest, as might happen at any moment these people realized the peril, organized, and made a clean sweep of the whole brood of scolex!
1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
In entries relating to the books of the Bible, the numbers in parentheses
indicate the chapter and verse(s) referred to.
--
of individual books
olive, 200
1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
It would go too far to tell the reader all about life in the astral world. Many books could be written on this subject. I will, nevertheless, give a few hints of interest to the magician. The magician will have experienced during his mental and astral wanderings, when his mental and astral body was split off, that in the astral sphere the ideas of time and space do not exist for him, so that in one single moment he is able to travel any distance and on his way there are no material hindrances which he would not be able to penetrate with his mental and astral body. Every human being will have the same experience after his physical death. The initiate, however, has the advantage of getting acquainted with this fact during his lifetime, and that already in this material world he is liberated of one sorrow: the fear of death. He knows well in which astral sphere he will live after his death, and for him the putting away of his physical body is only a transition from the physical world into a more subtle one, similar to changing his place of re~idence.
The magician will experience yet another thing here on earth: all interests that are normal with an average, that is an undeveloped, non-initiated person in this physical world, will cease in the astral plane. Therefore it is not at all surprising that a genuine magician, who is equally familiar with the conditions here and there, that is in the physical and the astral world, loses his interests in this physical world, as far as he does not regard it as the means for his personal development. He will already learn here on earth that fame, honour, riches and all other earthly advantages cannot be taken from here to the astral world and are therefore useless. A true magician will therefore never cry for mortal things. His interest will constantly be directed to using the time which he has at his disposal in this physical sphere to the best of his abilities for his personal development.
--
If a magician calls a being whose shape he does not know into the earth-zone or into our physical world from another zone, then such a being, provided it wants to take on a visible shape at all, must take on the shape appropriate to its qualities in order to get into contact with the magician. A common demon, however, is not able to do this, for a demon lacking the necessary maturity is not capable of condensing itself from out of its sphere into the earth-zone or our physical world. Therefore most books on magic conjurations do not even mention simple demons, but talk only of demons with a certain rank and title. But even these are never dealt with in detail.
In this connection, one may raise the question of whether a being living in another zone would be able to call an initiate, a person of spiritual rank, into its zone. Such a question has to be denied from the hermetic point of view, for a human being, and especially an initiate, is a God-like creature symbolising in miniature, the macrocosm and representing the complete authority in the microcosm and macrocosm. A magician can therefore never be forced to do anything by any being, whatever degree of perfection it might have, with only one exception: Divine Providence. All heads, no matter of what rank or from which zone they come, and no matter whether good or evil, are only partial aspects of the macrocosm, of God. Without permission of Divine
1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
If a necromancer or sorcerer has a relatively high power of imagination and is able partially to raise up his consciousness, it may happen that, by using magic though barbarous names, he succeeds in having one of his evocations translated into the language of the being and the being he is evoking hears his voice. The next question to arise is whether the being reacts to the evocation and intends to do what the sorcerer wants him to do. For the being at once realizes whether the sorcerer is mature enough and developed enough to be able to exercise coercion or whether it can go easily in opposition. If a positive, good being is involved, it will pity the sorcerer. If the sorcerer has evoked an indifferent and less active being and if the sorcerer's desire, if it were realised, would not harm him, it might, now and then, give a token of sympathy and do what the sorcerer wants done. But if the sorcerer desires anything that might harm him or any other person without being able to take the full responsibility for this, then the being will not react to the sorcerer's evocation. All means of coercion mentioned in various books for the sorcerer's use in order to have the beings to work for him are ineffectual and but mere phrases with only a slight or no effect at all on astral beings. Negative beings, on the other hand, prefer to react to negative and evil intentions and try to help the sorcerer in their realization. But a head of demons also knows quite well that he need not do what the sorcerer wants, if the sorcerer desires something which would debit him too much karmically or which he could not take responsibility for from the karmic point of view. In such a case not even a demon would dare to fulfill the sorcerer's wish, for this being, even though it be a negative one, depends on Divine Providence. It cannot, on its own accord, create vibrations which would cause a chaotic tate in the harmony of a sphere. Therefore it is necessary to point out again and again that a certain degree of magical development and perfection is absolutely necessary for the evocation of the beings of any sphere and in order to be able to place one's consciousness into the relevant sphere or zone and to translate one's thoughts into the metaphorical language or cosmic language so that a being understands them.
With these points in mind the magician will realize the true value of the book of charms which he has started for his personal use, and that the book actually is a language book of the cosmic language in which he will enter all the procedures of his art of magical evocation translated into symbolic picture-language. A necromancer or sorcerer working according to the worst rituals and carrying out the most barbarous invocations and evocations is by no means able to practise invocations in a systematic order, that is, to start a conversation with the being concerned, not to mention the authority he should be able to represent, for he is lacking the necessary magical maturity and perfection. A necromancer might, at the most, put himself into an ecstatic state during his operations, which is not more than a cry into the zone in question, even if his citations are most terrifying and appear to him very promising.
--
After having sealed the contract or pact the sorcerer cannot do any work for weeks or months. During this time he is taught by his head various practices and is initiated into the use of his powers. The sealing of such a pact is actually not much different from what is stated in the grimoires or magic books. There is, however, a little difference hardly known to anybody: the pact itself is not compiled by the spirit being, but is, in fact, drawn up and written by the sorcerer himself, like the book of charms. The text of the pact is written down in ordinary ink. Special ink, however, may be used for this purpose, depending on the rituals applied, but this is not so important. The contract clearly states what services have to be rendered by the being which wishes it will fulfill, which possibilities are given the sorcerer with this pact, including other conditions which must be fulfilled by the being on behalf of the sorcerer. On another page of the contract the duties are laid down which, on the one hand, the sorcerer must carry out for the being and which, on the other hand, the being orders itself to carry out. It further states in which manner the head can be called and whether it has to appear visibly or invisibly; how servants, put at the sorcerer's disposal, have to be treated, etc. The most important point is the period for which the contract is valid and that after the expiration date of the contract the sorcerer is obliged to travel to the sphere of the demon. Also the way in which the sorcerer will die in the physical world and how he will move over into the sphere of the head is fixed by contract. All points and conditioned are agreed to by both parties, and the being usually signs the contract by its own seal, using the sorcerer's hand as a medium, and the mutual agreement is countersigned. It is also quite possible that the being asks for, or insists on, the sorcerer's signing the contract with his own blood.
But contracts have been made, and are still being made, without such a condition. Usually the contract is written in duplicate; one copy remains in the sorcerer's hands, the other is for the being. It is stated in the books that the being takes both copies, but this is done rarely and only happens with a certain category of beings.
Usually the second copy is folded together by the sorcerer, and burned. This burning of the contract actually means that the ideas and points of the contract are transmitted to the relevant zone.
1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo lived in great poverty during his first years in Pondicherry. He was on the police blacklist, far away from those who could have helped him, his mail censored, his every move surveyed by British spies, who were attempting to get him extradited through all sorts of devious maneuvers, including planting compromising papers in his house and then denouncing him to the French police. 294 Once they even tried to kidnap him. Sri Aurobindo would finally be left in peace the day the French police superintendent came to search his room and discovered in his desk drawers the works of Homer. After inquiring whether these writings were "really Greek," the superintendent became so filled with awe and respect for this gentleman-yogi, who read scholarly books and spoke French, that he simply left, never to return. The newcomer could now receive whomsoever he wished and move about as he pleased. Several comrades-in-arms had followed him, waiting for their "leader" to resume the political struggle, but since "the Voice" remained silent,
Sri Aurobindo did not move. Besides, he saw that the political process was now under way; the spirit of independence had been awakened in his compatriots, and things would follow their inevitable course until India's total liberation, as he had foreseen. Now he had other things to do.
--
But he wrote in an unusual manner not one book after another, but four and even six books concurrently, on the most varied subjects,
such as The Life Divine, his fundamental "philosophical" work and spiritual vision of evolution; The Synthesis of Yoga, in which he describes the various stages and experiences of the integral yoga, and surveys all the past and present yogic disciplines; the Essays on the Gita, which expounds his philosophy of action; The Secret of the Veda, with a study of the origins of language; and The Ideal of Human Unity and The Human Cycle, which approach evolution from its sociological and psychological standpoints and examine the future possibilities of human societies. He had found
--
Exactly! When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise.308 After writing so many books for his disciples, Sri Aurobindo finally avowed that the sole purpose of books 305
306
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. had been visiting Sri Ramakrishna for the past two years. Since he had been educated along English lines, he had acquired a fondness for Western philosophy and science, and had liked to hear Keshab and other scholars lecture. Sri Ramakrishna would address him now and then as the "Englishman". Since coming to Sri Ramakrishna, M. had lost all relish for lectures and for books written by English scholars. The only thing that appealed to him now was to see the Master day and night, and hear the words that fell from his blessed lips. M. constantly dwelt on certain of Sri Ramakrishna's sayings. The Master had said, "One can certainly see God through the practice of spiritual discipline", and again, "The vision of God is the only goal of human life."
MASTER (to M.): "If you practise only a little, someone will come forward to tell you the right path. Observe the ekadasi.
--
MASTER: "That is very good. But the characteristic of a man of Perfect Knowledge is that he doesn't keep a single book with him. He carries all his Knowledge on the tip of his tongue. There's the instance of Sukadeva. books-I mean the scriptures-contain a mixture of sand and sugar. The sdhu takes the sugar, leaving aside the sand. He takes only the essence."
Vaishnavcharan, the musician, arrived and sang a few devotional songs.
--
MUKHERJI: "It is good to read sacred books like the Git."
MASTER: "But what will you gain by mere reading? Some have heard of milk, some have seen it, and there are some, besides, who have drunk it. God can indeed be seen; what is more, one can talk to Him.
1.17 - God, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Since the remotest times, Mankind has always believed in something beyond human understanding, something transcendental that he idolized no matter whether there was question of personified or unpersonified conceptions of God. Anything man was unable to understand or to comprehend was imputed to the powers above such as his intuitive virtue admitted them. In this way, all the deities of mankind, good and evil ones (demons) have been born. As time went on, gods, angels, demiurges, demons and ghosts have been worshiped irrespective of their ever having been alive in reality or their having existed only in fancy. With the development of mankind, the idea of God was shrinking especially at the time when, with the aid of the sciences, phenomena were explained that previously were ascribed to the gods. A lot of books would have to be written if one wished to enter into details of the various ideas of God in the history of the nations.
Let us approach the idea of God from a magicians standpoint. To the plain man the idea of God serves as a support for his spirit just not to entangle himself in uncertainty or get out of his depth. Therefore his God always remains something inconceivable, intangible, and incomprehensible to him. It is quite otherwise with the magician who knows his God in all aspects. He holds his God in awe as he knows himself to have been created in its image, consequently to be a part of God. He sees his lofty ideal, his first duty and his sacred objective in the union with the Godhead, in becoming the God-man. The rise to this sublime goal shall be described later on. The synthesis of this mystic union with God consists in developing the divine ideas, from the lowest up to the highest steps, in such a degree as to attain the union with the universal.
1.17 - The Spiritus Familiaris or Serving Spirits, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Most grimoires and other books dealing with the magic of evocation often talk of serving spirits, the so-called spiritus familiaris.
According to these books serving spirits are put at the magician's personal disposal by high beings, especially by the principals of demQns with the idea that the magician need not bother personally with the principals of demons, that is their masters, on each occasion and for every trivial matter. The books further state that such serving spirits usually are delivered to the magician, or, as is more likely, to the sorcerer by that head or principal of demons with whom he has concluded a contract. By means of an ankhur the serving spirit is provided by its head with the same kind of force, power and faculties etc. that the head possesses. The magician does not care by whom the effect he wants is caused; whether it is by the head himself or by any of the spirits serving him. One thing, however, is important: the Karmic responsibility always lies with the magician, or with the sorcerer. As already mentioned in the chapter dealing with the various kinds of con114 tracts, the magician must, after the contract has expired in the physical world, follow the principal of demons into his sphere and there pay back in full measure for the work done by it. This repayment, of course, is not a material repayment, but a spiritual one.
From the hermetic point of view, the serving spirit must not be taken for the so-called family spirits of the primitive peoples of antiquity. These family spirits were, in most cases, the deceased of a tribe, its ancestors and pre-ancestors, heroes etc. with whom a type of necromancy was practised similar to a more primitive kind of fetish-worsphip by keeping up a permanent contact with these deceased. This kind of necromancy may be compared with the spiritism of our own days. Since every initiate knows about the practices, cult operation etc. necessary for getting into contact with an ancestor, with a family spirit, I will desist from writing again about this matter. Not only had each family their family or house ghost; there were also numerous tribes having their own genius, as is known from history. The true magician is able to tell the difference, from the hermetic standpoint, between an actual spiritus familiaris and a family or ancestral spirit.
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
A disciple had to discover everything for himself, within himself, in the midst of a very active life. He was left to himself. How could mental rules possibly be drawn up for a work embracing all the levels of evolution mental, vital, and psychic, all the human types and all the traditions and cultures (some disciples had been raised as Christians, others as Taoists, Moslems, Buddhists, atheists, etc.)? Each one had to find his own truth, which is never the same as the next man's truth. Some people in the Ashram believed in the virtues of asceticism in spite of all Sri Aurobindo had said about it and they lived as ascetics; others favored judo or football; others liked books and studies, while still others did not; some were involved in business,
or manufactured stainless steel, perfumes, and even tons of sugar in a modern sugar mill. There was something to satisfy every taste. Those who liked painting painted; those who liked music had every possible instrument, Indian and Western, at their disposal; those who liked teaching became teachers at the International Centre of Education,
--
Most quotations refer to the complete edition of Sri Aurobindo's works in 30 volumes (The Centenary Edition). Figures in bold indicate the volume number. Other quotations are taken from the following editions and books.
Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita (1959)
1.18 - Evocation, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
If the magician takes into his hands a book on evocation, or if he has, in his library, several books dealing with this subject, he will find a certain connection between all the instructions, and if he takes them all together he will be informed how to call a being and which formulae have to be used for that purpose etc. In none of the books, however, will he find the actual pre-conditions for a successful evocation. Therefore it is not at all surprising that nearly all attempts go wrong. From the hermetic point of view any contact with a spirit being of a certain sphere may be regarded as a sort of evocation, irrespective of the fact whether spiritistic methods, methods of necromancy or any other methods are applied for establishing such a contact. The question of whether the desired being actually appears on account of the various methods applied remains unanswered, for only the person who tries them could give a true statement about it. If sometimes such an attempt made according to the methods laid down in those books leads to a success, it is still undecided, whether the results have come out because of the method, for other practices could also have played a decisive part. For instance, in the case of spiritistic evocations, success can be brought about by some quite different factors, even if a great amount of evidences is available indicating that the success is the result of the method of evocation suggested. The subconsciousness of the oral medium may be the cause for the spiritistic success, if it is a success at all. Furthermore, the subconscious creation of phantoms, elementals, elementaries, which the operator's increased attention and power of imagination might have created during the evocation, can in such a case, not be attributed to the being but to the operator's own individuality.
This fact is hardly ever acknowledged by the person concerned.
1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"You may learn a great deal from books; but it is all futile if you have no love for God and no desire to realize Him. A mere pundit, without discrimination and renunciation, has his attention fixed on 'woman and gold'. The vulture soars very high but its eyes are fixed on the charnel-pit.
"That alone is knowledge through which one is able to know God. All else is futile. Well, what is your idea about God?"
--
Day and night he used to study the Upanishads, the Adhytma Rmyana, and similar books on Vednta. He would turn up his nose at the mention of the forms of God. Once I ate from the leaf-plates of the beggars. At this Haladhri said to me, 'How will you be able to marry your children?' I said: 'You rascal! Shall I ever have children? May your mouth that repeats words from the Git and the Vednta be blighted!' Just fancy! He declared that the world was illusory and, again, would meditate in the temple of Vishnu with turned-up nose."
In the evening Balarm and the other devotees returned to Calcutta. The Master remained in his room, absorbed in contemplation of the Divine Mother: After a while the sweet music of the evening worship in the temples was heard.
--
MASTER: "When one attains perfection one takes delight in all these relationships. In that state a devotee has not the slightest trace of lust. The holy books of the Vaishnavas speak of Chandidas and the washerwoman. Their love was entirely free from lust.
"In that state a devotee looks on himself as a woman. He does not regard himself as a man. Sanatana Goswami refused to see Mirabai because she was a woman. Mira informed him that at Vrindvan the only man was Krishna and that all others were His handmaids. 'Was it right of Sanatana to think of himself as a man?' Mira inquired."
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
How many books of that kind the sdhus used to read here!"
Mahima recited the description of Om:
--
MANILAL (smiling): "Once several men were crossing the Ganges in a boat. One of them, a pundit, was making a great display of his erudition, saying that he had studied various books-the Vedas, the Vednta, and the six systems of philosophy. He asked a fellow passenger, 'Do you know the Vednta?' 'No, revered sir.' 'The Samkhya and the Patanjala?' 'No, revered sir.' 'Have you read no philosophy whatsoever?' 'No, revered sir.' The pundit was talking in this vain way and the passenger sitting in silence, when a great storm arose and the boat was about to sink. The passenger said to the pundit, 'Sir, can you swim?' 'No', replied the pundit. The passenger said, 'I don't know the Samkhya or the Patanjala, but I can swim.' "
MASTER (smiling): "What will a man gain by knowing many scriptures? The one thing needful is to know how to cross the river of the world. God alone is real, and all else illusory.
1.19 - The Practice of Magical Evocation, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The censer now comes into the picture. The magician either places it between the circle and the triangle or directly into the triangle. The censer is either filled with burning charcoal, or has a wick and over this a little copper plate fixed. This plate is heated by the flame. The powder in the censer must in all cases correspond to the being's sphere and is to be placed on the plate. Since, in our case, we are dealing with an intelligence from Venus, ground Cinnamon-bark will suffice as incense. Only a small quantity should be used so that the room just faintly smells of cinnamon. cinnamon-tincture can also be used, and a few drops of this substance must then be poured on the copper-plate. You will get this liquid substance from any chemist, though, you may also prepare it yourself, if you wish. Just mix normal cinnamon with two thirds of spirit of wine and let it stand and draw for eight days. After this period filter it and the cinnamon tincture is ready for use. If, during magical operations, you do not intend to work with a censer, put a few drops of cinnamon tincture on a piece of blotting paper. In either case the smell of cinnamon will create a temple-atmosphere agreeable to the intelligence of Hagiel, and this atmosphere will also help with the materialization of the intelligence in our physical world. The censering of the room, however, is not at all so important as some books would have it.
It is just another aid.
1.200-1.224 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Department, Delhi: He has read Paul Bruntons Search in Secret India and The Secret Path. He lost his wife with whom he had led a happy life for eleven or twelve years. In his grief he seeks solace. He does not find solace in reading books: wants to tear them up. He does not intend to ask questions. He simply wants to sit here and derive what solace he can in the presence of Maharshi.
Maharshi, as if in a train of thoughts, spoke now and then to the following effect:
--
Dr. Popatlal Lohara, a visitor, has studied several books including Upadesa
Sara and visited several saints, sadhus and yogis, probably 1,500 as he puts their number. A sadhu in Trimbak has told him that he has still debts to pay which, if done, will enable him to have realisation. His only debt, as he conceived it, was the marriage of his son. It has since been performed and he now feels himself free from karmic indebtedness.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Again, how much a man suffers for his wife! Still he believes that there is no other relative so near. Look at the sad plight of a husband. Perhaps he earns twenty rupees a month and is the father of three children. He hasn't the means to feed them well. His roof leaks, but he hasn't the wherewithal to repair it. He cannot afford to buy new books for his son. He cannot invest his son with the sacred thread. He begs a few pennies from his different friends.
The ideal of a spiritual family
--
"What a nice state of mind Captain has developed! He looks like a rishi when he is seated to perform worship. He performs the rati with lighted camphor and recites beautiful hymns. When he rises from his seat after finishing the worship, his eyes are swollen from emotion, as if bitten by ants. Besides, he always devotes himself to the study of the sacred books, such as the Git and the Bhagavata. Once I used one or two English words before him, and that made him angry. He said, 'English-educated people are profane.' "
After a while Adhar said humbly to the Master: "Sir, you haven't been to our place for a long time. The drawing-room smells worldly and everything else appears to be steeped in darkness."
1.20 - Talismans - The Lamen - The Pantacle, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Remember, too, please, what I have pointed out elsewhere, that the greatest Masters have quite often not been Magicians at all, technically; they have used such devices as Secret Societies, Slogans and books. If you are so frivolous as to try to exclude these from our discourse, it is merely evidence that you have not understood a single word of what I have been trying to tell you these last few hundred years!
May I close with a stray example or so? Equinox III, 1, has the Neophyte's Pantacle of Frater O.I.V.V.I.O.[32] The Fontispiece of the original (4 volume) edition of Magick, the colors vilely reproduced, is a Lamen of my own Magick, or a Pantacle of the Science, I'm sure I'm not sure which![33]
1.21 - IDOLATRY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
How different is the case with the developed and more modern forms of idolatry! These have achieved not merely survival, but the highest degree of respectability. They are recommended by men of science as an up-to-date substitute for genuine religion and by many professional religious teachers are equated with the worship of God. All this may be deplorable; but it is not in the least surprising. Our education disparages the more primitive forms of idolatry; but at the same time it disparages, or at the best it ignores, the Perennial Philosophy and the practice of spirituality. In place of mumbo-jumbo at the bottom and of the immanent and transcendent Godhead at the top, it sets up, as objects of admiration, faith and worship, a pantheon of strictly human ideas and ideals. In academic circles and among those who have been subjected to higher education, there are few fetishists and few devout contemplatives; but the enthusiastic devotees of some form of political or social idolatry are as common as blackberries. Significantly enough, I have observed, when making use of university libraries, that books on spiritual religion were taken out much less frequently than was the case in public libraries, patronized in the main by men and women who had not enjoyed the advantages, or suffered under the handicaps, of prolonged academic instruction.
The many varieties of higher idolatry may be classed under three main heads: technological, political and moral. Technological idolatry is the most ingenuous and primitive of the three; for its devotees, like those of the lower idolatry, believe that their redemption and liberation depend upon material objectsin this case gadgets. Technological idolatry is the religion whose doctrines are promulgated, explicitly or by implication, in the advertisement pages of our newspapers and magazines the source, we may add parenthetically, from which millions of men, women and children in the capitalistic countries derive their working philosophy of life. In Soviet Russia too, technological idolatry was strenuously preached, becoming, during the years of that countrys industrialization, a kind of state religion. So whole-hearted is the modern faith in technological idols that (despite all the lessons of mechanized warfare) it is impossible to discover in the popular thinking of our time any trace of the ancient and profoundly realistic doctrine of hubris and inevitable nemesis. There is a very general belief that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothingcan enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology without having to pay for them by any compensating disadvantages.
1.2.1 - Mental Development and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reading good books can be of help in the early mental stagethey prepare the mind, put it in the right atmospherecan even if one is very sensitive bring some glimpses of realisation on the mental plane. Afterwards the utility diminishesyou have to find the right knowledge and experience in yourself.
***
This [inclination to meditate while reading books on spiritual life] is quite a normal movement. In reading these books you get into touch with the Force behind them and it is this that pushes you into meditation and a corresponding experience.
***
--
What happens in reading such books [as a book on zoology] is that one comes into a very external consciousness which looks outward and not inward. When the reading is over the mind runs for a time in this external groove and then one has to remain quiet and call back or get back into the inward state to which the higher thoughts naturally come. This may take a little time.
***
--
The reading of books of a light character may act as a relaxation of the mental consciousness. In the early stages it is not always possible to keep the mind to an unbroken spiritual concentration and endeavour and it takes refuge in other occupations, feeling even instinctively drawn to those of a lighter character.
***
--
The inability to read books or papers is often felt when the consciousness is getting the tendency to go inside.
***
1.21 - My Theory of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Thousands of books have been written on Astrology; nobody could possible read them all thoroughly, and he would be a great fool to try. But he may do little harm by going into them far enough to observe that hardly any half-dozen are agreed even on the foundations of their system, hardly any two upon the meaning of any given aspect, dignity, or position; there is not always agreement even upon what questions pertain to which houses.
There are a few completely quack systems, such as those which mix up the science with Toshosophical[35] hypotheses; naturally you discard these. But even of generally acceptable forms of Astrology, such as Mundane and Horary, I tend to be distrustful. I ask, for instance, why, if Taurus rules Poland and Ireland, as is no doubt the case, the crash and massacres of 1939 e.v. and later in the one did not take place in the other. All the seaports of the world naturally come under one of the three watery signs; but we do not find that an affliction of Pisces, which hits Tunis, should do harm to all the other harbours similarly ruled.
1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
God, the scripture, and the devotee are identical "Keshab conducted the prayer that evening at the bathing-ghat on the river. After the worship I said to him: 'It is God who manifests Himself, in one aspect, as the scriptures; therefore one should worship the sacred books, such as the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantras. In another aspect He has become the devotee. The heart of the devotee is God's drawing-room. One can easily find one's master in the drawing-room. Therefore, by worshipping His devotee, one worships God Himself.'
"Keshab and his followers listened to my words with great attention. It was a full-moon night. The sky was flooded with light. We were seated in the open court at the top of the stairs leading to the river. I said, 'Now let us all chant, "Bhagavata-Bhakta-Bhagavan." '
1.22 - How to Learn the Practice of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Compare and contrast what you know of the natives, from history, with what is said of the aspects (and the rest) in the books you have read.
Put together similar horoscopes; e.g. a dozen which have Sagittarius rising, another lot with Jupiter in the mid-heaven, and so on; see if you can find a similarity in their lives with what the books will have led you to expect.
Don't be afraid to criticise; on the contrary, do some research work on your own, and find cases which seem to contradict tradition.
1.2.2 - The Place of Study in Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To read many books quickly gives freedom and ease and familiarity with the language. The other method [to read a book carefully more than once] is necessary for thoroughness and accuracy in detail.
***
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Just then Mahimacharan arrived. He lived at Cossipore near Calcutta. Mahimacharan held the Master in great respect and was a frequent visitor at the temple garden. He was a man of independent means, having inherited some ancestral property. He devoted his time to religious thought and to the study of the scriptures. He was a man of some scholarship, having studied many books, both Sanskrit and English.
MASTER (to Mahima): "What is this? I see a steamship here. (All laugh.) We expect here a small boat at the most, but a real steamship has arrived. But then I know. It's the rainy season!" (Laughter.)
1.2.3 - The Power of Expression and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is obvious that poetry cannot be a substitute for sadhana; it can be an accompaniment only. If there is a feeling (of devotion, surrender etc.), it can express and confirm it; if there is an experience, it can express and streng then the force of experience. As reading of books like the Upanishads or Gita or singing of devotional songs can help, especially at one stage or another, so this can help also. Also it opens a passage between the exterior consciousness and the inner mind or vital. But if one stops at that, then nothing much is gained. Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature. If these things are neglected and only poetry and mental development and social contacts occupy all the time, then that is not sadhana. Also the poetry must be written in the true spirit, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but as a means of contact with the Divine through aspiration or of the expression of ones own inner being, as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the Western artist or littrateur. Even works or meditation cannot succeed unless they are done in the right spirit of consecration and spiritual aspiration gathering up the whole being and dominating all else. It is the lack of this gathering up of the whole life and nature and turning it towards the one aim, which is the defect in so many here, that lowers the atmosphere and stands in the way of what is being done by myself and the Mother.
***
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Some say that one should never cease to engage in hearing, reflection and one-pointedness. These are not fulfilled by reading books, but only by continued practice to keep the mind withdrawn.
The aspirant may be kritopasaka or akritopasaka. The former is fit to realise the Self, even with the slightest stimulus: only some little doubt stands in his way, it is easily removed if he hears the truth once from the Master. Immediately he gains the samadhi state. It is presumed that he had already completed sravana, reflection, etc. in previous births, they are no more necessary for him.
--
He said, "I permit him to do so. I have permitted him already. Let him do so even more. Let others follow suit. Only let them leave me alone. If because of these reports no one comes to me, I shall consider it a great service done to me. Moreover, if he cares to publish books containing scandals of me, and if he makes money by their sale, it is really good. Such books will sell even more quickly and in larger numbers than others. Look at Miss Mayo's book. Why should he not also do it? He is doing me a very good turn." Saying so, He laughed.
213
--
D.: Is not samsara a hindrance? Do not all the holy books advocate renunciation?
M.: Samsara is only in your mind. The world does not speak out, saying
--
D.: Several terms are used in the holy books - Atman, Paramatman,
Para, etc. What is the gradation in them?
--
M.: This sloka occurs in different scriptures, holy books, e.g.,
Bhagavata, Maha Bharata, etc. It also forms the motto of Chapter
--
D.: No, no, it is all theory. I have read many books. But no use. It is practically impossible to make the mind concentrate.
M.: Concentration is impossible so long as there are predispositions.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Some say that one should never cease to engage in hearing, reflection and one-pointedness. These are not fulfilled by reading books, but only by continued practice to keep the mind withdrawn.
The aspirant may be kritopasaka or akritopasaka. The former is fit to realise the Self, even with the slightest stimulus: only some little doubt stands in his way, it is easily removed if he hears the truth once from the Master. Immediately he gains the samadhi state. It is presumed that he had already completed sravana, reflection, etc. in previous births, they are no more necessary for him.
--
He said, I permit him to do so. I have permitted him already. Let him do so even more. Let others follow suit. Only let them leave me alone. If because of these reports no one comes to me, I shall consider it a great service done to me. Moreover, if he cares to publish books containing scandals of me, and if he makes money by their sale, it is really good. Such books will sell even more quickly and in larger numbers than others. Look at Miss Mayos book. Why should he not also do it? He is doing me a very good turn. Saying so, He laughed.
29th September, 1936
--
D.: Is not samsara a hindrance? Do not all the holy books advocate renunciation?
M.: Samsara is only in your mind. The world does not speak out, saying
--
D.: Several terms are used in the holy books - Atman, Paramatman,
Para, etc. What is the gradation in them?
--
M.: This sloka occurs in different scriptures, holy books, e.g.,
Bhagavata, Maha Bharata, etc. It also forms the motto of Chapter
--
D.: No, no, it is all theory. I have read many books. But no use. It is practically impossible to make the mind concentrate.
M.: Concentration is impossible so long as there are predispositions.
--
To resume polemics - the author of Vritti Prabhakara claims to have studied 350,000 books before writing this book. What is the use?
Can they bring in Realisation of the Self? Vichara Sagara is full of logic and technical terms. Can these ponderous volumes serve
--
M.: If I say Do - Rama, Rama to one who has not struggled through books like you, he will do it and stick to it. If I say so to one like you who have read much and are investigating matters, you will not do it for long, because you will think, Why should I do it?
Above all, who am I that should be repeating the mantra? Let me find who I am before I proceed further; and so you will stop japa and begin investigation.
--
Self-luminosity. The world divya shows it. The full word means the Self. Who is to bestow a divine eye? And who is to see? Again, people read in the books, hearing, reflection and one-pointedness are necessary. They think that they must pass through savikalpa samadhi and nirvikalpa samadhi before attaining Realisation.
Hence all these questions. Why should they wander in that maze?
--
The anecdotes differ in different books. We are not concerned with the names and the embellishments. The tatva, i.e., the moral, must not be lost sight of. The disciple surrenders himself to the master. That means there is no vestige of individuality retained by the disciple. If the surrender is complete all sense of individuality is lost and there is thus no cause for misery. The eternal being is only happiness. That is revealed.
Without understanding it aright, people think that the Guru teaches the disciple something like TATVAMASI and that the disciple realises
--
M.: It is all meant to help the bhavana (imagery). There are books dealing with six centres (shadchakra) and many other lakshyas
(centres), internal and external. The description of the Heart is one among so many lakshyas. But it is not necessary. It is only the source of the I-thought. That is the ultimate truth.
--
The books say that there are so many kinds of diksha (initiations
- hasta diksha, sparsa diksha, chakshu diksha, mano diksha, etc.)
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Of course, in one sense your words are true. It is said that in one respect the devotee of God is greater than God Himself, because he carries God in his heart. (All rejoice.) It is said in the Vaishnava books: 'A devotee regards himself as a higher, and God as a lower, being.' Yaoda, the mother of Krishna, was about to fetter Krishna, who was God Incarnate, with chains. She believed that no one but herself could take care of Krishna.
"Sometimes God acts as the magnet and the devotee as the needle. God attracts the devotee to Himself. Again, sometimes the devotee acts as the magnet and God as the needle. Such is the attraction of the devotee that God comes to him, unable to resist his love."
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
But for all their inadequacy and their radical unlikeness to the facts to which they refer, words remain the most reliable and accurate of our symbols. Whenever we want to have a precise report of facts or ideas, we must resort to words. A ceremony, a carved or painted image, may convey more meanings and overtones of meaning in a smaller compass and with greater vividness than can a verbal formula; but it is liable to convey them in a form that is much more vague and indefinite. One often meets, in modern literature, with the notion that mediaeval churches were the architectural, sculptural and pictorial equivalents of a theological summa, and that mediaeval worshippers who admired the works of art around them were thereby enlightened on the subject of doctrine. This view was evidently not shared by the more earnest churchmen of the Middle Ages. Coulton cites the utterances of preachers who complained that congregations were getting entirely false ideas of Catholicism by looking at the pictures in the churches instead of listening to sermons. (Similarly, in our own day the Catholic Indians of Central America have evolved the wildest heresies by brooding on the carved and painted symbols with which the Conquistadors filled their churches.) St. Bernards objection to the richness of Cluniac architecture, sculpture and ceremonial was motivated by intellectual as well as strictly moral considerations. So great and marvellous a variety of divers forms meets the eye that one is tempted to read in the marbles rather than in the books, to pass the whole day looking at these carvings one after another rather than in meditating on the law of God. It is in imageless contemplation that the soul comes to the unitive knowledge of Reality; consequently, for those who, like St. Bernard and his Cistercians, are really concerned to achieve mans final end, the fewer distracting symbols the better.
Most men worship the gods because they want success in their worldly undertakings. This kind of material success can be gained very quickly (by such worship), here on earth.
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Balarm's father was a pious Vaishnava who devoted most of his time to prayer and meditation in his garden house at Vrindvan. He also studied devotional books and enjoyed the company of devotees. Balarm had brought his father to Calcutta to meet the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna was in a very happy mood. Seated near him were Ram, Balarm, Balarm's father, M., Manomohan, and several young devotees. He was conversing with them.
--
MASTER (to Balarm's father and the others): "The Bhaktamala is one of the Vaishnava books. It is a fine book. It describes the lives of the various Vaishnava devotees. But it is one-sided. At one place the author found peace of mind only after compelling Bhagavati, the Divine Mother, to take Her initiation according to the Vaishnava discipline.
"Once I spoke highly of Vaishnavcharan to Mathur and persuaded him to invite Vaishnavcharan to his house. Mathur welcomed him with great courtesy. He fed his guest from silver plates. Then do you know what happened? Vaishnav said in front of Mathur, 'You will achieve nothing whatsoever in spiritual life unless you accept Krishna as your Ideal.' Mathur was a follower of the Sakta cult and a worshipper of the Divine Mother. At once his face became crimson. I nudged Vaishnavcharan.
1.25 - Fascinations, Invisibility, Levitation, Transmutations, Kinks in Time, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In the summer of 1910 e.v. I was living at 125 Victoria Street, in a studio converted into a Temple by means of a Circle, an Altar and the rest. West of the Altar was a big fireplace with a fender settee; the East wall was covered with bookshelves. Enter the late Theodor Reuss, O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the O.T.O. He wanted me to join that Order. I recommended him, in politer language to repeat the Novocastrian Experiment. Undeterred, he insisted: "But you must."
(Now we go back, or forward, I know not which, to a night when I found myself stranded in London. I asked hospitality of a stranger; it was readily afforded. Some hours later my hostess fell asleep; I could not do so; something was nagging me. I suddenly took my notebook, and wrote a certain passage in a certain book, since published.)[46]
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Certain people asked me a question difficult to solve and which is beyond the powers of anyone like me, and is not to be found in any of the books that have reached me. For they said: What are the particular offspring of the eight deadly sins? Or which of the three chief sins is the father of the other five (minor sins)? But by pleading praiseworthy ignorance as regards this difficulty, I learnt from the holy men the following: The mother of lust is gluttony, and the mother of despondency is vainglory; sorrow and also anger are the offspring of those three (i.e. cupidity, sensuality, ambition); and the mother of pride is vainglory.
In reply to this statement of those ever-memorable Fathers, I began again earnestly to ask them to tell me about the pedigree of the eight sins which exactly are born from which? And these dispassionate men kindly instructed me, saying: The irrational passions have no order or reason, but they have every sort of disorder and every kind of chaos. And the blessed Fathers confirmed this by convincing examples and supplied many proofs, some of which we are including in the present chapter, in order to draw light from them in judging the rest.
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
46. The preliminary task of solitude is the disengagement from all affairs, whether laudable or not; for he who allows even laudable ones will certainly fall into those which are not. The second task of solitude is earnest prayer. And the third is inviolable activity of the heart.4 It is physically impossible for one who does not know the alphabet to study books. It is still more impossible for one who has not attained to the first to pass in the right way to the last two tasks.
47. Engaged in the middle task, I was among the middle orders; and an angel enlightened me, thirsting as I was. And again I was among them, and when I asked: What was the Lord before He took visible form? the angel could not tell me, for he was not allowed. So I asked him: In what state is He now? He replied: In the state proper to Him, but not in this (our state). I asked: What is the meaning of the standing and sitting on the right hand of the Father? He said: It is impossible to grasp these mysteries by hearing with the human ear. I implored him on the spot to lead me where my longings drew me,5 and he said: The hour has not yet come, because the fire of incorruption does not yet burn sufficiently within you. Whether I was then with this earth, I know not; or out of it I am quite unable to say.6
--
78. Reading10 enlightens the mind considerably, and helps it concentrate. For those are the Holy Spirits words and they attune those who attend to them. Let what you read lead you to action, for you are a doer.11 Putting these words into practice makes further reading superfluous. Seek to be enlightened by the words of salvation12 through your labours, and not merely from books. Until you receive spiritual power do not study works of an allegorical nature because they are dark words, and they darken the weak.13
79. Often one cup of wine is sufficient to reveal its flavour, and one word of the solitary makes known to those who can taste it his whole inner state and activity.
1.29 - Continues to describe methods for achieving this Prayer of Recollection. Says what little account we should make of being favoured by our superiors., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
your superior's good books; whereas to-morrow, if she sees you exhibiting some additional virtue,
it is with you that she will be better pleased-and if she is not it is of little consequence. Never give
--
There are many ways in which we can gradually acquire this habit, as various books tell us.
We must cast aside everything else, they say, in order to approach God inwardly and we must retire
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
To resume polemics - the author of Vritti Prabhakara claims to have studied 350,000 books before writing this book. What is the use?
Can they bring in Realisation of the Self? Vichara Sagara is full of logic and technical terms. Can these ponderous volumes serve
--
M.: If I say "Do - Rama, Rama" to one who has not struggled through books like you, he will do it and stick to it. If I say so to one like you who have read much and are investigating matters, you will not do it for long, because you will think, "Why should I do it?
Above all, who am I that should be repeating the mantra? Let me find who I am before I proceed further"; and so you will stop japa and begin investigation.
--
Self-luminosity. The world divya shows it. The full word means the Self. Who is to bestow a divine eye? And who is to see? Again, people read in the books, "hearing, reflection and one-pointedness are necessary". They think that they must pass through savikalpa samadhi and nirvikalpa samadhi before attaining Realisation.
Hence all these questions. Why should they wander in that maze?
--
The anecdotes differ in different books. We are not concerned with the names and the embellishments. The tatva, i.e., the moral, must not be lost sight of. The disciple surrenders himself to the master. That means there is no vestige of individuality retained by the disciple. If the surrender is complete all sense of individuality is lost and there is thus no cause for misery. The eternal being is only happiness. That is revealed.
Without understanding it aright, people think that the Guru teaches the disciple something like "TATVAMASI" and that the disciple realises
--
M.: It is all meant to help the bhavana (imagery). There are books dealing with six centres (shadchakra) and many other lakshyas
(centres), internal and external. The description of the Heart is one among so many lakshyas. But it is not necessary. It is only the source of the 'I-thought'. That is the ultimate truth.
--
The books say that there are so many kinds of diksha (initiations
- hasta diksha, sparsa diksha, chakshu diksha, mano diksha, etc.)
1.34 - The Myth and Ritual of Attis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
nonsense, the Sibylline books, that the foreign invader would be
driven from Italy if the great Oriental goddess were brought to
1.38 - Treats of the great need which we have to beseech the Eternal Father to grant us what we ask in these words: Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Explains certain temptations. This chapter is noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
He likes to have some trifle, if only books, which he can pawn or sell, for if he falls ill he will need
extra comforts. Sinner that I am! Is this the vow of poverty that you took? Stop worrying about
1.39 - Continues the same subject and gives counsels concerning different kinds of temptation. Suggests two remedies by which we may be freed from temptations.135, #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
own unworthiness. I will say no more here, for you will find many books which give this kind of
advice. I have said all this because I have had experience of the matter and have sometimes found
14.02 - Occult Experiences, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So this is the story. I have brought these books because some of the poets have had such an experience.
Alfred de Musset says that from his childhood he had a comrade who was always with him he was like a brother to him; he accompanied him in life's joys and sorrows, in dangers and happiness-he was always with him. I shall read out some stanzas:
1.42 - This Self Introversion, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Once started on that road, one can easily develop self-deception to a fine art. One can imagine that one has undergone, or achieved, all sorts of experiences "as described in the books," when all that one has actually done is to work the results of one's reading into a bubble inflated by imagination.
It should be obvious to you that the habit grows on one; every bad quality, from vanity to laziness, lends most willing aid. One replaces reality more and more continuously by these exciting and flattering reveries, which by this time have no longer any shadow of a claim to be called mystic experiences at all.
1.42 - Treats of these last words of the Paternoster Sed libera nos a malo. Amen. But deliver us from evil. Amen., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
it a real comfort. Our books may be taken from us, but this is a book which no one can take away,
and it comes from the lips of the Truth Himself, Who cannot err.
--- Overview of noun book
The noun book has 11 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (46) book ::: (a written work or composition that has been published (printed on pages bound together); "I am reading a good book on economics")
2. (10) book, volume ::: (physical objects consisting of a number of pages bound together; "he used a large book as a doorstop")
3. (2) record, record book, book ::: (a compilation of the known facts regarding something or someone; "Al Smith used to say, `Let's look at the record'"; "his name is in all the record books")
4. (1) script, book, playscript ::: (a written version of a play or other dramatic composition; used in preparing for a performance)
5. ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book ::: (a record in which commercial accounts are recorded; "they got a subpoena to examine our books")
6. book ::: (a collection of playing cards satisfying the rules of a card game)
7. book, rule book ::: (a collection of rules or prescribed standards on the basis of which decisions are made; "they run things by the book around here")
8. Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book ::: (the sacred writings of Islam revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad during his life at Mecca and Medina)
9. Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word ::: (the sacred writings of the Christian religions; "he went to carry the Word to the heathen")
10. book ::: (a major division of a long written composition; "the book of Isaiah")
11. book ::: (a number of sheets (ticket or stamps etc.) bound together on one edge; "he bought a book of stamps")
--- Overview of verb book
The verb book has 4 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
1. (3) book ::: (engage for a performance; "Her agent had booked her for several concerts in Tokyo")
2. (1) reserve, hold, book ::: (arrange for and reserve (something for someone else) in advance; "reserve me a seat on a flight"; "The agent booked tickets to the show for the whole family"; "please hold a table at Maxim's")
3. (1) book ::: (record a charge in a police register; "The policeman booked her when she tried to solicit a man")
4. book ::: (register in a hotel booker)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun book
11 senses of book
Sense 1
book
=> publication
=> work, piece of work
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
book, volume
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
record, record book, book
=> fact
=> information, info
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
script, book, playscript
=> dramatic composition, dramatic work
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book
=> record
=> document
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
book
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 7
book, rule book
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 8
Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
INSTANCE OF=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 9
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 10
book
=> section, subdivision
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> music
=> auditory communication
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 11
book
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun book
7 of 11 senses of book
Sense 1
book
=> authority
=> curiosa
=> formulary, pharmacopeia
=> trade book, trade edition
=> bestiary
=> catechism
=> pop-up book, pop-up
=> storybook
=> tome
=> booklet, brochure, folder, leaflet, pamphlet
=> textbook, text, text edition, schoolbook, school text
=> workbook
=> copybook
=> appointment book, appointment calendar
=> catalog, catalogue
=> phrase book
=> playbook
=> prayer book, prayerbook
=> reference book, reference, reference work, book of facts
=> review copy
=> songbook
=> yearbook
HAS INSTANCE=> Das Kapital, Capital
HAS INSTANCE=> Erewhon
HAS INSTANCE=> Utopia
Sense 2
book, volume
=> album
=> coffee-table book
=> folio
=> hardback, hardcover
=> journal
=> novel
=> order book
=> paperback book, paper-back book, paperback, softback book, softback, soft-cover book, soft-cover
=> picture book
=> sketchbook, sketch block, sketch pad
=> notebook
Sense 3
record, record book, book
=> logbook
=> won-lost record
=> card, scorecard
Sense 4
script, book, playscript
=> promptbook, prompt copy
=> continuity
=> dialogue, dialog
=> libretto
=> scenario
=> screenplay
=> shooting script
Sense 5
ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book
=> cost ledger
=> general ledger
=> subsidiary ledger
=> daybook, journal
Sense 9
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> family Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> Vulgate
HAS INSTANCE=> Douay Bible, Douay Version, Douay-Rheims Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, Rheims-Douay Bible, Rheims-Douay Version
HAS INSTANCE=> Authorized Version, King James Version, King James Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> Revised Version
HAS INSTANCE=> New English Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> American Standard Version, American Revised Version
HAS INSTANCE=> Revised Standard Version
Sense 10
book
HAS INSTANCE=> Genesis, Book of Genesis
HAS INSTANCE=> Exodus, Book of Exodus
HAS INSTANCE=> Leviticus, Book of Leviticus
HAS INSTANCE=> Numbers, Book of Numbers
HAS INSTANCE=> Deuteronomy, Book of Deuteronomy
HAS INSTANCE=> Joshua, Josue, Book of Joshua
HAS INSTANCE=> Judges, Book of Judges
HAS INSTANCE=> Ruth, Book of Ruth
HAS INSTANCE=> I Samuel, 1 Samuel
HAS INSTANCE=> II Samuel, 2 Samuel
HAS INSTANCE=> I Kings, 1 Kings
HAS INSTANCE=> II Kings, 2 Kings
HAS INSTANCE=> I Chronicles, 1 Chronicles
HAS INSTANCE=> II Chronicles, 2 Chronicles
HAS INSTANCE=> Ezra, Book of Ezra
HAS INSTANCE=> Nehemiah, Book of Nehemiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Esther, Book of Esther
HAS INSTANCE=> Job, Book of Job
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalms, Book of Psalms
HAS INSTANCE=> Proverbs, Book of Proverbs
HAS INSTANCE=> Ecclesiastes, Book of Ecclesiastes
HAS INSTANCE=> Song of Songs, Song of Solomon, Canticle of Canticles, Canticles
HAS INSTANCE=> Isaiah, Book of Isaiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Jeremiah, Book of Jeremiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Lamentations, Book of Lamentations
HAS INSTANCE=> Ezekiel, Ezechiel, Book of Ezekiel
HAS INSTANCE=> Daniel, Book of Daniel, Book of the Prophet Daniel
HAS INSTANCE=> Hosea, Book of Hosea
HAS INSTANCE=> Joel, Book of Joel
HAS INSTANCE=> Amos, Book of Amos
HAS INSTANCE=> Obadiah, Abdias, Book of Obadiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Jonah, Book of Jonah
HAS INSTANCE=> Micah, Micheas, Book of Micah
HAS INSTANCE=> Nahum, Book of Nahum
HAS INSTANCE=> Habakkuk, Habacuc, Book of Habakkuk
HAS INSTANCE=> Zephaniah, Sophonias, Book of Zephaniah
HAS INSTANCE=> Haggai, Aggeus, Book of Haggai
HAS INSTANCE=> Zechariah, Zacharias, Book of Zachariah
HAS INSTANCE=> Malachi, Malachias, Book of Malachi
HAS INSTANCE=> Matthew, Gospel According to Matthew
HAS INSTANCE=> Mark, Gospel According to Mark
HAS INSTANCE=> Luke, Gospel of Luke, Gospel According to Luke
HAS INSTANCE=> John, Gospel According to John
HAS INSTANCE=> Acts of the Apostles, Acts
=> Epistle
HAS INSTANCE=> Revelation, Revelation of Saint John the Divine, Apocalypse, Book of Revelation
HAS INSTANCE=> Additions to Esther
HAS INSTANCE=> Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Children
HAS INSTANCE=> Susanna, Book of Susanna
HAS INSTANCE=> Bel and the Dragon
HAS INSTANCE=> Baruch, Book of Baruch
HAS INSTANCE=> Letter of Jeremiah, Epistle of Jeremiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tobit, Book of Tobit
HAS INSTANCE=> Judith, Book of Judith
HAS INSTANCE=> I Esdra, 1 Esdras
HAS INSTANCE=> II Esdras, 2 Esdras
HAS INSTANCE=> Ben Sira, Sirach, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach
HAS INSTANCE=> Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom
HAS INSTANCE=> I Maccabees, 1 Maccabees
HAS INSTANCE=> II Maccabees, 2 Maccabees
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun book
11 senses of book
Sense 1
book
=> publication
Sense 2
book, volume
=> product, production
Sense 3
record, record book, book
=> fact
Sense 4
script, book, playscript
=> dramatic composition, dramatic work
Sense 5
ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book
=> record
Sense 6
book
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
Sense 7
book, rule book
=> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
Sense 8
Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
INSTANCE OF=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
Sense 9
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
Sense 10
book
=> section, subdivision
Sense 11
book
=> product, production
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun book
11 senses of book
Sense 1
book
-> publication
=> reissue, reprint, reprinting
=> new edition
=> book
=> volume
=> read
=> impression, printing
=> collection, compendium
=> periodical
=> magazine, mag
=> tip sheet
=> reference, source
=> republication
Sense 2
book, volume
-> product, production
=> book, volume
=> book
=> by-product, byproduct, spin-off
=> deliverable
=> end product, output
=> inspiration, brainchild
=> job
=> magazine
=> newspaper, paper
=> output, outturn, turnout
=> turnery
=> work, piece of work
=> yield, fruit
=> movie, film, picture, moving picture, moving-picture show, motion picture, motion-picture show, picture show, pic, flick
Sense 3
record, record book, book
-> fact
=> record, record book, book
=> basics, rudiments
=> index, index number, indicant, indicator
Sense 4
script, book, playscript
-> dramatic composition, dramatic work
=> play, drama, dramatic play
=> act
=> scene
=> script, book, playscript
Sense 5
ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book
-> record
=> balance sheet
=> expense record
=> ledger, leger, account book, book of account, book
=> payslip
=> register
=> bankbook, passbook
=> checkbook, chequebook
Sense 6
book
-> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> procession
=> pharmacopoeia
=> string
=> wardrobe
=> wardrobe
=> population, universe
=> armamentarium
=> art collection
=> backlog
=> battery
=> block
=> book, rule book
=> book
=> bottle collection
=> bunch, lot, caboodle
=> coin collection
=> collage
=> content
=> ensemble, tout ensemble
=> corpus
=> crop
=> tenantry
=> findings
=> flagging
=> flinders
=> pack
=> hand, deal
=> long suit
=> herbarium
=> stamp collection
=> statuary
=> sum, summation, sum total
=> agglomeration
=> gimmickry
=> nuclear club
=> pile, heap, mound, agglomerate, cumulation, cumulus
=> mass
=> combination
=> congregation
=> hit parade
=> Judaica
=> kludge
=> library, program library, subroutine library
=> library
=> mythology
HAS INSTANCE=> Nag Hammadi, Nag Hammadi Library
=> biota, biology
=> fauna, zoology
=> petting zoo
=> set
=> Victoriana
=> class, category, family
=> job lot
=> package, bundle, packet, parcel
=> defense, defence, defense team, defense lawyers
=> prosecution
=> planting
=> signage
=> generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP
=> pantheon
=> Free World
=> Third World
=> Europe
=> Asia
=> North America
=> Central America
=> South America
=> Oort cloud
=> galaxy
=> galaxy, extragalactic nebula
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> repertoire, repertory
=> repertory, repertoire
=> assortment, mixture, mixed bag, miscellany, miscellanea, variety, salmagundi, smorgasbord, potpourri, motley
=> batch, clutch
=> batch
=> rogue's gallery
=> exhibition, exposition, expo
=> convoy
=> traffic
=> aviation, air power
=> vegetation, flora, botany
=> law, jurisprudence
=> menagerie
=> data, information
=> ana
=> mail, post
=> treasure
=> treasure trove
=> trinketry
=> troponymy, troponomy
=> smithereens
HAS INSTANCE=> Wise Men, Magi
Sense 7
book, rule book
-> collection, aggregation, accumulation, assemblage
=> procession
=> pharmacopoeia
=> string
=> wardrobe
=> wardrobe
=> population, universe
=> armamentarium
=> art collection
=> backlog
=> battery
=> block
=> book, rule book
=> book
=> bottle collection
=> bunch, lot, caboodle
=> coin collection
=> collage
=> content
=> ensemble, tout ensemble
=> corpus
=> crop
=> tenantry
=> findings
=> flagging
=> flinders
=> pack
=> hand, deal
=> long suit
=> herbarium
=> stamp collection
=> statuary
=> sum, summation, sum total
=> agglomeration
=> gimmickry
=> nuclear club
=> pile, heap, mound, agglomerate, cumulation, cumulus
=> mass
=> combination
=> congregation
=> hit parade
=> Judaica
=> kludge
=> library, program library, subroutine library
=> library
=> mythology
HAS INSTANCE=> Nag Hammadi, Nag Hammadi Library
=> biota, biology
=> fauna, zoology
=> petting zoo
=> set
=> Victoriana
=> class, category, family
=> job lot
=> package, bundle, packet, parcel
=> defense, defence, defense team, defense lawyers
=> prosecution
=> planting
=> signage
=> generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP
=> pantheon
=> Free World
=> Third World
=> Europe
=> Asia
=> North America
=> Central America
=> South America
=> Oort cloud
=> galaxy
=> galaxy, extragalactic nebula
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> fleet
=> repertoire, repertory
=> repertory, repertoire
=> assortment, mixture, mixed bag, miscellany, miscellanea, variety, salmagundi, smorgasbord, potpourri, motley
=> batch, clutch
=> batch
=> rogue's gallery
=> exhibition, exposition, expo
=> convoy
=> traffic
=> aviation, air power
=> vegetation, flora, botany
=> law, jurisprudence
=> menagerie
=> data, information
=> ana
=> mail, post
=> treasure
=> treasure trove
=> trinketry
=> troponymy, troponomy
=> smithereens
HAS INSTANCE=> Wise Men, Magi
Sense 8
Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
-> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> scripture, sacred scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Adi Granth, Granth, Granth Sahib
HAS INSTANCE=> Avesta, Zend-Avesta
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavadgita, Gita
HAS INSTANCE=> Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum
=> Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> Paralipomenon
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tanakh, Tanach, Hebrew Scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Prophets, Nebiim
HAS INSTANCE=> Hagiographa, Ketubim, Writings
=> Testament
=> Gospel, Gospels, evangel
=> Synoptic Gospels, Synoptics
HAS INSTANCE=> Book of Mormon
=> prayer
=> service book
=> Apocrypha
=> sapiential book, wisdom book, wisdom literature
=> Pseudepigrapha
HAS INSTANCE=> Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
=> Talmudic literature
HAS INSTANCE=> Gemara
HAS INSTANCE=> Mishna, Mishnah
=> Vedic literature, Veda
HAS INSTANCE=> Upanishad
=> mantra
=> psalm
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalm
Sense 9
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
-> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> scripture, sacred scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Adi Granth, Granth, Granth Sahib
HAS INSTANCE=> Avesta, Zend-Avesta
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavadgita, Gita
HAS INSTANCE=> Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum
=> Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> Paralipomenon
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tanakh, Tanach, Hebrew Scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Prophets, Nebiim
HAS INSTANCE=> Hagiographa, Ketubim, Writings
=> Testament
=> Gospel, Gospels, evangel
=> Synoptic Gospels, Synoptics
HAS INSTANCE=> Book of Mormon
=> prayer
=> service book
=> Apocrypha
=> sapiential book, wisdom book, wisdom literature
=> Pseudepigrapha
HAS INSTANCE=> Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
=> Talmudic literature
HAS INSTANCE=> Gemara
HAS INSTANCE=> Mishna, Mishnah
=> Vedic literature, Veda
HAS INSTANCE=> Upanishad
=> mantra
=> psalm
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalm
Sense 10
book
-> section, subdivision
=> lead, lead-in, lede
=> canto
=> above
=> sports section
=> article, clause
=> book
=> chapter
=> episode
=> spot
=> spot
=> insert
=> introduction
=> narration
=> conclusion, end, close, closing, ending
=> passage
=> mezuzah, mezuza
=> sura
=> exposition
=> obbligato, obligato
=> recapitulation
=> development
Sense 11
book
-> product, production
=> book, volume
=> book
=> by-product, byproduct, spin-off
=> deliverable
=> end product, output
=> inspiration, brainchild
=> job
=> magazine
=> newspaper, paper
=> output, outturn, turnout
=> turnery
=> work, piece of work
=> yield, fruit
=> movie, film, picture, moving picture, moving-picture show, motion picture, motion-picture show, picture show, pic, flick
--- Grep of noun books
bookseller
bookshelf
bookshop
bookstall
bookstore
Grep of noun book
account book
appointment book
bankbook
bell book
black book
blue book
book
book agent
book bag
book binding
book fair
book jacket
book louse
book lover
book lung
book matches
book of account
book of amos
book of baruch
book of common prayer
book of daniel
book of deuteronomy
book of ecclesiastes
book of esther
book of exodus
book of ezekiel
book of ezra
book of facts
book of genesis
book of habakkuk
book of haggai
book of hosea
book of instructions
book of isaiah
book of jeremiah
book of job
book of joel
book of jonah
book of joshua
book of judges
book of judith
book of knowledge
book of lamentations
book of leviticus
book of malachi
book of maps
book of micah
book of mormon
book of nahum
book of nehemiah
book of numbers
book of obadiah
book of proverbs
book of psalms
book of revelation
book of ruth
book of susanna
book of the prophet daniel
book of tobit
book of zachariah
book of zephaniah
book review
book scorpion
book seller
book token
book value
bookbinder
bookbindery
bookbinding
bookcase
bookclub
bookdealer
bookend
booker
booker t. washington
booker taliaferro washington
bookfair
bookie
booking
booking agent
booking clerk
bookishness
bookkeeper
bookkeeping
booklet
booklouse
booklover
bookmaker
bookman
bookmark
bookmarker
bookmobile
bookplate
bookseller
bookshelf
bookshop
bookstall
bookstore
bookworm
casebook
checkbook
chequebook
closed book
coffee-table book
coloring book
comic book
commonplace book
cookbook
cookery book
copybook
day book
daybook
domesday book
doomsday book
fake book
good book
guidebook
handbook
hornbook
hymnbook
instruction book
leaf-book
logbook
matchbook
minute book
mug book
notebook
order book
paper-back book
paperback book
passbook
phone book
phonebook
phrase book
picture book
playbook
pocket book
pocketbook
pop-up book
prayer book
prayerbook
promptbook
record book
reference book
roadbook
rule book
sapiential book
schoolbook
scrapbook
service book
sketchbook
soft-cover book
softback book
songbook
source book
statute book
storybook
studbook
talking book
telephone book
textbook
ticket book
trade book
travel guidebook
white book
wisdom book
wordbook
workbook
yearbook