classes ::: power,
children :::
branches ::: capacities

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object:capacities
similar:siddhi, power
class:power

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Faust
Life_without_Death
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
Process_and_Reality
Questions_And_Answers_1955
The_Categories
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Lotus_Sutra

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.04_-_The_Systems_of_Yoga
01.01_-_The_New_Humanity
01.03_-_Yoga_and_the_Ordinary_Life
0_1958-02-03b_-_The_Supramental_Ship
0_1958-11-08
0_1959-01-31
0_1960-12-17
0_1961-01-12
0_1961-07-15
0_1961-11-12
0_1961-12-23
0_1962-01-12
0_1962-01-12_-_supramental_ship
0_1962-02-27
0_1962-09-08
0_1963-03-23
0_1963-06-22
0_1963-07-06
0_1963-11-20
0_1964-01-18
0_1964-02-05
0_1964-08-14
0_1965-01-12
0_1965-04-17
0_1965-04-21
0_1965-05-08
0_1966-01-31
0_1966-09-17
0_1967-03-07
0_1967-03-22
0_1967-08-02
0_1967-12-30
0_1968-02-03
0_1968-12-04
0_1969-03-26
0_1969-06-28
0_1969-07-26
0_1969-10-18
0_1970-03-25
0_1971-01-16
0_1971-04-17
0_1971-06-23
0_1972-05-17
0_1972-05-27
0_1973-01-20
02.02_-_The_Message_of_the_Atomic_Bomb
02.13_-_On_Social_Reconstruction
03.02_-_Yogic_Initiation_and_Aptitude
03.10_-_Hamlet:_A_Crisis_of_the_Evolving_Soul
04.03_-_Consciousness_as_Energy
05.01_-_Man_and_the_Gods
05.22_-_Success_and_its_Conditions
05.33_-_Caesar_versus_the_Divine
06.01_-_The_End_of_a_Civilisation
06.11_-_The_Steps_of_the_Soul
06.12_-_The_Expanding_Body-Consciousness
07.37_-_The_Psychic_Being,_Some_Mysteries
07.45_-_Specialisation
08.01_-_Choosing_To_Do_Yoga
08.04_-_Doing_for_Her_Sake
08.16_-_Perfection_and_Progress
1.001_-_The_Aim_of_Yoga
1.00c_-_DIVISION_C_-_THE_ETHERIC_BODY_AND_PRANA
1.00d_-_Introduction
1.010_-_Self-Control_-_The_Alpha_and_Omega_of_Yoga
1.01_-_Economy
1.01_-_THAT_ARE_THOU
1.01_-_The_Mental_Fortress
1.02.3.2_-_Knowledge_and_Ignorance
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_Self-Consecration
1.02_-_Skillful_Means
1.02_-_The_Great_Process
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
1.02_-_The_Two_Negations_1_-_The_Materialist_Denial
10.37_-_The_Golden_Bridge
1.03_-_Self-Surrender_in_Works_-_The_Way_of_The_Gita
1.03_-_The_Coming_of_the_Subjective_Age
1.04_-_On_Knowledge_of_the_Future_World.
1.04_-_The_Discovery_of_the_Nation-Soul
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.05_-_Mental_Education
1.05_-_Some_Results_of_Initiation
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_True_and_False_Subjectivism
1.05_-_Yoga_and_Hypnotism
1.06_-_Quieting_the_Vital
1.06_-_The_Objective_and_Subjective_Views_of_Life
1.075_-_Self-Control,_Study_and_Devotion_to_God
1.07_-_The_Ego_and_the_Dualities
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.08_-_The_Four_Austerities_and_the_Four_Liberations
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.08_-_The_Synthesis_of_Movement
1.099_-_The_Entry_of_the_Eternal_into_the_Individual
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_Sleep_and_Death
1.09_-_The_Greater_Self
1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda
1.10_-_Aesthetic_and_Ethical_Culture
1.10_-_Conscious_Force
1.10_-_The_Three_Modes_of_Nature
11.15_-_Sri_Aurobindo
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.11_-_The_Reason_as_Governor_of_Life
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.13_-_A_Dream
1.13_-_Reason_and_Religion
1.13_-_The_Divine_Maya
1.13_-_The_Supermind_and_the_Yoga_of_Works
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.17_-_Legend_of_Prahlada
1.18_-_FAITH
1.19_-_The_Curve_of_the_Rational_Age
1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity
1.2.05_-_Aspiration
1.2.09_-_Consecration_and_Offering
1.2.1_-_Mental_Development_and_Sadhana
1.2.2_-_The_Place_of_Study_in_Sadhana
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.26_-_The_Ascending_Series_of_Substance
1.27_-_CONTEMPLATION,_ACTION_AND_SOCIAL_UTILITY
1.300_-_1.400_Talks
1.4.02_-_The_Divine_Force
14.05_-_The_Golden_Rule
1914_06_26p
1951-01-08_-_True_vision_and_understanding_of_the_world._Progress,_equilibrium._Inner_reality_-_the_psychic._Animals_and_the_psychic.
1951-01-15_-_Sincerity_-_inner_discernment_-_inner_light._Evil_and_imbalance._Consciousness_and_instruments.
1951-01-20_-_Developing_the_mind._Misfortunes,_suffering;_developed_reason._Knowledge_and_pure_ideas.
1951-01-25_-_Needs_and_desires._Collaboration_of_the_vital,_mind_an_accomplice._Progress_and_sincerity_-_recognising_faults._Organising_the_body_-_illness_-_new_harmony_-_physical_beauty.
1951-02-19_-_Exteriorisation-_clairvoyance,_fainting,_etc_-_Somnambulism_-_Tartini_-_childrens_dreams_-_Nightmares_-_gurus_protection_-_Mind_and_vital_roam_during_sleep
1951-03-08_-_Silencing_the_mind_-_changing_the_nature_-_Reincarnation-_choice_-_Psychic,_higher_beings_gods_incarnating_-_Incarnation_of_vital_beings_-_the_Lord_of_Falsehood_-_Hitler_-_Possession_and_madness
1951-03-10_-_Fairy_Tales-_serpent_guarding_treasure_-_Vital_beings-_their_incarnations_-_The_vital_being_after_death_-_Nightmares-_vital_and_mental_-_Mind_and_vital_after_death_-_The_spirit_of_the_form-_Egyptian_mummies
1951-04-26_-_Irrevocable_transformation_-_The_divine_Shakti_-_glad_submission_-_Rejection,_integral_-_Consecration_-_total_self-forgetfulness_-_work
1951-05-11_-_Mahakali_and_Kali_-_Avatar_and_Vibhuti_-_Sachchidananda_behind_all_states_of_being_-_The_power_of_will_-_receiving_the_Divine_Will
1953-06-17
1953-09-09
1953-10-07
1953-11-04
1953-11-25
1954-02-10_-_Study_a_variety_of_subjects_-_Memory_-Memory_of_past_lives_-_Getting_rid_of_unpleasant_thoughts
1954-03-03_-_Occultism_-_A_French_scientists_experiment
1954-07-07_-_The_inner_warrior_-_Grace_and_the_Falsehood_-_Opening_from_below_-_Surrender_and_inertia_-_Exclusive_receptivity_-_Grace_and_receptivity
1954-08-04_-_Servant_and_worker_-_Justification_of_weakness_-_Play_of_the_Divine_-_Why_are_you_here_in_the_Ashram?
1954-12-22_-_Possession_by_hostile_forces_-_Purity_and_morality_-_Faith_in_the_final_success_-Drawing_back_from_the_path
1955-06-08_-_Working_for_the_Divine_-_ideal_attitude_-_Divine_manifesting_-_reversal_of_consciousness,_knowing_oneself_-_Integral_progress,_outer,_inner,_facing_difficulties_-_People_in_Ashram_-_doing_Yoga_-_Children_given_freedom,_choosing_yoga
1955-10-12_-_The_problem_of_transformation_-_Evolution,_man_and_superman_-_Awakening_need_of_a_higher_good_-_Sri_Aurobindo_and_earths_history_-_Setting_foot_on_the_new_path_-_The_true_reality_of_the_universe_-_the_new_race_-_...
1955-12-07_-_Emotional_impulse_of_self-giving_-_A_young_dancer_in_France_-_The_heart_has_wings,_not_the_head_-_Only_joy_can_conquer_the_Adversary
1956-01-11_-_Desire_and_self-deception_-_Giving_all_one_is_and_has_-_Sincerity,_more_powerful_than_will_-_Joy_of_progress_Definition_of_youth
1956-05-09_-_Beginning_of_the_true_spiritual_life_-_Spirit_gives_value_to_all_things_-_To_be_helped_by_the_supramental_Force
1956-06-13_-_Effects_of_the_Supramental_action_-_Education_and_the_Supermind_-_Right_to_remain_ignorant_-_Concentration_of_mind_-_Reason,_not_supreme_capacity_-_Physical_education_and_studies_-_inner_discipline_-_True_usefulness_of_teachers
1956-06-20_-_Hearts_mystic_light,_intuition_-_Psychic_being,_contact_-_Secular_ethics_-_True_role_of_mind_-_Realise_the_Divine_by_love_-_Depression,_pleasure,_joy_-_Heart_mixture_-_To_follow_the_soul_-_Physical_process_-_remember_the_Mother
1956-09-19_-_Power,_predominant_quality_of_vital_being_-_The_Divine,_the_psychic_being,_the_Supermind_-_How_to_come_out_of_the_physical_consciousness_-_Look_life_in_the_face_-_Ordinary_love_and_Divine_love
1957-04-17_-_Transformation_of_the_body
1957-04-24_-_Perfection,_lower_and_higher
1957-05-15_-_Differentiation_of_the_sexes_-_Transformation_from_above_downwards
1957-05-29_-_Progressive_transformation
1957-07-31_-_Awakening_aspiration_in_the_body
1957-09-18_-_Occultism_and_supramental_life
1957-11-13_-_Superiority_of_man_over_animal_-_Consciousness_precedes_form
1958-03-19_-_General_tension_in_humanity_-_Peace_and_progress_-_Perversion_and_vision_of_transformation
1958-07-23_-_How_to_develop_intuition_-_Concentration
1958-09-10_-_Magic,_occultism,_physical_science
1958-10-22_-_Spiritual_life_-_reversal_of_consciousness_-_Helping_others
1960_11_13?_-_50
1962_02_27
1964_09_16
1970_04_20_-_485
1f.lovecraft_-_At_the_Mountains_of_Madness
1.pbs_-_The_Cenci_-_A_Tragedy_In_Five_Acts
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.poe_-_The_Conversation_Of_Eiros_And_Charmion
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_IV-_Book_Third-_Despondency
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_The_Yoga_and_Its_Objects
2.02_-_Habit_2__Begin_with_the_End_in_Mind
2.02_-_Indra,_Giver_of_Light
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_On_Medicine
2.03_-_The_Eternal_and_the_Individual
2.04_-_Agni,_the_Illumined_Will
2.05_-_The_Line_of_Light_and_The_Impression
2.08_-_The_Release_from_the_Heart_and_the_Mind
2.09_-_On_Sadhana
2.0_-_Reincarnation_and_Karma
2.1.03_-_Man_and_Superman
2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge
2.11_-_On_Education
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.1.4.1_-_Teachers
2.1.4.2_-_Teaching
2.1.4_-_The_Lower_Vital_Being
2.1.5.1_-_Study_of_Works_of_Sri_Aurobindo_and_the_Mother
2.16_-_The_15th_of_August
2.17_-_December_1938
2.17_-_The_Progress_to_Knowledge_-_God,_Man_and_Nature
2.19_-_Out_of_the_Sevenfold_Ignorance_towards_the_Sevenfold_Knowledge
2.19_-_The_Planes_of_Our_Existence
2.2.01_-_The_Problem_of_Consciousness
2.2.01_-_Work_and_Yoga
2.2.04_-_Practical_Concerns_in_Work
2.20_-_The_Infancy_and_Maturity_of_ZO,_Father_and_Mother,_Israel_The_Ancient_and_Understanding
2.20_-_The_Lower_Triple_Purusha
2.20_-_The_Philosophy_of_Rebirth
2.21_-_The_Ladder_of_Self-transcendence
2.21_-_The_Order_of_the_Worlds
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality
2.23_-_Man_and_the_Evolution
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.2.7.01_-_Some_General_Remarks
2.28_-_The_Divine_Life
2.3.01_-_Aspiration_and_Surrender_to_the_Mother
2.3.04_-_The_Higher_Planes_of_Mind
2.3.1_-_Ego_and_Its_Forms
29.03_-_In_Her_Company
29.04_-_Mothers_Playground
3.01_-_Towards_the_Future
3.02_-_Aspiration
3.02_-_The_Great_Secret
3.04_-_The_Spirit_in_Spirit-Land_after_Death
3.05_-_The_Physical_World_and_its_Connection_with_the_Soul_and_Spirit-Lands
3.06_-_Thought-Forms_and_the_Human_Aura
31.01_-_The_Heart_of_Bengal
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
32.08_-_Fit_and_Unfit_(A_Letter)
33.16_-_Soviet_Gymnasts
3.4.1.06_-_Reading_and_Sadhana
3-5_Full_Circle
3.7.2.02_-_The_Terrestial_Law
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_The_Principle_of_the_Integral_Yoga
4.03_-_The_Meaning_of_Human_Endeavor
4.03_-_THE_ULTIMATE_EARTH
4.04_-_In_the_Total_Christ
4.04_-_Weaknesses
4.05_-_The_Instruments_of_the_Spirit
4.08_-_The_Liberation_of_the_Spirit
4.0_-_The_Path_of_Knowledge
4.1.01_-_The_Intellect_and_Yoga
4.1.2_-_The_Difficulties_of_Human_Nature
4.15_-_Soul-Force_and_the_Fourfold_Personality
4.19_-_The_Nature_of_the_supermind
4.24_-_The_supramental_Sense
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
4.26_-_The_Supramental_Time_Consciousness
4.3.2_-_Attacks_by_the_Hostile_Forces
4.3.3_-_Dealing_with_Hostile_Attacks
4.3_-_Bhakti
5.01_-_Message
5.02_-_Perfection_of_the_Body
5.03_-_The_Divine_Body
5.05_-_Supermind_and_Humanity
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
7.01_-_The_Soul_(the_Psychic)
7_-_Yoga_of_Sri_Aurobindo
Blazing_P1_-_Preconventional_consciousness
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
COSA_-_BOOK_XII
ENNEAD_06.01_-_Of_the_Ten_Aristotelian_and_Four_Stoic_Categories.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
For_a_Breath_I_Tarry
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
r1914_06_29
r1915_01_10
r1917_01_22
r1917_02_18
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Talks_026-050
Talks_051-075
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Divine_Names_Text_(Dionysis)
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Great_Sense
The_Riddle_of_this_World

PRIMARY CLASS

power
SIMILAR TITLES
capacities

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

capacities ::: pl. --> of Capacity


TERMS ANYWHERE

3. In its historical aspect, aristocracy is a definite class or order known as hereditary nobility, which possesses prescriptive rank and privileges. This group developed from primitive monarchy, by the gradual limitation of the regal authority by those who formed the council of the king. The defense of their prerogatives led them naturally to consider themselves as a separate class fitted by birthright to monopolize government. But at the same time, they assumed a number of corresponding obligations (hence the aphorism noblesse oblige) particularly for maintaining justice, peace and security. [The characteristics of hereditary aristocracy are: descent and birthright, breeding and education, power to command, administrative and military capacities, readiness to fulfill personal and national obligations, interest in field sports, social equality of its members, aloofness and exclusiveness, moral security in the possession of real values regardless of criticism, competition or advancement.] In certain societies as in Great Britain, birth-right is not an exclusive factor: exceptional men are admitted by recognition into the aristocratic circle (circulation of the elite), after a tincture of breeding satisfying its external standards. The decline of hereditary nobility was due to economic rather than to social or political changes. Now aristocracy can claim only a social influence.

abhiprAya. (T. dgongs pa; C. yiqu; J. ishu; K. ŭich'wi 意趣). In Sanskrit, "hidden intention" or "purpose"; a term used in hermeneutics to refer to the concealed intent the Buddha had in mind when he made a statement that was not literally true (see also ABHISAMDHI). In the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA, there are four abhiprAyas. (1) The Buddha may say that two things are the same when in fact they are similar in only one, albeit important, feature. Thus, sAKYAMUNI Buddha says that he is the past buddha VIPAsYIN, thinking of the fact that there is not the slightest difference in their DHARMAKAYAs. This is called the intention of sameness (samatAbhiprAya). (2) The Buddha may say one thing while intending something else (arthAntarAbhiprAya). This category is often invoked in YOGACARA exegesis to explain why the Buddha proclaimed the nonexistence of all phenomena in the PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras when he in fact did not intend this statement to be taken literally, thinking instead of the three natures (TRILAKsAnA) of all phenomena propounded by the YogAcAra. (3) The buddha may make a statement intending another time (kAlAntarAbhiprAya) than that suggested by his words. For example, he may assure lazy persons who are incapable of any virtuous practice whatsoever that they will be reborn in SUKHAVATĪ, the paradise of AMITABHA, if they will simply call on that buddha. He does this in order to encourage them to accumulate a modest amount of merit, although he knows that they will not be reborn there immediately or even in their next lifetime, but at some other time in the future. (4) The Buddha adjusts his teaching to the capacities of his students based on their dispositions (pudgalAntarAbhiprAya). For example, the Buddha will extol the benefits of the practice of charity (DANA) to a person who is disposed toward the accumulation of merit (PUnYA) but will underplay the importance of charity to a person who becomes complacently attached to that practice. See ABHISAMDHI; SANDHYABHAsA.

actualizing tendency: in Rogers's theory, an innate drive which reflects the desire to grow, to develop and to enhance one's capacities.

"And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine

“And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine

Anthropopathism: (Gr. anthropos, man; pathein, suffer) Sometimes referred to as the pathetic fallacy, i.e., attributing human feelings illegitimately to situations or things lacking such capacities. -- V.F.

Anthroposophy: An occult and mystic philosophical movement, based on the teachings of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, aiming at man’s progressive liberation from the chains of egoism and at the development of his dormant faculties and higher capacities for knowledge and enlightenment, to enable him to perceive and respond to “subtler manifestations of Nature.” Anthroposophists place great emphasis, among other things, on the occult significance of colors and their relations to human emotions (cf. color awareness).

attainder ::: n. --> The act of attainting, or the state of being attainted; the extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person, consequent upon sentence of death or outlawry; as, an act of attainder.
A stain or staining; state of being in dishonor or condemnation.


Back of all the orderly unfolding of the embryonic cells — usually ascribed to nature — is the subconscious directing influence of the monadic ego born from and bathing in the cosmic intelligence. In human beings the reincarnating ego is a ray of a spiritual monad, whose self-consciousness and activity takes in the solar system. This monad is karmically bound to oversee the evolving career of the human ego; and this celestial parentage in the cosmic hierarchy makes humans literally children of the sun. Here, then, is the solution of the biological mystery of unfolding purpose which is so harmoniously worked out by the reproductive material of a single cell. This intelligent influence acts upon the embryo through the directive power of “the astral fluid, working through and in conjunction with the vital capacities and potentialities of the cell . . .” (MIE 217-8).

capacities ::: pl. --> of Capacity

Benkenmitsu nikyoron. (辯顯密二教論). In Japanese, literally "Distinguishing the Two Teachings of the Exoteric and Esoteric"; a relatively short treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGON monk KuKAI in the early ninth century. The text is commonly known more simply as the Nikyoron. As the title suggests, the central theme of the Benkenmitsu nikyoron is the elaboration of the difference between the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Buddhism and the demonstration of the latter's superiority. The text begins with a brief introduction, followed by a series of questions and answers, and a short conclusion. The Benkenmitsu nikyoron describes the relation between the exoteric teachings preached by the NIRMAnAKAYA of the Buddha and the esoteric teachings preached by his DHARMAKAYA as that between provisional words spoken according to the different capacities of sentient beings and ultimate truth. By meticulously citing scriptural references, such as the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, the Benkenmitsu nikyoron shows that the dharmakAya, like the nirmAnakAya and SAMBHOGAKAYA, can indeed preach and that it does so in a special language best articulated in such esoteric scriptures as the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA. Whereas the nirmAnakAya speaks the DHARMA with reference to the six perfections (PARAMITA), the dharmakAya employs the language of the three mysteries: the body, speech, and mind of MAHAVAIROCANA expressed in MUDRA, MANTRA, and MAndALA. Like many of kukai's other writings, the arguments presented in his Benkenmitsu nikyoron helped him legitimize the introduction and installment of the new teachings, now known as MIKKYo or esoteric Buddhism, which he had brought back from China. There are several commentaries on the text, including those composed by Seisen (1025-1115), Raiyu (1226-1304), Yukai (1345-1416), and Kaijo (1750-1805).

'Bras spungs. (Drepung). In Tibetan, literally "Rice Heap"; one of the three monastic seats (GDAN SA GSUM) of the DGE LUGS sect of Tibetan Buddhism; located eight kilometers west of the Tibetan capital of LHA SA. The monastery is named after the Dhanyakataka stupa in AMARAVATĪ in southern India, where the Buddha is said to have first taught the KALACAKRATANTRA. It was founded in 1416 by 'JAM DBYANGS CHOS RJE BKRA SHIS DPAL LDAN, one of TSONG KHA PA's leading disciples, and after only a few years in operation already housed over 2,000 monks. In the early sixteenth century, the second DALAI LAMA Dge 'dun rgya mtsho (Gendün Gyatso, 1475-1542) became the monastery's abbot; in 1530, he established a residence and political institution there called the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG or "Palace of TUsITA." Following him, Bsod nams grags pa (Sonam Drakpa, 1478-1554) became the abbot. Thereafter, until the ascendancy of the Dalai Lamas, the most powerful religious dignitaries in the monastery were the Dalai Lamas and the reincarnations of Bsod nams grags pa. In the seventeenth century, under the direction of the fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, the Dga' ldan pho brang (also known as the gzims khang 'og ma or "lower chambers" to distinguish it from the "upper chambers," gzims khang gong ma, where the incarnations of Bsod nams grags pa resided), was moved to the PO TA LA palace. There it functioned as the seat of the Tibetan government until the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959. The monastery is an enormous complex of assembly halls, temples, chapels, living quarters and mountain hermitages. At the time of the fifth Dalai Lama, 'Bras spungs housed over 10,000 monks divided into seven (and later four) colleges (grwa tshang), more than fifty regional dormitories (khams tshan), and occupied an area of some 180,000 square feet, easily forming the largest monastery in Tibet. At the height of its florescence, 'Bras spungs drew applicants from all quarters of the Tibetan cultural world including the far east and northeast in A mdo, as well as Mongolia, Kalmykia, and Buryatia. The monastery was large enough to accommodate individuals of a wide range of capacities and interests. A large percentage of its monks engaged in little formal intellectual study, instead choosing to work for the institution as laborers, cooks, and ritual assistants. Even so, 'Bras spungs's numerous monastic colleges also attracted some of Tibet's most talented and gifted scholars, producing a line of elite academicians and authors. The complex was sacked a number of times, first by the King of Gtsang (Tsang) during a civil war in 1618, then by the Mongol army in 1635, and again by Lha bzang Khan in 1706. It was most recently plundered by the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Cultural Revolution but opened again in 1980 with five hundred monks.

Capacity:Any ability, potentiality, power or talent possessed by anything, either to act or to suffer. It may be innate or acquired, dormant or active. The topic of capacity figures, in the main, in two branches of philosophy: (a) in metaphysics, as in Aristotle's discussion of potentiality and actuality, (b) in ethics, where an agent's capacities are usually regarded as having some bearing on the question as to what his duties are. -- W.K.F.

Characterology: This name originally was used for types; thus in Aristotle and Theophrastus, and even much later, e.g. in La Bruyere. Gradually it came to signify something individual; a development paralleled by the replacement of "typical" figures on the stage by individualities. There is no agreement, even today, on the definition; confusion reigns especially because of an insufficient distinction between character, personality, and person. But all agree that character manifests itself in the behavior of a person. One can distinguish a merely descriptive approach, one of classification, and one of interpretation. The general viewpoints of interpretation influence also description and classification, since they determine what is considered "important" and lay down the rules by which to distinguish and to classify. One narrow interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of inborn properties, rooted in organic constitution; character is considered, therefore, as essentially unchangeable and predetermined. The attempts at establishing correlations between character and body-build (Kretschmer a.o.) are a special form of such narrow interpretation. It makes but little difference if, besides inborn properties, the influence of environmental factors is acknowledged. The rationalistic interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of convictions. These convictions are seen as purely intellectual in extreme rationalism (virtue is knowledge, Socrates), or as referring to the value-aspect of reality which is conceived as apprehended by other than merely intellectual operations. Thus, Spranger gives a classification according to the "central values" dominating a man's behavior. (Allport has devised practical methods of character study on this basis.) Since the idea a person has of values and their order may change, character is conceived as essentially mutable, even if far going changes may be unfrequent. Character-education is the practical application of the principles of characterology and thus depends on the general idea an author holds in regard to human nature. Character is probably best defined as the individual's way of preferring or rejecting values. It depends on the innate capacities of value-apprehension and on the way these values are presented to the individual. Therefore the enormous influence of social factors. -- R.A.

  “Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, and having merely the passive capacities. Brahma, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts; when, obeying the command, he made ‘inferior and superior’ (avara and vara) progeny (putra), Bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will gave birth to females. . . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Danavas (Titans and demon Magicians) and other beings.

database management system "database" (DBMS) A suite of programs which typically manage large structured sets of persistent data, offering ad hoc query facilities to many users. They are widely used in business applications. A database management system (DBMS) can be an extremely complex set of software programs that controls the organisation, storage and retrieval of data (fields, records and files) in a database. It also controls the security and integrity of the database. The DBMS accepts requests for data from the application program and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data. When a DBMS is used, information systems can be changed much more easily as the organisation's information requirements change. New categories of data can be added to the database without disruption to the existing system. Data security prevents unauthorised users from viewing or updating the database. Using passwords, users are allowed access to the entire database or subsets of the database, called subschemas (pronounced "sub-skeema"). For example, an employee database can contain all the data about an individual employee, but one group of users may be authorised to view only payroll data, while others are allowed access to only work history and medical data. The DBMS can maintain the integrity of the database by not allowing more than one user to update the same record at the same time. The DBMS can keep duplicate records out of the database; for example, no two customers with the same customer numbers (key fields) can be entered into the database. {Query languages} and {report writers} allow users to interactively interrogate the database and analyse its data. If the DBMS provides a way to interactively enter and update the database, as well as interrogate it, this capability allows for managing personal databases. However, it may not leave an audit trail of actions or provide the kinds of controls necessary in a multi-user organisation. These controls are only available when a set of application programs are customised for each data entry and updating function. A business information system is made up of subjects (customers, employees, vendors, etc.) and activities (orders, payments, purchases, etc.). Database design is the process of deciding how to organize this data into record types and how the record types will relate to each other. The DBMS should mirror the organisation's data structure and process transactions efficiently. Organisations may use one kind of DBMS for daily transaction processing and then move the detail onto another computer that uses another DBMS better suited for random inquiries and analysis. Overall systems design decisions are performed by data administrators and systems analysts. Detailed database design is performed by database administrators. The three most common organisations are the {hierarchical database}, {network database} and {relational database}. A database management system may provide one, two or all three methods. Inverted lists and other methods are also used. The most suitable structure depends on the application and on the transaction rate and the number of inquiries that will be made. Database machines are specially designed computers that hold the actual databases and run only the DBMS and related software. Connected to one or more mainframes via a high-speed channel, database machines are used in large volume transaction processing environments. Database machines have a large number of DBMS functions built into the hardware and also provide special techniques for accessing the disks containing the databases, such as using multiple processors concurrently for high-speed searches. The world of information is made up of data, text, pictures and voice. Many DBMSs manage text as well as data, but very few manage both with equal proficiency. Throughout the 1990s, as storage capacities continue to increase, DBMSs will begin to integrate all forms of information. Eventually, it will be common for a database to handle data, text, graphics, voice and video with the same ease as today's systems handle data. See also: {intelligent database}. (1998-10-07)

ekayāna. (T. theg pa gcig pa; C. yisheng; J. ichijo; K. ilsŭng 一乘). In Sanskrit, lit. "one vehicle" or "single vehicle." "Vehicle" literally means "conveyance" or "transportation," viz., the conveyance that carries sentient beings from SAMSĀRA to NIRVĀnA; the term may also refer to the actual person who reaches the destination of the path. The doctrine of a single vehicle is set forth in certain MAHĀYĀNA SuTRAs, most famously, the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), which declares that the three vehicles of the sRĀVAKA (disciple), PRATYEKABUDDHA (solitary buddha), and BODHISATTVA are actually just three expedient devices (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) for attracting beings to the one buddha vehicle, via which they all become buddhas. It is important to note that, although it is often claimed that a central tenet of the MAHĀYĀNA is that all sentient beings will eventually achieve buddhahood, this view is not universally set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras and philosophical schools. A number of important sutras, notably the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, maintained that there are three final vehicles and that those who successfully followed the path of the srāvaka and pratyekabuddha would eventually become ARHATs and would not then go on to achieve buddhahood (cf. GOTRA; BUDDHADHĀTU). This position was also held by such major YOGĀCĀRA figures as ASAnGA. In the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, however, the Buddha reveals that his earlier teachings of the three vehicles were in fact three expedient forms suited to specific beings' capacities; the sutra's exposition of the one buddha vehicle is said to be the unifying, complete, and final exposition of his teachings. Since this one-vehicle teaching is the teaching that leads to buddhahood, it is synonymous with the "buddha vehicle" (BUDDHAYĀNA), the "great vehicle" (MAHĀYĀNA), and sometimes the "bodhisattva vehicle" (BODHISATTVAYĀNA). In East Asia, there was substantial consideration given to the precise relations among these terms. Thus, the FAXIANG school of Chinese YOGĀCĀRA interprets the "one vehicle" of the three-vehicle system as being equivalent to the bodhisattva vehicle, while the HUAYAN and TIANTAI schools distinguish between the one buddha vehicle and the bodhisattva vehicle that is included within the three vehicles. The Faxiang school also distinguishes between two levels of the ekayāna, the "inclusive" Mahāyāna (sheru dasheng) and the "derivative" Mahāyāna (chusheng dasheng). According to the explanation of KUIJI (632-682), the first is an expedient like that used in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra to attract people of indeterminate nature to the one buddha vehicle. Because this type of sentient being is incapable of immediately attaining buddhahood, this teaching does not fully correspond to the meaning of the ekayāna. However, because all members of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra's audience have the potential to become buddhas through hearing this teaching, it is still considered to be true and effective. The second type means that all teachings of the Buddha are "born from" or "derive from" a single Mahāyāna teaching; Kuiji says that this type corresponds to the teaching of the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA and the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA.

Energism: (Lat. energia, active) Ethical theory that right action consists in exercising one's normal capacities efficiently. Not happiness or pleasure, but self-realization is the aim of ethical action. -- A.J.B.

ESOTERIC HISTORY AFTER 1875 The instrument the planetary hierarchy had chosen for the task of publicizing the knowledge which had been kept secret since Atlantis was H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891). Blavatsky was enjoined not to give out any esoteric facts without special permission in each individual case. She was not to mention anything about the planetary hierarchy.

The truth, or the knowledge of reality, is only to be given gradually, with sparing facts, to a mankind unprepared to receive it. It is necessary to find connections to established fictions of which people have heard enough for them to believe that they comprehend what it all is about. A new, revolutionary system of ideas would be rejected off hand as a mere fantastic invention. It could not be comprehended, let alone understood, without careful preparation.

The most important reason, which probably only esotericians are able to understand, is the fact of the dynamic energy of ideas.

Once the esoteric knowledge was permitted to be published there was no longer any need of initiation into the old knowledge orders, nobody having been initiated into anyone of them since 1875. Although those initiated in previous incarnations were not given the opportunity to revive all their old knowledge, enough was made known, and besides hinted at, for them to be able to discover the most essential by themselves.

The most important esoteric facts to be found in the works of Sinnett, Judge, and
Hartmann &


Exabyte "company, storage" A company and, by extension, a tape format for computer data backup and transfer. The tape is a data quality 8mm video cassette recorder tape. Exabyte units can store between five and fourteen {gigabytes} of data per tape. Exabytes are usually attached to {Unix} {workstations}. [What different tape capacities exist? Compare with DAT?] (1995-07-06)

Exabyte ::: (company, storage) A company and, by extension, a tape format for computer data backup and transfer. The tape is a data quality 8mm video cassette recorder tape. Exabyte units can store between five and fourteen gigabytes of data per tape. Exabytes are usually attached to Unix workstations.[What different tape capacities exist? Compare with DAT?] (1995-07-06)

extend ::: v. t. --> To stretch out; to prolong in space; to carry forward or continue in length; as, to extend a line in surveying; to extend a cord across the street.
To enlarge, as a surface or volume; to expand; to spread; to amplify; as, to extend metal plates by hammering or rolling them.
To enlarge; to widen; to carry out further; as, to extend the capacities, the sphere of usefulness, or commerce; to extend


Free Will The inherent power or capacity of choice, divine in its origin, which every being in the kosmos exercises in some degree as, consciously or unself-consciously, it evolves forth its essential self. Every thing and being has its own essential characteristic or svabhava and, the universal urge being towards self-expression and self-consciousness, of necessity each has its relative share of inherent free will with which to work out its destiny. Since evolution is a coming forth of the involved monadic essence, the unfolding of inner capacities and attributes, it cannot be produced, however stimulated, by something outside of itself. The one divine will is the force behind evolution on all planes of manifestation throughout the kosmos. Hence, each entity, as a unit of the divine All, has its portion of free choice and power to bring forth what is within itself.

  “He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he ‘saw it as in a great Deep in the Eternal.’ He had ‘a thorough view of the universe, as in a chaos,’ which yet ‘opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young plant.’ He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and the spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God; ‘Man must acknowledge,’ he writes, ‘that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.’ Had this great Theosophist mastered Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then that the ‘god’ who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not in ‘what measure he pleased,’ but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed” (TG 60).

Hostile attacks very ordinarily become violent when the pro- gress is becoming rapid and on the way to be definite — espe- cially if they find they cannot carry out an effective aggression into the inner being, they try to shake by outside assaults. One must take it as a trial of strength, a call for gathering all one’s capacities of calm and openness to the Light and Power, so as to make oneself an instrument for the victory of the Divine over the undivine.

Huayan jing suishu yanyi chao. (J. Kegongyo zuisho engisho; K. Hwaom kyong suso yonŭi ch'o 華嚴經随疏演義鈔). In Chinese, "Autocommentary to the Exegesis of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA," a ninety-roll autocommentary by the Huayan patriarch CHENGGUAN to his own sixty-roll exegesis of the AvataMsakasutra, the HUAYAN JING SHU; this massive work provides the most exhaustive presentation of Chengguan's thought in his oeuvre. In the autocommentary, Chengguan provides a general overview of the history and thought of the HUAYAN tradition, along with a painstaking line-by-line commentary to the text of the AvataMsakasutra. Chengguan explains the rise of the Huayan teachings and offers a classification of teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI). These sections are followed by an explanation of such seminal Huayan doctrines as the dependent origination of the DHARMADHĀTU (FAJIE YUANQI). Chengguan also outlines the different capacities of sentient beings and provides a summary of the teachings of the different exegetical traditions in China. A comparative study of the various Chinese translations of the AvataMsakasutra follows, culminating in an analysis of the title of the sutra. The autocommentary then follows with a detailed treatment of specific passages in the sutra. Chengguan's attempt to define clearly the boundaries between the different traditions of Buddhism, as well as his emphasis on a distinctively Huayan style of meditation, are noteworthy aspects of his commentary.

IBM PC "computer" International Business Machines Personal Computer. IBM PCs and compatible models from other vendors are the most widely used computer systems in the world. They are typically single user {personal computers}, although they have been adapted into multi-user models for special applications. Note: "IBM PC" is used in this dictionary to denote IBM and compatible personal computers, and to distinguish these from other {personal computers}, though the phrase "PC" is often used elsewhere, by those who know no better, to mean "IBM PC or compatible". There are hundreds of models of IBM compatible computers. They are based on {Intel}'s {microprocessors}: {Intel 8086}, {Intel 8088}, {Intel 80286}, {Intel 80386}, {Intel 486} or {Pentium}. The models of IBM's first-generation Personal Computer (PC) series have names: IBM PC, {IBM PC XT}, {IBM PC AT}, Convertible and Portable. The models of its second generation, the Personal System/2 ({PS/2}), are known by model number: Model 25, Model 30. Within each series, the models are also commonly referenced by their {CPU} {clock rate}. All IBM personal computers are software compatible with each other in general, but not every program will work in every machine. Some programs are time sensitive to a particular speed class. Older programs will not take advantage of newer higher-resolution {display standards}. The speed of the {CPU} ({microprocessor}) is the most significant factor in machine performance. It is determined by its {clock rate} and the number of bits it can process internally. It is also determined by the number of bits it transfers across its {data bus}. The second major performance factor is the speed of the {hard disk}. {CAD} and other graphics-intensive {application programs} can be sped up with the addition of a mathematics {coprocessor}, a chip which plugs into a special socket available in almost all machines. {Intel 8086} and {Intel 8088}-based PCs require {EMS} (expanded memory) boards to work with more than one megabyte of memory. All these machines run under {MS-DOS}. The original {IBM PC AT} used an {Intel 80286} processor which can access up to 16 megabytes of memory (though standard {MS-DOS} applications cannot use more than one megabyte without {EMS}). {Intel 80286}-based computers running under {OS/2} can work with the maximum memory. Although IBM sells {printers} for PCs, most printers will work with them. As with display hardware, the software vendor must support a wide variety of printers. Each program must be installed with the appropriate {printer driver}. The original 1981 IBM PC's keyboard was severely criticised by typists for its non-standard placement of the return and left shift keys. In 1984, IBM corrected this on its AT keyboard, but shortened the backspace key, making it harder to reach. In 1987, it introduced its Enhanced keyboard, which relocated all the function keys and placed the control key in an awkward location for touch typists. The escape key was relocated to the opposite side of the keyboard. By relocating the function keys, IBM made it impossible for software vendors to use them intelligently. What's easy to reach on one keyboard is difficult on the other, and vice versa. To the touch typist, these deficiencies are maddening. An "IBM PC compatible" may have a keyboard which does not recognize every key combination a true IBM PC does, e.g. shifted cursor keys. In addition, the "compatible" vendors sometimes use proprietary keyboard interfaces, preventing you from replacing the keyboard. The 1981 PC had 360K {floppy disks}. In 1984, IBM introduced the 1.2 megabyte floppy disk along with its AT model. Although often used as {backup} storage, the high density floppy is not often used for interchangeability. In 1986, IBM introduced the 720K 3.5" microfloppy disk on its Convertible {laptop computer}. It introduced the 1.44 megabyte double density version with the PS/2 line. These disk drives can be added to existing PCs. Fixed, non-removable, {hard disks} for IBM compatibles are available with storage capacities from 20 to over 600 megabytes. If a hard disk is added that is not compatible with the existing {disk controller}, a new controller board must be plugged in. However, one disk's internal standard does not conflict with another, since all programs and data must be copied onto it to begin with. Removable hard disks that hold at least 20 megabytes are also available. When a new peripheral device, such as a {monitor} or {scanner}, is added to an IBM compatible, a corresponding, new controller board must be plugged into an {expansion slot} (in the bus) in order to electronically control its operation. The PC and XT had eight-bit busses; the AT had a 16-bit bus. 16-bit boards will not fit into 8-bit slots, but 8-bit boards will fit into 16-bit slots. {Intel 80286} and {Intel 80386} computers provide both 8-bit and 16-bit slots, while the 386s also have proprietary 32-bit memory slots. The bus in high-end models of the PS/2 line is called "{Micro Channel}". {EISA} is a non-IBM rival to Micro Channel. The original IBM PC came with {BASIC} in {ROM}. Later, Basic and BasicA were distributed on floppy but ran and referenced routines in ROM. IBM PC and PS/2 models PC range Intro CPU Features PC Aug 1981 8088 Floppy disk system XT Mar 1983 8088 Slow hard disk XT/370 Oct 1983 8088 IBM 370 mainframe emulation 3270 PC Oct 1983 8088 with 3270 terminal emulation PCjr Nov 1983 8088 Floppy-based home computer PC Portable Feb 1984 8088 Floppy-based portable AT Aug 1984 286 Medium-speed hard disk Convertible Apr 1986 8088 Microfloppy laptop portable XT 286 Sep 1986 286 Slow hard disk PS/2 range Intro CPU Features Model 1987-08-25 8086 PC bus (limited expansion) Model 1987-04-30 8086 PC bus Model 30 1988-09-286 286 PC bus Model 1987-04-50 286 Micro Channel bus Model 50Z Jun 1988 286 Faster Model 50 Model 55 SX May 1989 386SX Micro Channel bus Model 1987-04-60 286 Micro Channel bus Model 1988-06-70 386 Desktop, Micro Channel bus Model P1989-05-70 386 Portable, Micro Channel bus Model 1987-04-80 386 Tower, Micro Channel bus IBM PC compatible specifications CPU CPU  Clock  Bus   Floppy Hard    bus  speed width RAM  disk disk OS    bit  Mhz   bit byte  inch byte Mbyte 8088 16  4.8-9.5 8  1M*   5.25 360K 10-40 DOS    3.5 720K    3.5 1.44M 8086 16   6-12   16  1M* 20-60 286 16   6-25   16 1-8M*  5.25 360K 20-300 DOS    5.25 1.2M OS/2 386 32   16-33  32 1-16M** 3.5 720K Unix    3.5 1.44M 40-600 386SX 32   16-33  16 1-16M** 40-600 *Under DOS, RAM is expanded beyond 1M with EMS memory boards **Under DOS, RAM is expanded beyond 1M with normal "extended" memory and a memory management program. See also {BIOS}, {display standard}. (1995-05-12)

IBM PC ::: (computer) International Business Machines Personal Computer.IBM PCs and compatible models from other vendors are the most widely used computer systems in the world. They are typically single user personal computers, although they have been adapted into multi-user models for special applications.Note: IBM PC is used in this dictionary to denote IBM and compatible personal computers, and to distinguish these from other personal computers, though the phrase PC is often used elsewhere, by those who know no better, to mean IBM PC or compatible.There are hundreds of models of IBM compatible computers. They are based on Intel's microprocessors: Intel 8086, Intel 8088, Intel 80286, Intel 80386, Intel model number: Model 25, Model 30. Within each series, the models are also commonly referenced by their CPU clock rate.All IBM personal computers are software compatible with each other in general, but not every program will work in every machine. Some programs are time sensitive to a particular speed class. Older programs will not take advantage of newer higher-resolution display standards.The speed of the CPU (microprocessor) is the most significant factor in machine performance. It is determined by its clock rate and the number of bits it can across its data bus. The second major performance factor is the speed of the hard disk.CAD and other graphics-intensive application programs can be sped up with the addition of a mathematics coprocessor, a chip which plugs into a special socket available in almost all machines.Intel 8086 and Intel 8088-based PCs require EMS (expanded memory) boards to work with more than one megabyte of memory. All these machines run under MS-DOS. The one megabyte without EMS). Intel 80286-based computers running under OS/2 can work with the maximum memory.Although IBM sells printers for PCs, most printers will work with them. As with display hardware, the software vendor must support a wide variety of printers. Each program must be installed with the appropriate printer driver.The original 1981 IBM PC's keyboard was severely criticised by typists for its non-standard placement of the return and left shift keys. In 1984, IBM corrected them intelligently. What's easy to reach on one keyboard is difficult on the other, and vice versa. To the touch typist, these deficiencies are maddening.An IBM PC compatible may have a keyboard which does not recognize every key combination a true IBM PC does, e.g. shifted cursor keys. In addition, the compatible vendors sometimes use proprietary keyboard interfaces, preventing you from replacing the keyboard.The 1981 PC had 360K floppy disks. In 1984, IBM introduced the 1.2 megabyte floppy disk along with its AT model. Although often used as backup storage, the introduced the 1.44 megabyte double density version with the PS/2 line. These disk drives can be added to existing PCs.Fixed, non-removable, hard disks for IBM compatibles are available with storage capacities from 20 to over 600 megabytes. If a hard disk is added that is not another, since all programs and data must be copied onto it to begin with. Removable hard disks that hold at least 20 megabytes are also available.When a new peripheral device, such as a monitor or scanner, is added to an IBM compatible, a corresponding, new controller board must be plugged into an the PS/2 line is called Micro Channel. EISA is a non-IBM rival to Micro Channel.The original IBM PC came with BASIC in ROM. Later, Basic and BasicA were distributed on floppy but ran and referenced routines in ROM.IBM PC and PS/2 modelsPC range Intro CPU FeaturesPC Aug 1981 8088 Floppy disk system PS/2 range Intro CPU FeaturesModel 1987-08-25 8086 PC bus (limited expansion) IBM PC compatible specifications CPU CPU Clock Bus Floppy Hardbus speed width RAM disk disk OS *Under DOS, RAM is expanded beyond 1M with EMS memory boards**Under DOS, RAM is expanded beyond 1M with normal extended memory and a memory management program.See also BIOS, display standard. (1995-05-12)

incapacities ::: pl. --> of Incapacity

indriya. (T. dbang po; C. gen; J. kon; K. kŭn 根). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "faculty," "dominant," or "predominant factor"; a polysemous term of wide import in Buddhist soteriological and epistemological literature. In the SuTRA literature, indriya typically refers to the five or six sense bases: e.g., the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile faculties associated with the physical sense organs and the mental base associated with the mind; in the case of the physical senses, the indriya are forms of subtle matter located within the organs of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body that enable the functioning of the senses. The mind (MANAS) is typically listed as a sixth, internal sensory faculty. The six sense faculties (sadindriya) are subsumed as well within the list of the twelve ĀYATANA (sense-fields) and eighteen DHĀTU (elements). ¶ Indriya is also used soteriologically to describe the five "dominants" or "spiritual faculties" that are crucial to development along the path: faith (sRADDHĀ), effort (VĪRYA), mindfulness (SMṚTI), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). These two denotations for indriya are subsumed by the VAIBHĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA abhidharma into a more extensive list of twenty-two faculties: (1-5) the five physical sense faculties, which are the predominant factors in the rise of the sensory consciousnesses, etc.; (6-7) the "female" (strīndriya) and "male" (purusendriya) faculties, which are the predominant factors in distinguishing sex organs and marking physical gender; (8) the "life force" (jīvitendriya; see JĪVITA), the predominant factor in birth and prolonging the physical continuum up through the "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA); (9) the mental faculty (MANENDRIYA), the predominant factor that governs both rebirth and the associations between an individual and the world at large; (10-14) the five faculties of sensation or feeling-viz., pleasure (SUKHA), suffering (DUḤKHA), satisfaction (saumanasya), dissatisfaction (daurmanasya), and indifference (UPEKsĀ)-the predominant factors with regard to contamination (SAMKLEsA), for passions such as attachment, hatred, conceit, delusion, etc., attach themselves to these five sensations, creating bondage to worldly objects; (15-22) the eight faculties-viz., the five moral faculties of faith (sraddhā), energy (vīrya), mindfulness (smṛti), concentration (samādhi), and wisdom (prajNā), and the three immaculate faculties of (1) anājNātam ājNāsyāmī 'ndriyam ("the faculty of resolving to understand that which is yet to be understood"), (2) ājNātendriya ("the faculty of having understood"), and (3) ājNātāvīndriya ("the faculty of perfecting one's understanding")-which are the predominant factors regarding purification (VIsUDDHI); this is because the five moral faculties are the predominant factors that purify beings of their bondage to worldly objects and offer access to NIRVĀnA, and the three immaculate faculties are the predominant factors in the origin, duration, and enjoyment of nirvāna. ¶ Indriya is also used to refer to "three capacities" (see TRĪNDRIYA) of the disciples of the Buddha or of a particular teaching, based on their level of aptitude or capacity for understanding: viz., those of dull faculties (MṚDVINDRIYA), those of intermediate faculties (MADHYENDRIYA), and those of sharp faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA).

Initiate: One admitted to knowledge of occult mysteries and secrets; one who has acquired occult powers by systematically developing his superphysical capacities.

intellected ::: a. --> Endowed with intellect; having intellectual powers or capacities.

Involution ::: The reverse process or procedure of evolution. As evolution means the unfolding, the unwrapping, therolling forth, of what already exists and is latent, so involution means the inwrapping, the infolding, theingoing of what previously exists or has been unfolded, etc. Involution and evolution never in anycircumstances can be even conceived of properly as operative the one apart from the other: every act ofevolution is an act of involution, and vice versa. To illustrate, as spirit and matter are fundamentally oneand yet eternally coactive and interactive, so involution and evolution are two names for two phases ofthe same procedure of growth, and are eternally coactive and interactive. As an example, the so-calleddescent of the monads into matter means an involution or involving or infolding of spiritual potenciesinto material vehicles which coincidently and contemporaneously, through the compelling urge of theinfolding energies, unfold their own latent capacities, unwrap them, roll them forth; and this is theevolution of matter. Thus what is the involution of spirit is contemporaneously and pari passu theevolution of matter. Contrariwise, on the ascending or luminous arc when the involved monadic essencesbegin to rise towards their primordial spiritual source they begin to unfold or unwrap themselves aspreviously on the descending arc they had infolded or inwrapped themselves. But this process ofunfolding or evolution of the monadic essences is contemporaneous with and pari passu with theinfolding and inwrapping, the involution, of the material energies and powers.Human birth and death are outstanding illustrations or examples of the same thing. The child is born, andas it grows to its full efflorescence of power it evolves or rolls forth certain inherent characteristics orenergies or faculties, all derived from the human being's svabhava or ego. Contrariwise, when the declineof human life begins, there is a slow infolding or inwrapping of these same facilities which thus seemgradually to diminish. These facilities and energies thus evolved forth in earth-life are the working of theinnate spiritual and intellectual and psychical characteristics impelling and compelling the vehicular orbody sides of the human constitution to express themselves as organs becoming more and more perfectas the child grows to maturity.After death the process is exactly the reverse. The material or vehicular side of the being grows less andless strong and powerful, more and more involved, and becoming with every step in the process moredormant. But contemporaneously and coincidently the distinctly spiritual and intellectual powers andfaculties themselves become released from the vehicles and begin to expand into ever largerefflorescence, attaining their maximum in the devachan. It is only the usual carelessness in accuratethinking that induces the idea that evolution is one distinct process acting alone, and that involution -about which by the way very little is heard -- is another process acting alone. The two, as said above, arethe two phases of activity of the evolving monads, and these phases exist contemporaneously at anymoment, each of the two phases continually acting and interacting with the other phase. They areinseparable.Just so with spirit and matter. Spirit is not something radically distinct from and utterly separate frommatter. The two are fundamentally one, and the two are eternally coactive and interactive.There are several terms in Sanskrit which correspond to what the theosophist means by evolution, butperhaps the best general term is pravritti, meaning to "revolve" or to "roll forwards," to unroll or tounwrap. Again, the reverse procedure or involution can probably best be expressed in Sanskrit by theterm nivritti, meaning "rolling backwards" or "inwrapping" or "infolding." A term which is frequentlyinterchangeable with evolution is emanation. (See also Evolution)

Karmendriya: In Hinduism and occult philosophy, one of the five indriyas (q.v.) or powers of action, reactive or muscular senses, corresponding to the physiological capacities of expression or speech, seizing or handling, locomotion, excretion, and sexual activity.

Karmendriya: (Skr.) One of the five indriyas (q.v.) or powers of action, reactive or muscular senses, corresponding to the physiological capacities of expression or speech, seizing or handling, locomotion, excretion, and sexual activity. -- K.F.L.

lines ::: Relatively independent streams or capacities that proceed through levels of development. Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences is one example of the study of developmental lines. There is evidence for over a dozen developmental lines, including cognitive, moral, self-identity, aesthetic, kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, and mathematical. Integral Theory generally classifies these lines according to one of three types: cognitive lines (as studied by Jean Piaget, Robert Kegan, Kurt Fischer, etc.); selfrelated lines (e.g., morals, self-identity, needs, etc.); and capacities or talents (e.g., musical capacity, kinesthetic capacity, introspective capacity). Cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for development in the self-related lines and appears to be necessary for most of the capacities.

Mahāsīhanādasutta. (C. Shenmao xishu jing; J. Shinmokijukyo; K. Sinmo hŭisu kyong 身毛喜豎經). In Pāli, the "Great Discourse on the Lion's Roar"; the twelfth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (Sanskrit fragments of small portions of the scripture are extant; no version is included in the Chinese translations of the ĀGAMAs, but there is an independent translation attributed to Weijing titled the Shenmao xishu jing, or "Horripilation Sutra"); preached by the Buddha to Sāriputta (sĀRIPUTRA) in response to criticisms made by Sunakkhatta, a former disciple who charged that the Buddha was not endowed with supranormal powers. The Buddha states that because of his limited capacities, Sunakkhatta was unable to perceive the Buddha's ten powers, four kinds of self-confidence, and the nondecline of his omniscience. He then describes the meritorious deeds that give rise to these powers and the wrong views of the naked JAINA ascetics with whom Sunakkhatta had taken up residence. The Buddha declares that those who claim that the Buddha's insights are simply his own ideas and that he lacks supranormal powers will be reborn in the hells. ¶ A different Mahāsīhanādasutta also appears as the eighth sutta in the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA, where it is an alternate title for the KASSAPASĪHANĀDASUTTANTA ("Lion's Roar of Kassapa/Kasyapa"); see KASSAPASĪHANĀDASUTTANTA.

Men tvith great capacities or «i tw. r . vital have yen- often more glaring dSeem “ f eh"'' nary men or at least the defeats of the huf 7 " "‘''■

mṛdvindriya. (T. dbang po rtul ba; C. dungen; J. donkon; K. tun'gŭn 鈍根). In Sanskrit, "dull faculties"; the lowest of the "three capacities" (TRĪNDRIYA) used to describe those disciples of the Buddha whose intellectual and spiritual abilities are lesser than those with "average faculties" (MADYENDRIYA) and "sharp faculties" (TĪKsnENDRIYA). The "follower of faith" (sRADDHĀNUSĀRIN) who enters into practice more quickly than the "follower of dharma" (DHARMĀNUSĀRIN), without first investigating whether the practice will deliver the result, is the archetypal mṛdvindriya person. The term appears in discussions of UPĀYA, the Buddha's skill at adapting his teachings to the intellects, interests, and aspirations of his disciples. The Buddha offers the simplest teachings, such as that the practice of charity (DĀNA) and morality (sĪLA), which result in a favorable rebirth as a divinity or human, to those of lesser faculties, understanding that such disciples are initially incapable of understanding more sophisticated teachings. The term is also put to polemical use, describing the adherents of competing schools who mistakenly think that their understanding of the doctrine is the Buddha's highest teaching. In the MAHĀYĀNA, those with "dull faculties" do not gain the irreversible (AVAIVARTIKA) stage until a later stage of the path.

Mulapariyāyasutta. (C. Xiang jing; J. Sokyo; K. Sang kyong 想經). In Pāli, "Discourse on the Root Instruction" or the "Roots of Phenomena"; the first sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (an untitled recension of uncertain affiliation appears in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA; there is also a related SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension that appears as the 102nd SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA). Preached to a gathering of monks in Ukkatthā, the Buddha explains the basis of all phenomena under twenty-four categories (e.g., the four material elements, the heavens, sensory cognition, etc.), noting that the nature of these phenomena is truly knowable only by a TATHĀGATA. The Buddha describes the different cognitive capacities of four types of persons: ordinary worldlings (PṚTHAGJANA), disciples engaged in higher training, worthy ones (ARHAT), and perfect buddhas (SAMYAKSAMBUDDHA).

ojo yoshu. (C. Wangsheng yao ji 往生要集). In Japanese, "Collection of Essentials on Going to Rebirth" [in the pure land]; one of the most influential Japanese treatises on the practice of nenbutsu (C. NIANFO) and the soteriological goal of rebirth in the PURE LAND, composed by the Japanese TENDAISHu monk GENSHIN at the Shuryogon'in at YOKAWA on HIEIZAN in 985. The ojo yoshu offers a systematic overview of pure land thought and practice, using extensive passages culled from various scriptures and treatises, especially the writings of the Chinese pure land monks DAOCHUO and SHANDAO. Genshin's collection is divided into ten sections: departing from the defiled realm, seeking (rebirth) in the pure land; evidence for (the existence of) SUKHĀVATĪ; the proper practice of nenbutsu methods for assisting mindfulness; special nenbutsu (betsuji nenbutsu); the benefits of nenbutsu; evidence for the results forthcoming from nenbutsu; the fruits of rebirth in the pure land; and a series of miscellaneous questions and answers. Genshin contends that the practice of nenbutsu is relatively easy for everyone and is appropriate for people during the degenerate age of the final dharma (J. mappo; see MOFA), especially as a deathbed practice. Genshin also recommended the chanting of the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA to those of lower spiritual capacity (a total of nine spiritual capacities are posited by Genshin; cf. JIUPIN), and he regarded this practice as inferior to the contemplative practices described in the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING. Genshin's work was also famous for its description of SAMSĀRA, especially its vivid depiction of the hells (cf. NĀRAKA); his description inspired lurid paintings of the hells on Japanese screens. The ojo yoshu became popular among the Heian aristocracy; the text's view of the degenerate age (J. mappo; cf. C. MOFA) may have provided an explanation for the social upheaval at the end of the Heian period. The text also exerted substantial influence over the subsequent development of the pure land movements in the Tendai tradition on Mt. Hiei. The ojo yoshu also played an important role in laying the groundwork for an independent pure land tradition in Japan a century later. Several important commentaries on the ojo yoshu were prepared by the Japanese JoDOSHu monk HoNEN. In addition, the ojo yoshu was one of the few texts written in Japan that made its way to China, where it influenced the development of pure land Buddhism on the mainland.

parson ::: n. --> A person who represents a parish in its ecclesiastical and corporate capacities; hence, the rector or incumbent of a parochial church, who has full possession of all the rights thereof, with the cure of souls.
Any clergyman having ecclesiastical preferment; one who is in orders, or is licensed to preach; a preacher.


power ::: “Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” Letters on Yoga

power ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga

purusa. (P. purisa; T. skyes bu; C. ren/shifu/shenwo; J. nin/jifu/jinga; K. in/sabu/sina 人/士夫/神我). In Sanskrit, "person" or "being," a common term for an individual being or self in Indian literature. In the non-Buddhist Indian philosophical schools, especially SāMkhya, the term often refers to the imperishable self that persists from lifetime to lifetime. However, in Buddhist scholastic literature, the term tends to function as a synonym for PUDGALA, that is, the person or being created in each lifetime, which is the product of past action (KARMAN) and devoid of any perduring self (ĀTMAN). In less philosophical contexts, the term commonly means simply "man" or "(human) male." Thus, the Buddha is called a MAHĀPURUsA, "great man." One of the famous uses of the term in Buddhist literature is found in the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. In this work, Atisa divides all persons into three capacities (TRĪNDRIYA), based on their level of aspiration. Those who seek only happiness within SAMSĀRA, whether in this life or a future life, are classified as beings of lesser capacity (MṚDVINDRIYA). Those who seek liberation from rebirth for themselves alone are classified as beings of intermediate capacity (MADYENDRIYA). Those who seek to liberate all beings in the universe from suffering are beings of great capacity (TĪKsnENDRIYA). This threefold division provided the structure for TSONG KHA PA's LAM RIM CHEN MO.

  “Referred to as an enigmatical personage by modern writers. Frederic II., King of Prussia, used to say of him that he was a man whom no one had ever been able to make out. Many are his ‘biographies,’ and each is wilder than the other. By some he was regarded as an incarnate god, by others as a clever Alsatian Jew. One thing is certain, Count de St. Germain — whatever his real patronymic may have been — had a right to his name and title, for he had bought a property called San Germano, in the Italian Tyrol, and paid the Pope for the title. He was uncommonly handsome, and his enormous erudition and linguistic capacities are undeniable, for he spoke English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Swedish, Danish, and many Slavonian and Oriental languages, with equal facility with a native. He was extremely wealthy, never received a sou from anyone — in fact never accepted a glass of water or broke bread with anyone — but made most extravagant presents of superb jewellery to all his friends, even to the royal families of Europe. His proficiency in music was marvellous; he played on every instrument, the violin being his favourite. ‘St. Germain rivalled Paganinni himself,’ was said of him by an octogenarian Belgian in 1835, after hearing the ‘Genoese maestro.’ ‘It is St. Germain resurrected who plays the violin in the body of an Italian Skeleton,’ exclaimed a Lithuanian baron who had heard both.

Ring Employed in the early days of the Theosophical Society, especially in connection with the correspondence held by the mahatmas with A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume, to signify any one of the many evolutionary cyclings followed by the monads in and through the different kingdoms of nature, such as the elemental, mineral, vegetable, etc. Any group of such monads thus collected together is called a life-wave. Every one of the seven, ten, or twelve classes of monads must follow every one of such rings in order to evolve the karmic and latent powers and capacities involved in the monad and held by it as evolutionary tendencies or urges.

Saddharmapundarīkasutra. (T. Dam pa'i chos padma dkar po'i mdo; C. Miaofa lianhua jing/Fahua jing; J. Myohorengekyo/Hokekyo; K. Myobop yonhwa kyong/Pophwa kyong 妙法蓮華經/法華經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the White Lotus of the True Dharma," and known in English simply as the "Lotus Sutra"; perhaps the most influential of all MAHĀYĀNA sutras. The earliest portions of the text were probably composed as early as the first or second centuries of the Common Era; the text gained sufficient renown in India that a number of chapters were later interpolated into it. The sutra was translated into Chinese six times and three of those translations are extant. The earliest of those is that made by DHARMARAKsA, completed in 286. The most popular is that of KUMĀRAJĪVA in twenty-eight chapters, completed in 406. The sutra was translated into Tibetan in the early ninth century. Its first translation into a European language was that of EUGÈNE BURNOUF into French in 1852. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra is perhaps most famous for its parables, which present, in various versions, two of the sutra's most significant doctrines: skill-in-means (UPĀYA) and the immortality of the Buddha. In the parable of the burning house, a father lures his children from a conflagration by promising them three different carts, but when they emerge they find instead a single, magnificent cart. The three carts symbolize the sRĀVAKA vehicle, the PRATYEKABUDDHA vehicle, and the BODHISATTVA vehicle, while the one cart is the "one vehicle" (EKAYĀNA), the buddha vehicle (BUDDHAYĀNA). This parable indicates that the Buddha's previous teaching of three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) was a case of upāya, an "expedient device" or "skillful method" designed to attract persons of differing capacities to the dharma. In fact, there is only one vehicle, the vehicle whereby all beings proceed to buddhahood. In the parable of the conjured city, a group of weary travelers take rest in a magnificent city, only to be told later that it is a magical creation. This conjured city symbolizes the NIRVĀnA of the ARHAT; there is in fact no such nirvāna as a final goal in Buddhism, since all will eventually follow the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood. The apparently universalistic doctrine articulated by the sutra must be understood within the context of the sectarian polemics in which the sutra seems to have been written. The doctrine of upāya is intended in part to explain the apparent contradiction between the teachings that appear in earlier sutras and those of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The former are relegated to the category of mere expedients, with those who fail to accept the consummate teaching of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra as the authentic word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) repeatedly excoriated by the text itself. In a device common in Mahāyāna sutras, the sutra itself describes both the myriad benefits that accrue to those who recite, copy, and revere the sutra, as well as the misfortune that will befall those who fail to do so. The immortality of the Buddha is portrayed in the parable of the physician, in which a father feigns death in order to induce his sons to commit to memory an antidote to poison. The apparent death of the father is compared to the Buddha's entry into nirvāna, something which he only pretended to do in order to inspire his followers. Elsewhere in the sutra, the Buddha reveals that he did not achieve enlightenment as the prince Siddhārtha who left his palace, but in fact had achieved enlightenment eons before; the well-known version of his departure from the palace and successful quest for enlightenment were merely a display meant to inspire the world. The immortality of the Buddha (and other buddhas) is also demonstrated when a great STuPA emerges from the earth. When the door to the funerary reliquary is opened, ashes and bones are not found, as would be expected, but instead the living buddha PRABHuTARATNA, who appears in his stupa whenever the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is taught. sĀKYAMUNI joins him on his seat, demonstrating another central Mahāyāna doctrine, the simultaneous existence of multiple buddhas. Other famous events described in the sutra include the miraculous transformation of a NĀGA princess into a buddha after she presents a gem to sākyamuni and the tale of a bodhisattva who immolates himself in tribute to a previous buddha. The sutra contains several chapters that function as self-contained texts; the most popular of these is the chapter devoted to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA, which details his ability to rescue the faithful from various dangers. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential in East Asia, inspiring both a range of devotional practices as well as the creation of new Buddhist schools that had no Indian analogues. The devotional practices include those extolled by the sutra itself: receiving and keeping the sutra, reading it, memorizing and reciting it, copying it, and explicating it. In East Asia, there are numerous tales of the miraculous benefits of each of these practices. The practice of copying the sutra (or having it copied) was a particularly popular form of merit-making either for oneself or for departed family members. Also important, especially in China, was the practice of burning either a finger or one's entire body as an offering to the Buddha, emulating the self-immolation of the bodhisattva BHAIsAJYARĀJA in the twenty-third chapter (see SHESHEN). In the domain of doctrinal developments, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential across East Asia, its doctrine of upāya providing the rationale for the systems of doctrinal taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) that are pervasive in East Asian Buddhist schools. In China, the sutra was the central text of the TIANTAI ZONG, where it received detailed exegesis by a number of important figures. The school's founder, TIANTAI ZHIYI, divided the sutra into two equal parts. In the first fourteen chapters, which he called the "trace teaching" (C. jimen, J. SHAKUMON), sākyamuni appears as the historical buddha. In the remaining fourteen chapters, which Zhiyi called the "origin teaching" (C. benmen, J. HONMON), sākyamuni reveals his true nature as the primordial buddha who achieved enlightenment many eons ago. Zhiyi also drew on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra in elucidating two of his most famous doctrines: the three truths (SANDI, viz., emptiness, the provisional, and the mean) and the notion of YINIAN SANQIAN, or "the trichiliocosm in an instant of thought." In the TENDAISHu, the Japanese form of Tiantai, the sutra remained supremely important, providing the scriptural basis for the central doctrine of original enlightenment (HONGAKU) and the doctrine of "achieving buddhahood in this very body" (SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); in TAIMITSU, the tantric form of Tendai, sākyamuni Buddha was identified with MAHĀVAIROCANA. For the NICHIREN schools (and their offshoots, including SoKA GAKKAI), the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is not only its central text but is also considered to be the only valid Buddhist sutra for the degenerate age (J. mappo; see C. MOFA); the recitation of the sutra's title is the central practice in Nichiren (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo). See also SADĀPARIBHuTA.

Sanjie jiao. (J. Sangaikyo/Sankaikyo; K. Samgye kyo 三階教). In Chinese, often translated as the "Three Stages School," but more probably referring to the "School of the Third Stage." The Sanjie jiao was a Chinese religious movement that was inspired by the influential teachings of the Chinese monk XINXING (540-594). The community shared Xinxing's belief in the decline of the DHARMA (MOFA) and the concomitant decay of one's potential or capacity (genji) for attaining buddhahood. According to the Three Stages teachings, the capacities of sentient beings are roughly divided into the so-called three stages (sanjie). The first two stages, now past, are those of the one vehicle (YISHENG; cf. EKAYĀNA) or three vehicles (TRIYĀNA), during which correct views about Buddhism were still present in the world. The current "third stage" (i.e., the present) was characterized instead by the proliferation of false views and prejudices. Because people during this degenerate age of the dharma were inevitably mistaken in their perceptions of reality, it was impossible for them to make any correct distinctions, whether between right and wrong, good and evil, ordained and lay. To counter these inveterate tendencies toward discrimination, Sanjie jiao adherents were taught instead to treat all things as manifestations of the buddha-nature (FOXING), leading to a "universalist teaching" (pufa) of Buddhism that was presumed to have supplanted all the previous teachings of the religion. Xinxing advocated that almsgiving (DĀNA) was the epitome of Buddhist practice during the degenerate age of the dharma and that the true perfection of giving (DĀNAPĀRAMITĀ) meant that all people, monks and laypeople alike, should be making offerings to relieve the suffering to those most in need, including the poor, the orphaned, and the sick. In its radical reinterpretation of the practice of giving in Buddhism, even animals were considered to be a more appropriate object of charity than were buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks, or the three jewels (RATNATRAYA); members of the community were even said to bow down to dogs. As the only reliable practice during this degenerate third stage, the Sanjie jiao community institutionalized giving in the form of an "inexhaustible storehouse cloister" (WUJINZANG YUAN). Donations made to the inexhaustible storehouse established by the Three Stages community at the monastery Huadusi in Chang'an would be distributed again during times of famine. The offerings were also used to fund the restoration of monasteries and the performance of religious services (i.e., the reverence field of merit, C. jingtian), and to provide alms to the poor (i.e., the compassion field of merit, C. beitian; see PUnYAKsETRA). The inexhaustible storehouse also came to serve as a powerful money-lending institution. The Three Stages community was labeled a heresy during the persecution of Buddhism during the Tang dynasty and, in 713, the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756) issued an edict closing the inexhaustible storehouse due to charges of embezzlement; its scriptures were eventually labeled spurious (see APOCRYPHA) and dropped out of circulation, only to be rediscovered in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache. Despite these persecutions, the school continued to be influential for several more centuries.

Sankaracharya was also the founder of the Advaita-vedanta school of philosophy. The story of his life is very remarkable. He was born according to tradition in the 6th century BC, probably about 510. He lived, to be only 32 years old, but owing to his extraordinary capacities he accomplished many great and spiritual works for humanity. Probably most of the marvelous episodes recorded about his life are allegories of certain of his spiritual experiences and conquests, written in this form — as was the custom of students of the Mystery schools — in order to veil the deep mysteries of his life.

sanmitsu. (C. sanmi, K. sammil 三密). In Japanese, "three secrets" or "three mysteries"; an esoteric Buddhist teaching that posits that the body, speech, and mind of sentient beings, which are understood to be the source of the three forms of KARMAN in standard Buddhist doctrine, abide in a nondual relationship with the body, speech, and mind of MAHĀVAIROCANA, the DHARMAKĀYA buddha. All speech is therefore in actuality the speech of this buddha, all forms are his body, and all mental formations are at their root the mind of Mahāvairocana. The doctrine of the three mysteries appears in various strata of MAHĀYĀNA materials, but is featured most prominently in esoteric literature. In China, TIANTAI thinkers such as TIANTAI ZHIYI and ZHANRAN argued that the Buddha taught via his NIRMĀnAKĀYA, SAMBHOGAKĀYA, or dharmakāya, depending on the capacities of his audience. On another level, however, these three bodies of the Buddha were said to be nondual. In Japan, KuKAI argued that all beings had the capacity to experience the teaching of the dharmakāya directly, a position that later Japanese TENDAI thinkers argued was implicit in the earlier Chinese Tiantai teachings on the three mysteries. Kukai's sanmitsu theory held that ordinary beings may rapidly realize their buddha-nature through ABHIsEKA, or ritual initiation, and ADHIstHĀNA, or ritual empowerment, which allowed for the efficacious performance of MUDRĀ, the chanting of MANTRA and DHĀRAnĪ, and the contemplation of the MAndALA of a chosen object of devotion. These forms of initiation and empowerment, when followed by these three modes of ritual comportment, were said to reveal that the sublime reality of buddhahood is alive within the mundane reality that beings ordinarily inhabit. Once the body, speech, and mind of beings and buddhas are recognized as nondual, an ordinary being is then able to acquire SIDDHI, or supernatural powers, which may be used to effect change in the world, up to and including achieving buddhahood in this very body (J. SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU; C. JISHEN CHENGFO).

self ::: a. --> Same; particular; very; identical. ::: n. --> The individual as the object of his own reflective consciousness; the man viewed by his own cognition as the subject of all his mental phenomena, the agent in his own activities, the subject of his own feelings, and the possessor of capacities and character; a

Shao K'ang-chieh: Shao K'ang-chieh (Shao Yung, Shao Yao-fu, 1011-1077) was son of a scholar (Ch'eng I-ch'uan's teacher). Although he served in the government in a few minor capacities, in general, his life was that of quietude and poverty. But his reputation of integrity and scholarship grew so high that scholars far and near regarded him as their "teacher," and people "warned one another to refrain from evil for fear that Master Shao might know." His Huang-chi Ching-shih, (Supreme Principles for the States and for Society) is a standird Neo-Confucian (li hsueh) work. -- W.T.C.

TAPAS. ::: Energisni and concentration of capacities ; tranquilly intense divine force ; austerity of conscious force acting upon itself or its object ; the principle of spiritual power and force in the highest or divine Nature.

The existing anthropoid apes, however, are truly the closest of the animals or semi-animals to the human stock, actually having originated from a miscegenation by very early, quasi-mindless humans (actually undeveloped savages of those far distant times) with what then were fairly evolved simian types. Thus the present-day anthropoids are a somewhat, if slightly, advanced stock over their earlier forefathers who were the original anthropoids produced by the “sin” of unevolved and savage Atlantean tribes with simians. Precisely because the anthropoids have some human ancestry they will attract to incarnation in the future human egos as yet in a low state of unfolded spiritual and intellectual powers and capacities, and who will thus, as the cycles roll on, finally evolve into a low type of thinking and sensitive human being.

The feeling (not merely the idea or tbe aspiration) that all the life and the work are the Mother’s and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a peat joy in the work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose. , .

Theosophy enjoins students to let psychic powers alone, until they develop normally and naturally in the progress of the student along the path of wisdom and self-mastery. The craze for psychic powers and attempts in their cultivation arise almost invariably out of ignorance of the existence in ourselves of far higher and more powerful forces which can always be employed with safety, and even profit, to the individual. These greater powers are those classed as spiritual and intellectual-aspirational — powers which ennoble and dignify man, containing in themselves capacities for amazing effects. Their use is always safe once they are understood and studied. By their side the psychic powers, attributes, and faculties are like the puny efforts of children to copy adults.

thermopile ::: n. --> An instrument of extreme sensibility, used to determine slight differences and degrees of heat. It is composed of alternate bars of antimony and bismuth, or any two metals having different capacities for the conduction of heat, connected with an astatic galvanometer, which is very sensibly affected by the electric current induced in the system of bars when exposed even to the feeblest degrees of heat.

The universal correspondences in nature, the interrelation of all things, imply that the most apparently casual and trivial events have of necessity connection with other events, so that the one can be interpreted by means of the other, provided only that the diviner knows the rules and has the insight and skill. Thus, in cartmancy, one deals the cards with a mind concentrated on the knowledge desired, and their fall is determined by these unseen and little understood influences. It is evident, however, that the condition and capacities of the diviner play an essential part in the success of the operation; hence the instructions as to fasting, continence, and the like, so often laid down as preliminaries.

tīksnendriya. (P. tikkhindriya; T. dbang po rnon po; C. ligen; J. rikon; K. igŭn 利根). In Sanskrit, "sharp faculties," the highest of the "three capacities" (TRĪNDRIYA), used to describe those disciples of the Buddha whose intellectual and spiritual abilities are greater than that of those of average (MADHYENDRIYA) and dull capacities (MṚDVINDRIYA). The term appears particularly in discussions of UPĀYA, the Buddha's ability to adapt his teachings to the intellects, interests, and aspirations of his disciples, with his highest teachings said to be reserved for disciples of sharp faculties. Thus the term is also often used polemically to describe one's preferred teaching as intended only for those of sharp faculties, while dismissing other competing teachings as intended for those of dull or average faculties. See also MAHĀPURUsA; INDRIYA.

Transhumanism - (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. See /r/Transhuman

trīndriya. (T. dbang po gsum; C. sangen; J. sankon; K. samgŭn 三根). In Sanskrit, "three capacities," or "three faculties"; a division of disciples of the Buddha or of a particular teaching, based on relative levels of aptitude, understanding, or profundity. The three are as follows: those of dull faculties (MṚDVINDRIYA), those of intermediate faculties (MADHYENDRIYA), and those of sharp faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA). The term is often used polemically to describe one's preferred teaching as intended only for those of sharp faculties, while dismissing other competing teachings as intended for those of dull or intermediate faculties. See also INDRIYA.

triyāna. (T. theg pa gsum; C. sansheng; J. sanjo; K. samsŭng 三乘). In Sanskrit, "three vehicles," three different means taught in Buddhist soteriological literature of conveying sentient beings to liberation. There are two common lists of the three: (1) the vehicles of the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA (both of which lead to the state of an ARHAT), and BODHISATTVA (which leads to buddhahood); (2) the HĪNAYĀNA, MAHĀYĀNA, and VAJRAYĀNA, although the vajrayāna is considered by its adherents to be a form of the Mahāyāna; the vajrayāna would speak instead of the HĪNAYĀNA, PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, and VAJRAYĀNA. According to some Mahāyāna sutras, most famously the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the three vehicles (in the first sense above) are an expedient device (UPĀYA) developed by the Buddha to entice beings of differing spiritual capacities toward enlightenment; in fact, however, there is really only one vehicle (EKAYĀNA) by which all beings proceed to buddhahood. Thus, in the Mahāyāna philosophical schools, the question arises of whether or not there are "three final vehicles," that is, whether the state of the arhat is a permanent dead end or whether arhats would also eventually continue on to buddhahood. For example, the position that there are three separate and final vehicles is associated with the YOGĀCĀRA school of ASAnGA and the Chinese FAXIANG ZONG. The position that there are not three, but instead a single decisive vehicle, is associated with the MADHYAMAKA school of NĀGĀRJUNA and CANDRAKĪRTI and the Chinese TIANTAI ZONG.

VIRTUE AND VICE. ::: So long as one is in the ordinary nature, one has capacities and defects, virtues and vices. When

wushi bajiao. (J. goji hakkyo; K. osi p'algyo 五時八教). In Chinese, "five periods and eight teachings"; a classification of teachings (PANJIAO) attributed to the TIANTAI systematizer TIANTAI ZHIYI. A detailed explanation of the wushi bajiao is found in the text by the Korean exegete CH'EGWAN, the CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI (C. Tiantai sijiao yi). The five periods correspond to what is believed to be the five major chronological periods (WUSHI) of the Buddha's teaching career (represented by the name of a SuTRA or group of sutras preached during each period), namely, (1) Huayan (AVATAMSAKASuTRA), (2) ĀGAMA, (3) VAIPULYA, (4) PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, and (5) Lotus (SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA) and Nirvāna (MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA). According to Zhiyi, the Buddha also employed different techniques of conversion or pedagogical modes (huayi) for audiences of varying capacities, which are broadly divided into four: the sudden, gradual, indeterminate, and secret. The sudden and gradual teachings are distinguished by their variant uses of skillful means (UPĀYA), and indeterminate refers to the differing levels of the understanding of individuals. Zhiyi's contribution to these well-established categories was his further division of the indeterminate teachings into "secret" and "manifest" based on the awareness of the presence of others in the assembly. The content of the Buddha's teachings (huafa) is further described in terms of the four categories of TRIPItAKA, common, distinct, and consummate. This division is based on whether the teachings are that of TRIPItAKA (viz. HĪNAYĀNA), MAHĀYĀNA (distinct), both (joint), or neither (consummate). Zhiyi referred to the central sutra of his own Tiantai school, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, as consummate. Zhiyi's own classification system is based on those of earlier exegetical traditions of the north (wujiao shizong) and south (sanjiao), which he sought to unite and ultimately transcend. See TIANTAI BAJIAO.

xiangfa. (J. zoho; K. sangpop 像法). In Chinese, "semblance dharma" or "counterfeit dharma"; a term related to the Sanskrit SADDHARMAPRATIRuPAKA. The Sanskrit term has a range of uses, including as a designation for the BUDDHADHARMA after the buddha has passed into PARINIRVĀnA. In the East Asian context, xiangfa came to designate the second and middle period of a buddha's teaching. The first period, that of the SADDHARMA (C. zhengfa), is the period of the true dharma after a buddha's passage into parinirvāna, during which time it is still possible to achieve enlightenment by following his teachings. The second period, of xiangfa, is a time during which the achievement of enlightenment is still possible, but the practice of the dharma has generally been reduced to rote repetition of the teachings and practices; there are also signs of laxity in both monastic and lay practice developing during this period. The third period, that of MOFA (cf. SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA), or the final dharma, is a time of degeneration and decline, during which the practice of the dharma is no longer efficacious, due largely to the diminished capacities of humans. This division into three periods of the dharma seems to have originated in China and was widely influential in East Asian Buddhism.



QUOTES [27 / 27 - 717 / 717]


KEYS (10k)

   10 Sri Aurobindo
   3 The Mother
   2 Sri Aurobindo
   2 Ken Wilber
   1 Schopenhauer
   1 Robert Anton Wilson
   1 Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche
   1 Julian Huxley
   1 Jiddu Krishnamurti
   1 James W Fowler
   1 Georges Van Vrekhem
   1 Essential Integral
   1 Carl Rogers
   1 Sri Ramakrishna

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   15 Noam Chomsky
   11 Anonymous
   10 Sri Aurobindo
   9 Thomas Merton
   9 Bessel A van der Kolk
   7 Lewis Mumford
   6 Joshua Foer
   6 Jiddu Krishnamurti
   6 Immanuel Kant
   6 Hannah Arendt
   6 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
   5 Stephen Harrod Buhner
   5 Peter Singer
   5 John Rogers Searle
   5 Jan Philipp Sendker
   5 Friedrich Nietzsche
   5 Eric Hoffer
   5 Elizabeth Gilbert
   4 Thomas Nagel
   4 Michel de Montaigne

1:The Lord has provided different forms of worship to suit different people with different capacities in different stages of development. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
2:The development of capacities is not only permissible but right, when it can be made part of the Yoga ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Consecration and Offering,
3:The greatest obstacle to the contact with the Divine is pride and the sense of one's personal worth, one's personal capacities, personal power — the person becomes very big, so big that there is no place for the Divine. ~ The Mother,
4:The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. ~ Carl Rogers,
5:The experimental sciences, when one occupies oneself with them for their own sake, studying them without any philosophical aim, are like a face without eyes. They then represent one of those occupations suitable to middling capacities devoid of the supreme gifts which would only be obstacles to their minute researches. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
6:What are the steps to follow for (1) sadhana and (2) silence of the mind?

   (1) Do work as sadhana. You offer to the Divine the work you do to the best of your capacities and you leave the result to the Divine. (2) Try to become conscious first above your head, keeping the brain as silent as possible. If you succeed and the work is done in that condition, then it will become perfect.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
7:What you say is quite true. A simple, straight and sincere call and aspiration from the heart is the one important thing and more essential and effective than capacities. Also to get the consciousness to turn inwards, not remain outward-going is of great importance - to arrive at the inner call, the inner experience, the inner Presence. The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I,
8:All of the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. ~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche,
9:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
   ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,
10:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
   ~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,
11:So, it is a basic function of education to help you to find out what you really love to do, so that you can give your whole mind and heart to it, because that creates human dignity, that sweeps away mediocrity, the petty bourgeois mentality. That is why it is very important to have the right teachers, the right atmosphere, so that you will grow up with the love which expresses itself in what you are doing. Without this love your examinations, your knowledge, your capacities, your position and possessions are just ashes, they have no meaning; without this love your actions are going to bring more wars, more hatred, more mischief and destruction. All this may mean nothing to you, because outwardly you are still very young, but I hope it will mean something to your teachers-and also to you, somewhere inside. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
12:55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.08,
13:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18,
14:The Twenty Tenets of Holons
1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things, or processes, but of holons.
2. Holons display four fundamental capacities:
a. self-preservation,
b. self-adaptation,
c. self-transcendence.
d. self-dissolution.
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
5. Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor.
6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higer; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
7. "The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is 'shallow' or 'deep'; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its 'span'" (A. Koestler).
8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
9. Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it.
10. Holarchies coevolve.
11. The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth.
12. Evolution has directionality:
a. Increasing complexity.
b. Increasing differentiation/integration.
c. Increasing organisation/structuration.
d. Increasing relative autonomy.
e. Increasing telos.
   ~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality, 1995, p. 35-78.,
15:In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,
16:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],
17:The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?)...
   The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy. ~ Julian Huxley, Transhumanism,
18:The most outward psychological form of these things is the mould or trend of the nature towards certain dominant tendencies, capacities, characteristics, form of active power, quality of the mind and inner life, cultural personality or type. The turn is often towards the predominance of the intellectual element and the capacities which make for the seeking and finding of knowledge and an intellectual creation or formativeness and a preoccupation with ideas and the study of ideas or of life and the information and development of the reflective intelligence. According to the grade of the development there is produced successively the make and character of the man of active, open, inquiring intelligence, then the intellectual and, last, the thinker, sage, great mind of knowledge. The soul-powers which make their appearance by a considerable development of this temperament, personality, soul-type, are a mind of light more and more open to all ideas and knowledge and incomings of Truth; a hunger and passion for knowledge, for its growth in ourselves, for its communication to others, for its reign in the world, the reign of reason and right and truth and justice and, on a higher level of the harmony of our greater being, the reign of the spirit and its universal unity and light and love; a power of this light in the mind and will which makes all the life subject to reason and its right and truth or to the spirit and spiritual right and truth and subdues the lower members to their greater law; a poise in the temperament turned from the first to patience, steady musing and calm, to reflection, to meditation, which dominates and quiets the turmoil of the will and passions and makes for high thinking and pure living, founds the self-governed sattwic mind, grows into a more and more mild, lofty, impersonalised and universalised personality. This is the ideal character and soul-power of the Brahmana, the priest of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4:15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality
19:Disciple : What part does breathing exercise - Pranayama - play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo : It sets the Pranic - vital - currents free and removes dullness of the brain so that the higher consciousness can come down. Pranayama does not bring dullness in the brain. My own experience, on the contrary, is that brain becomes illumined. When I was practising Pranayama at Baroda, I used to do it for about five hours in the day, - three hours in the morning and two in the evening. I found that the mind began to work with great illumination and power. I used to write poetry in those days. Before the Pranayama practice, usually I wrote five to eight lines per day; and about two hundred lines in a month. After the practice I could write 200 lines within half an hour. That was not the only result. Formerly my memory was dull. But after this practice I found that when the inspiration came I could remember all the lines in their order and write them down correctly at any time. Along with these enhanced functionings I could see an electrical activity all round the brain, and I could feel that it was made up of a subtle substance. I could feel everything as the working of that substance. That was far from your carbon-dioxide!

Disciple : How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo : It is the Pranic - vital - currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined.

~ Sri Aurobindo, A B Purani, Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, 19-9-1926,
20:The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha , a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4:15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality,
21:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
22:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
   ~ Georges Van Vrekhem,
23:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
   A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
   The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
24:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
   In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
   In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
   The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,
25:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.
   To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
   There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)
   When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.
   It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
   After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.
   This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."
   This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.
   Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.
   This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,
26:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
   Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?

   ... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
   When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
   It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
   Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
   And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
   Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
   And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
   And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
   There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,
27: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,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove
2:Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove
3:Alleged &
4:We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
5:The capacities by which we can gain insights into higher worlds lie dormant within each one of us. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
6:That man scorches with his brightness, who overpowers inferior capacities, yet he shall be revered when dead. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
7:It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
8:Right education should help the student, not only to develop his capacities, but to understand his own highest interest. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove
9:To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove
10:If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove
11:Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove
12:Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove
13: The great strength of delegation is that we can accomplish so much more. It allows us to multiply ourselves and increase leverage to grow our businesses beyond our own individual capacities.   ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove
14:An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove
15:... the physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America's realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
16:The Buddhist tenet, "Non-killing is supreme virtue", is very good, but in trying to enforce it upon all by legislation without paying any heed to the capacities of the people at large, Buddhism has brought ruin upon India. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
17:The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
18:The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove
19:We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove
20:..takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
21:The universe does not judge us; it only provides consequences and lessons and opportunities to balance and learn through the law of cause and effect. Compassion is the recognition that we are each doing the best we can within the limits of our current beliefs and capacities. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove
22:The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
23:A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities.    ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove
24:The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove
25:Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove
26:An effective mission statement: Is an expression of your own unique capacities. Inspires you rather than impresses anyone else. Is based on true principles which produce quality-of-life. Includes the physical, social, mental & spiritual areas. Deals with what you want to be and do with your life. Balances all the significant roles of your life.   ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove
27:Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
28:The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove
29:People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove
30:What I wish to show by these feats of strength is that prayer and meditation can definitely increase one's outer capacities. I hope that by doing this I will be able to inspire many people to pray and meditate sincerely as part of their regular daily routine. my message is that if one needs strength, then uncovering one's inner strength through prayer and meditation is the fastest and most effective way to get it. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
31:All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove
32:A person who makes full use of and exploits his talents, potentialities, and capacities. Such a person seems to be fulfilling himself and doing the best he is capable of doing. The self-actualized person must find in his life those qualities that make his living rich and rewarding. He must find meaningfulness, self-sufficiency, effortlessness, playfulness, richness, simplicity, completion, necessity, perfection, individuality, beauty, and truth. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove
33:You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement. Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority. All people are born with different constitutions. Never compare with others. Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength. Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove
34:Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
35:represented within awareness are highly variable, but the representational capacities themselves—the basis of the subjective experience of awareness—are generally very stable. Consequently, resting as awareness brings a beautiful sense of inner clarity and peace. These feelings are generally deepest in meditation, but you can cultivate a greater sense of abiding as awareness throughout the day. Use routine events—such as the phone ringing, going to the bathroom, or drinking water—as temple bells to return you to a sense of centeredness. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:such capacities in the first place. ~ Anonymous,
2:We all have different capacities for failure. ~ Brigid Kemmerer,
3:Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. ~ B K S Iyengar,
4:Life is the unfolding of the latent capacities of the soul. ~ Sivananda,
5:We are educating people out of their creative capacities. ~ Ken Robinson,
6:Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities. ~ Idries Shah,
7:My plans have always exceeded my capacities and energies ~ C Wright Mills,
8:Initially we performed in halls with capacities of 1,000. ~ Neville Marriner,
9:You can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit ~ Hugh Nibley,
10:We've used aid to build capacities so we won't need aid in future. ~ Paul Kagame,
11:Tune into your own capacities and always make time for sleep ~ Francesca Martinez,
12:We have unrealized capacities that sometimes only emerge in crisis. ~ Lance Armstrong,
13:sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon ~ Daniel H Pink,
14:Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
15:Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man a part of nature. ~ Edward Thorndike,
16:People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think ~ Neil Postman,
17:Your body has natural healing capacities that nobody in the field of medicine can ~ Wayne Dyer,
18:Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent. ~ Margaret Mead,
19:Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities. ~ Saul Bellow,
20:Each person is a really a great treasure house of capacities, possibilities, energies. ~ Jean Houston,
21:All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end. ~ Immanuel Kant,
22:The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement. ~ Aristotle,
23:We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves. ~ Thomas Merton,
24:"Discover inner capacities for wakefulness, joy, dignity and compassion – your Buddhanature." ~ Jack Kornfield,
25:It’s crucial to remember that your attention is one of the most precious capacities you possess. ~ Michael Taft,
26:One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
27:People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much. ~ Norman Mailer,
28:But perhaps Daniel exemplifies an even more inspiring idea: that we all have remarkable capacities ~ Joshua Foer,
29:To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them. ~ Jean Vanier,
30:We must make the choices that enable us
to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves. ~ Thomas Merton,
31:Everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity. The trick is to develop these capacities. ~ Anonymous,
32:To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
33:To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
34:We all have remarkable capacities asleep inside of us. If only we bothered ourselves to awaken them. ~ Joshua Foer,
35:Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities. ~ Walter Scott,
36:A successful school has to engage all the people, all the powers, and all the capacities within it. ~ Andy Hargreaves,
37:That man scorches with his brightness, who overpowers inferior capacities, yet he shall be revered when dead. ~ Horace,
38:People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. ~ Aldous Huxley,
39:Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart! ~ Umberto Eco,
40:The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
41:A good material work not exceeding normal capacities is most useful for keeping a good physical and moral poise. ~ The Mother,
42:My mental capacities are quite intact, Abigail Miller.” I had severe doubts on his ability to ascertain that. ~ Ashlan Thomas,
43:when you judge the power that is in a person, you must judge their capacities as both friend and as enemy. ~ Gregory David Roberts,
44:These capacities for randomness may have been amplified into human creativity through sexual and social selection. ~ Geoffrey Miller,
45:No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude. ~ Thomas de Quincey,
46:Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch,
47:HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
48:Each of us has capacities. The real trick is knowing the machinery of the boat in which you are crossing the channel. ~ Joseph Campbell,
49:inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn. ~ Daniel H Pink,
50:Remember our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong. ~ Judy Chicago,
51:Helping people to connect with their personal creative capacities is the surest way to release the best they have to offer. ~ Ken Robinson,
52:Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. ~ Peter Singer,
53:It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. ~ Albert Einstein,
54:What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love. ~ Margaret Mead,
55:Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. ~ Jan Philipp Sendker,
56:Right education should help the student, not only to develop his capacities, but to understand his own highest interest. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
57:To be totally engaged with all my functions and all my faculties and all my capacities in life to me that would be success. ~ Jacob Needleman,
58:We need to develop the intuitive capacities of the brain that some geniuses have manifested over humanity's lengthy history. ~ Thomas Keating,
59:Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. ~ Doris Lessing,
60:I cannot convince myself that my mental capacities are important enough to justify either the good or the harm they started. ~ William Golding,
61:Like most people in the slum, and in the world, for that matter, he believed his own dreams properly aligned to his capacities. ~ Katherine Boo,
62:It's time to launch yourself into that bigger life using your full capacities and with the light of our spirit shining brightly. ~ Lynn Robinson,
63:Loving ourselves points us to capacities of resilience, compassion, and understanding within that are simply part of being alive. —S ~ Kristin Neff,
64:Experiments work when, and only when, they call into action cognitive capacities that might reliably deliver the conclusions drawn. ~ Philip Kitcher,
65:We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings. ~ Abraham Maslow,
66:Effective altruism is the form of altruism in which we bring our rational capacities to bear in order to do the most good that we can. ~ Peter Singer,
67:But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
68:We don't so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems. ~ Carl Jung,
69:But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
70:there is nothing in the whole world madder than bringing matters down to the measure of our own capacities and potentialities. How ~ Michel de Montaigne,
71:All my life I've believed that men and women have equal capacities and talents...consequently there should be equality in life's chances. ~ Julia Gillard,
72:Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
73:...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. ~ Stephen Jay Gould,
74:Theism does not offer a sufficiently substantial explanation of our capacities, and naturalism does not offer a sufficiently reassuring one. ~ Thomas Nagel,
75:Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering. ~ Ron Suskind,
76:Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
77:Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities. ~ Frans de Waal,
78:The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,
79:Everyone has huge creative capacities. The challenge is to develop them. A culture of creativity has to involve everybody, not just a select few. ~ Ken Robinson,
80:people get used to having experts who can solve their problems for them; people can then easily lose motivation to develop their own capacities. ~ Peter M Senge,
81:that the failure of governments is due to the pressure of economic interest upon them rather than to the "limited capacities of human wisdom. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr,
82:A country’s finances, natural resources, and production capacities are often arbitrarily plundered by dictators and used to support the dictators’ will. ~ Gene Sharp,
83:I see real love as the most fundamental of our innate capacities, never destroyed no matter what we might have gone through or might yet go through. ~ Sharon Salzberg,
84:Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others-values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires. ~ Marya Mannes,
85:My faith in the future of literature rests on the knowledge that there are things that only literature, with its particular capacities, can give us. I ~ Italo Calvino,
86:Now, when a man has been underestimated by a friend, he has some cause for taking offense—since it is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. ~ Amor Towles,
87:The development of capacities is not only permissible but right, when it can be made part of the Yoga ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Consecration and Offering,
88:Do not give up hope entirely in spite of the horror of your situation. I am mobilising all my mental capacities to obtain your unconditional freedom. ~ Leonora Carrington,
89:The leader is a person who has the possibility through destiny to know the people, to recognize their capacities, and to bring them to bear on the problem. ~ Arthur Zajonc,
90:To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully. ~ Jack Kornfield,
91:The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent. ~ Smiley Blanton,
92:by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves. All ~ Thomas Merton,
93:Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model. ~ Abdul Kalam,
94:Now, when a man has been underestimated by a friend, he has some cause for taking offense—since it is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. ~ Amor Towles,
95:To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title. ~ Albert Pike,
96:Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick,
97:I have thus defined the concept of the “Background” as the set of nonintentional or preintentional capacities that enable intentional states of function. But ~ John Rogers Searle,
98:You can't make rules regarding the moral behavior of something unless you know what the hell it is, and what it's capacities are. What it can do, what it can't do. ~ Jerry Garcia,
99:If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
100:Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. ~ Margaret Fuller,
101:Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life. ~ Carl Rogers,
102:It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents. ~ Eric Hoffer,
103:Improvements in lending practices driven by information technology have enabled lenders to reach out to households with previously unrecognized borrowing capacities. ~ Alan Greenspan,
104:My preference would be to remain in the Senate, ... But you can't say I would refuse to serve in one of those (Cabinet) capacities. It's not the same as vice president. ~ John McCain,
105:Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership. ~ Deng Xiaoping,
106:There are also many things my wife can't stand about me, and there are certain capacities that she has that are different than mine. The trick is to find compatibilities. ~ Ian Bogost,
107:If you live for a very long while, you will have to watch your friends and loved ones die, your body age and lose its beauty and vigor, and your mental capacities fade. ~ Frederick Lenz,
108:I think of my own epitaph, still to be written, and all the places I'll wander. No longer rooted, but gold, flowing. I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me." -Violet ~ Jennifer Niven,
109:I paint to evoke a changing language of symbols, a language with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us towards the ultimate reality. ~ Morris Graves,
110:evolutionary naturalism offers an explanation of our knowledge that is seriously inadequate, when applied to the knowledge-generating capacities that we take ourselves to have. ~ Thomas Nagel,
111:The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities that had clear survival value. ~ Denis Dutton,
112:We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. ~ Jan Philipp Sendker,
113:I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
114:It would be wonderful if people could grow together in groups, teaching and learning communities where they empower, evoke, explore the enormous capacities of the human condition. ~ Jean Houston,
115:A vigorous culture capable of making corrective,stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding. ~ Jane Jacobs,
116:The call for the birth of the new light out of the dark comes to us any time we encounter something new that requires development beyond our current capacities. ~ Monika Wikman, Pregnant Darkness,
117:Most people are actually far less potent than they imagine themselves in their dreams, and
are endowed with far greater qualities and capacities than they translate into action. ~ Wilhelm Reich,
118:The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights. ~ Milton Friedman,
119:The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people. ~ Mark Twain,
120:Women have millions of years of genetically-enc oded intelligences, intuitions, capacities, knowledges, powers, and cellular knowings of exactly what to do with the infant. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce,
121:If we are biological organisms, not angels, then our cognitive faculties are similar to those called “physical capacities” and should be studied much as other systems of the body are. ~ Noam Chomsky,
122:There are things about us that make us who we are, personality traits, or capacities that we have, or knowledge we possess or that we don't possess, habits we have that are good or bad. ~ Ian Bogost,
123:Why then should women be denied the benefits of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God almighty would never have given them capacities. ~ Daniel Defoe,
124:In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual. ~ Immanuel Kant,
125:Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health. ~ Lois Capps,
126:There's such a magnitude of record taking. It's so exhaustive. Bandwidth and hard drive space are able to accommodate limitless capacities to take a record of anything and everything. ~ Sufjan Stevens,
127:I feel more like I'm a person who has so much to offer in different capacities that it would be a danger for me not to give myself a chance to spread my wings in all different directions. ~ Alicia Keys,
128:And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question. ~ Anne Bront,
129:And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question. ~ Anne Bronte,
130:Everyone we interact with has the capacity to surprise us in an infinite number of ways. What can first open us up to each of our innate capacities for love is merely to recognize that. ~ Sharon Salzberg,
131:Whatever capacities there may be for enjoyment or for suffering in this strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are, they will be drawn out wholly in accordance with character. ~ Mark Hopkins,
132:live with power and energy that undeniably transcends their natural capacities and with an intensity of commitment that far exceeds anything they have previously demonstrated in their lives ~ George Barna,
133:Trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up both to our own relational capacities and to the suffering of others. Not only does it makes us hurt, it makes us more human, caring, and wise. ~ Mark Epstein,
134:Intelligence alone does not get us where we need to go or even necessarily where we want to go. For that, the human creature must exercise harder-won capacities of wisdom, and wise action. ~ Krista Tippett,
135:We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us. ~ Allen W Wood,
136:The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men. ~ Immanuel Kant,
137:People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses ~ Stephen Covey,
138:as people’s capacities wane, whether through age or ill health, making their lives better often requires curbing our purely medical imperatives—resisting the urge to fiddle and fix and control. ~ Atul Gawande,
139:A title or promotion does not make anyone a leader. Leadership emerges from the character, qualities, and capacities of the individual. Make no mistake about it, authentic leadership is personal. ~ George B Bradt,
140:Ordinarily the executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex enable people to observe what is going on, predict what will happen if they take a certain action, and make a conscious choice. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
141:If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa. ~ Noam Chomsky,
142:The job of president is to motivate, to inspire, to be side by side with people making sure that they develop all their capacities and that I remove all the obstacles they have to grow by themselves. ~ Vicente Fox,
143:An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. ~ Maria Montessori,
144:It's a mistake to suppose that capacities must evolve gradually. There are many known examples of sharp changes - slight genetic modification that yields substantial phenotypic effects, and much else. ~ Noam Chomsky,
145:The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents. ~ Eric Hoffer,
146:SAWs were not metal things with little teeth, good for cutting wood. SAWs were Squad Automatic Weapons, which were fearsome fully-automatic machine guns, with fearsome capacities and fearsome capabilities. ~ Lee Child,
147:We may fairly say, then, that whatever about me is taken over in the service of Christ and his church—and that even includes aptitudes and capacities I had before I became a believer—is a spiritual gift. ~ Wayne Grudem,
148:I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization. ~ George Carlin,
149:A lot of us might never reach the point of realizing that by standing out, by actually being the people we say we want to be, we get to set ourselves free. Not in all capacities, but definitely in some. ~ Hannah Brencher,
150:To Aristotle or to Plato the State is, above all, a large and powerful educative agency which gives the individual increased opportunities of self-development and greater capacities for the enjoyment of life. ~ Aristotle,
151:We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make -- and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. ~ Ken Robinson,
152:If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. ~ Abraham H Maslow,
153:In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions. ~ Margaret J Wheatley,
154:I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. ~ Seymour Papert,
155:Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb. ~ Kevin Kelly,
156:What inspires me today is a desire to get closer to an understanding of what my artistic capacities are with the hope of organically sharing my gifts with an audience in the most heightened way I possibly can. ~ Mahershala Ali,
157:I strive to find materials that will engage students, expand their capacities as critical readers and thinkers, and feel immediately relevant to their daily lives and future work in court and social service systems. ~ Dean Spade,
158:The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
159:I did theatre a lot when I was a kid. Then I went to acting school in New York. I did a lot of behind the scenes in college. I wanted to learn while I had the time. I studied theatre and film in different capacities. ~ Justin Bartha,
160:Memory works in different ways for everybody. Different capacities, different directions, too. Sometimes memory helps you think, sometimes it impedes. Doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. Probably means it’s no big deal. ~ Haruki Murakami,
161:There are, in the capacities of mankind, three varieties: one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put clearly before him. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
162:Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
163:The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job. ~ Elliot W Eisner,
164:The greatest obstacle to the contact with the Divine is pride and the sense of one’s personal worth, one’s personal capacities, personal power — the person becomes very big, so big that there is no place for the Divine. ~ The Mother,
165:The qualities and capacities that are important in running-such factors as will power, the ability to apply effort during extreme fatigue and the acceptance of pain-have a radiating power that subtly influences one's life. ~ Jim Fixx,
166:Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine. ~ Idries Shah,
167:Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily - ethics is objectively constrained. It's not the case that "anything goes". ~ Philip Kitcher,
168:I just gravitated toward (working behind the scenes by) growing up on the different sets and watching my father and other people in their different capacities...When I was 13 years old, I asked for a Super 8 camera. ~ Michael Landon Jr,
169:Woman in the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest details in the activities of man, and she has equal right to liberty of freedom and liberty with him. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
170:The authority of the Supreme Court must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve. ~ Andrew Jackson,
171:The physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America's realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities. ~ John F Kennedy,
172:I think its really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so its good to see people in the media representing all of those things. ~ Kerry Bishe,
173:There is an air of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. ~ Edmund Burke,
174:Don't think you are going to go on forever because you are not and begin to plan something that will compensate as you reduce your capacities to leap or turn on this or that or the other, begin thinking of something else. ~ Katherine Dunham,
175:In cultures that recognize the importance of this capacity, this group of people are trained to use their enhanced perceptual capacities for the benefit of the group. there would then be many more holy people among us ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
176:The Buddhist tenet, "Non-killing is supreme virtue", is very good, but in trying to enforce it upon all by legislation without paying any heed to the capacities of the people at large, Buddhism has brought ruin upon India. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
177:Brilliant. [Lasdun] seems to me certainly among the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English, and far better than many who are more famous. His capacities are solidly established; his promise is nearly infinite. ~ Anthony Hecht,
178:If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin,
179:The freedom and human capacities of individuals must be developed to their maximum but individual powers must be linked to democracy in the sense that social betterment must be the necessary consequence of individual flourishing. ~ Henry Giroux,
180:The phenomenal field is neither caused nor defined but constituted by the sensorimotor structures and capacities of the body. The structure of perception just is the structure of the body: my body “is my point of view upon the world ~ Anonymous,
181:The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease. ~ Betty Friedan,
182:Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen... ~ Charlton Ogburn,
183:Every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him. ~ Anonymous,
184:Examine the measure of your children's capacities, and leave none of them uncultivated. However modest you may be in dress and other expenditures for a person of your rank, consecrate all you have to your children's education. ~ Sophie von La Roche,
185:If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God. ~ Timothy Keller,
186:The success of any development project is based on encouraging people to shoulder their own responsibilities and become aware of their own capacities, their rights too, rather than providing them with ready-made solutions. ~ Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan,
187:If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God. ~ Timothy J Keller,
188:Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can’t manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can. ~ Jordan Peterson,
189:The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
190:He suffered incessantly from the fact that his critical faculties transcended his constructive capacities. In a manner of speaking, his critical sense robbed him of his love for the offspring of his own mind even before they were born. ~ Albert Einstein,
191:Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities. ~ Benito Mussolini,
192:Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can’t manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
193:People are being forced to confront the realities. At the same time, we have an ever-growing understanding of the intelligence and emotional capacities of animals and an acceptance of the principle that animal cruelty is a moral problem. ~ Wayne Pacelle,
194:No one culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and stifled others. Each culture is a system of values which may well complement the values in another. ~ Ruth Benedict,
195:Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. ~ Bruce Mau,
196:I'm hoping to know and teach a Gospel that is true to Scripture - and the Gospel that I see in the Bible is COSMIC (big enough to redeem all of Creation) and RELATIONAL (getting at the root of the Fall - the loss of our relational capacities). ~ Peter Robinson,
197:To put it another way, God is able to interact with us in ways we interpret (through our time-bound experience of cause and effect) as the result of time-like capacities in the person or essence of God or the existence of other time-like dimensions ~ Hugh Ross,
198:I have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
199:service and sacrifice are ways to overcome selfishness. You will enjoy happiness that comes only from giving service to God and others. Your capacities will increase, and you will be an instrument in God’s hands ~ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
200:What is there about the notion of a person, at law, that makes every living member of the species Homo sapiens a person, irrespective of their mental capacities, but excludes every nonhuman animal - again, irrespective of their mental capacities? ~ Peter Singer,
201:Only if you reach the boundary will the boundary recede before you. And if you don't, if you confine your efforts, the boundary will shrink to accommodate itself to your efforts. And you can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit. ~ Hugh Nibley,
202:I sort of dreamed about directing before my career as an actor took off. I've directed stage before in so many capacities on tours. I put that together. You have to. Otherwise, it's your statement. It's your voice, and that has to come through. ~ Justin Timberlake,
203:In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life. ~ Lyndon B Johnson,
204:We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them. ~ Jean Vanier,
205:Attention, learning, and problem solving depend in part on the ability to plan and sequence actions and ideas. The Interactive Metronome(R) helps individuals systematically exercise and often improve basic motor planning and sequencing capacities. ~ Stanley Greenspan,
206:Metaphor means to carry beyond and rites of initiation cause people to descend below and leap beyond what they know of themselves. People arrive at a place where they must sink or else swim with inner capacities and resources they didn't know they had. ~ Michael Meade,
207:They can now devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and select them accordingly. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
208:I think I enjoy working obviously as a lead, but also you know I feel I'm also a character actor as well, so I enjoy approaching various projects in all sort of capacities. Any film I have been able to do I feel very fortunate to have been a part of. ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor,
209:The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect. ~ Mark Twain,
210:Capital increasingly exploits the entire range of our productive capacities, our bodies and our minds, our capacities for communication, our intelligence and creativity, our affective relations with each other, and more. Life itself has been put to work. ~ Michael Hardt,
211:I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becomes work. ~ Diane Lane,
212:Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
213:Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. ~ Eknath Easwaran,
214:even toddlers know that rules should be followed but that they can be changed. These two capacities, capacities for love and law, for caring about others and following the rules, allow our characteristically human combination of moral depth and flexibility. ~ Alison Gopnik,
215:The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
216:This is the evolutionary value of play- play makes us flexible. By reinterpreting reality and begetting novelty, we keep from becoming rigid. Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch,
217:All of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their fullest extent. ... And every life must be chalked up at least a partial failure when it does not succeed in reaching its inherent destiny. ~ Smiley Blanton,
218:Any intentional state only functions, that is, it only determines conditions of satisfaction, against a set of Background abilities, dispositions, and capacities that are not part of the intentional content and could not be included as part of the content. ~ John Rogers Searle,
219:For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account. ~ Noam Chomsky,
220:For the Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account. ~ Rudolf Rocker,
221:For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility of every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed them, and turn them to social account. ~ Rudolf Rocker,
222:People want to explore, we want to press our capacities to their limits, we want to appreciate what we can. But the joy of creation is something very few people get the opportunity to have in our society: artists get to have it, craftspeople have it, scientists. ~ Noam Chomsky,
223:The secret to success and enjoyment in so many parts of life is to know your capabilities and stay within them. Similarly, the key to success in investing is to know yourself and invest within your investing capabilities and within your emotional capacities. ~ Burton G Malkiel,
224:The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us. ~ Mrs. Jameson, Education, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles.,
225:But all of that civilized sophistication could collapse if carrying capacities everywhere are lowered by severe climate change. Humanity would revert to its norm of constant battles for diminishing resources. Peace lovers would be killed and eaten by war lovers. ~ Stewart Brand,
226:But dignity is also corroded by poverty no matter how poetically we invest the humble with simple graces and charm. No worker can maintain his morale or sustain his spirit if in the market place his capacities are declared to be worthless to society. The ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
227:My personal, metaphysical belief is Vedanta, which is that ultimately there is a singular consciousness. It's like a Hindu metaphysics, that basically we're all like characters in a play that consciousness is putting on to discover its own creative capacities. ~ Daniel Pinchbeck,
228:The more Christ fulfills the cravings of our souls, the more he changes our taste capacities from the inside out. The more we walk with him, the more we want him. The more we taste of him, the more we enjoy him. And this transforms how we live and what we live for. ~ David Platt,
229:After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter,
230:If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life. ~ Tara Brach,
231:It is to aid in making the arts operative rather than only positively or negatively pleasurable... it is to paint a record, in so far as I am increasingly capable, of man's deepst capacities... I seek to paint of how form manifests its subtlest quality named 'idea. ~ Morris Graves,
232:We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing. ~ Andy Hargreaves,
233:Men are of three different capacities: one understands intuitively; another understands so far as it is explained; and a third understands neither of himself nor by explanation. The first is excellent, the second, commendable, and the third, altogether useless. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli,
234:I believe that the time has come for women to take more active roles in all domains of human society, in an age in which education and the capacities of the mind, not physical strength, define leadership. This could help create a more equitable and compassionate society. ~ Dalai Lama,
235:Jung found that the psyche is androgynous: made up of both masculine &feminine.Thus, every man and every woman comes equipped with a psychological structure that in its wholeness includes the richness of both sides, both natures, both sets of capacities and strengths. ~ RA Johnson,
236:Without bravery, we will never be able to realize the vaulting scope of our own capacities. Without bravery, we will never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, our lives will remain small - far smaller than we probably want our lives to be. ~ Jack Gilbert,
237:What is usually called 'intelligence' refers to the linguistic and logical capacities that are valued in certain kinds of school and for certain school-like tasks. It leaves little if any room for spatial intelligence, personal intelligences, musical intelligence, etc. ~ Howard Gardner,
238:Primitive agonies exist in many of us. Originating in painful experiences that occurred before we had the cognitive capacities to know what was happening, they tend to blindside us, traumatizing us again and again as we find ourselves enacting a pain we do not understand. ~ Mark Epstein,
239:The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. ~ Eric Hoffer,
240:History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom. ~ Daisaku Ikeda,
241:What is it that we really want for a young person when we give him or her vocational advice? The only creditable answer, it seems to me, is one that avoids utopianism while keeping an eye on the human good: work that engages the human capacities as fully as possible. ~ Matthew B Crawford,
242:Jung found that the psyche is androgynous: made up of both masculine & feminine. Thus, every man and every woman comes equipped with a psychological structure that in its wholeness includes the richness of both sides, both natures, both sets of capacities & strengths. ~ RA Johnson,
243:To describe even in the barest outline the multitude of changes necessary to turn the power complex into an organic complex, and a money economy into a life economy, lies beyond the capacities of any individual mind; any attempt at a detailed picture would be presumptuous. ~ Lewis Mumford,
244:Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between the original capacities of the immature and the standards and customs of the elders increases. ~ John Dewey,
245:The ability to transmit in symbolic forms and human patterns a representative portion of a culture is the great mark of the city: this is the condition for encouraging the fullest expression of human capacities and potentialities, even in the rural and primitive areas beyond. ~ Lewis Mumford,
246:I learned more in those six months [ in the White House] than in the prior six years. I don't think that anybody who has had the privilege to serve the country at that level should walk out and behave like a crybaby. And I plan to continue to serve the country in other capacities. ~ Van Jones,
247:No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don’t need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers—but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
248:The concept of needs and capacities is fundamental to biology and psychology alike. Biology is concerned with the needs and capacities of living organisms qua physical entities. Psychology is concerned with the needs and capacities of living organisms qua conscious entities. ~ Nathaniel Branden,
249:A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities. ~ Dalai Lama,
250:God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy, and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and a mystical regeneration. ~ Thomas Merton,
251:I don't want nations feeling like that they can bully ourselves and our allies. I want to have a ballistic defense system so that we can make the world more peaceful, and at the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to the level commiserate with keeping the peace. ~ George W Bush,
252:Simply put, when there is no home birth in a society, or when home birth is driven completely underground, essential knowledge of women’s capacities in birth is lost to the people of that society—to professional caregivers, as well as to the women of childbearing age themselves. ~ Ina May Gaskin,
253:We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security - and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use ~ Mohamed ElBaradei,
254:Because rage and violence are human emotions and drives and capacities that inhabit us all. SEE CARL JUNG. Or that hipster Joseph Campbell. Because we all take archetypal journeys in a million ways - literal, symbolic, you name it - that figure, disfigure, and refigure violence. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch,
255:Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace. ~ Thomas Merton,
256:The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material ~ Sri Aurobindo,
257:The great commander knows that in order to win one needs to know the remote and also the immediate reasons for the war, the capacities of the soldiers, which is to say the social and political make-up of the states, determining the variety, the quality and the character of the men. ~ Claudio Magris,
258:A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
259:Language builds on our cognitive capacities to reason about the goals and intentions of other people, on our desire to imitate, our desire to communicate, and our twin capacities for using convention to name things and sequence to indicate differences between differing possibilities. ~ Gary F Marcus,
260:To me, egotists seem bloated, flatulent. They watch out for number one, peer down their noses at you, and tend to be jealous or envious. (Still, egotists usually have varying capacities for empathy and love compared to narcissists, who’re typically more incapacitated in these areas.) ~ Judith Orloff,
261:There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so. ~ James D Watson,
262:The stranger’s presence alerts him to his mother’s absence. For Spitz, this behavioral reaction signaled the attainment of psychological capacities that make a singular, personal attachment possible. “There is no love until the loved one can be distinguished from all others” (1965, ~ Stephen A Mitchell,
263:The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit. ~ Noam Chomsky,
264:Most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it. ~ Italo Calvino,
265:Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes. ~ Peter Senge,
266:People have a range of capacities to deal with overwhelming experience. Some people, some kids particularly, are able to disappear into a fantasy world, to dissociate, to pretend like it isnt happening, and are able to go on with their lives. And sometimes it comes back to haunt them. ~ Bessel van der Kolk,
267:I will suggest that the great aim of our education is to bring out of the child who comes into our hands every faculty that he brings with him, and then to try to win that child to turn all his abilities, his powers, his capacities, to the helping and serving of the community which is a part. ~ Annie Besant,
268:To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products. ~ Paul Goodman,
269:People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self. ~ Eric Hoffer,
270:The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it. ~ James Madison,
271:Everyone, Pax believed, was more than she or he appeared to be, and one of the saddest things about the human condition was that most people never realized what talents, capacities, and depth they possessed. That Pogo had taken a full measure of himself must be one reason that Bibi so loved him. ~ Dean Koontz,
272:The entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
273:I was not sent into the world merely to exercise the good capacities and good feelings of others - was I? - but to exert my own towards them; and when I marry, I shall expect to find more pleasure in making my wife happy and comfortable, than in being made so by her: I would rather give than receive. ~ Anne Bront,
274:We're all saints! We all have built into us this intention, the capacities for kindness and creativity and beauty. It's a matter of perspective. As Einstein said, "The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe that the universe is friendly." It's your choice. ~ Wayne Dyer,
275:In Greece, as elsewhere, the implementation of budget cuts, the dismantling of social welfare programs, and the deregulation of labor markets have occurred alongside a marked upgrading of the repressive capacities of the state. The more inequality climbs, the more public and private police are required. ~ Anonymous,
276:these sensory capacities are deeply interwoven with the complexity that we know of as the world. They are a primary point of interface between me and not me. For the ecological sophistication that we call Earth to exist, those interfaces must, of necessity, be extremely sophisticated as well. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
277:You must want to be first-class ...meaning the best, the very best you are capable of becoming. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. ~ Abraham Maslow,
278:Without bravery' he instructed' they would never be able to realize the vautling scopes of their own capacities. Without bravery they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery their lives would remain small far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
279:Spiritual Student! Rejoice as the outer building tumbles down, for the inner Temple is to be revealed. The mind of the individual seeking help is the Christ-mind –awaiting recognition. The man who has his being “in Christ” finds his capacities and abilities in Soul –not in the brain, body, or muscle. ~ Joel S Goldsmith,
280:The bee’s brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet the bee has remarkable capacities for learning and remembering things. It is able to make complex calculations on distance traveled and to recall where it’s going and where it’s already been. —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL ~ Karen White,
281:The internet similarly allows networked movements to grow dramatically and rapidly, but without prior building of formal or informal organizational and other collective capacities that could prepare them for the inevitable challenges they will face and give them the ability to respond to what comes next. ~ Zeynep Tufekci,
282:The system of Descartes... seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand. ~ Voltaire,
283:first grade is the prelude of things to come, a life organized around frontal-lobe capacities: sitting still; keeping sphincters in check; being able to use words rather than acting out; understanding abstract and symbolic ideas; planning for tomorrow; and being in tune with teachers and classmates. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
284:...[N]ature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end... [so nature's] true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was... imparted to us as a practical... absolutely necessary... faculty. ~ Immanuel Kant,
285:The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. ~ Immanuel Kant,
286:All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure. ~ Lydia M Child,
287:If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant. ~ Peter Singer,
288:By definition reality is complete; therefore, whatever purpose and meaning we find in it, using limited human capacities, is a fragment of a pre-existing state, which we term the state of infinite possibilities. The fragment cannot be the whole, although in what may appear as strange, the part implies the whole ~ Deepak Chopra,
289:Nothing in medical literature today communicates the idea that women's bodies are well-designed for birth. Ignorance of the capacities of women's bodies can flourish and quickly spread into the popular culture when the medical profession is unable to distinguish between ancient wisdom and superstitious belief. ~ Ina May Gaskin,
290:Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
291:...it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room ~ Orhan Pamuk,
292:We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless.... We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities. ~ Arthur Ashe,
293:The experimental sciences, when one occupies oneself with them for their own sake, studying them without any philosophical aim, are like a face without eyes. They then represent one of those occupations suitable to middling capacities devoid of the supreme gifts which would only be obstacles to their minute researches. ~ Schopenhauer,
294:The movement of animals across the bridge was by no means always in one direction, for although it is true that the more spectacular beasts—mastodon, saber-tooth, rhinoceros—came out of Asia to enrich the new world, other animals like the camel originated in America and carried their wonderful capacities into Asia. ~ James A Michener,
295:Here is a difference between the Warrior and the Hero. The man (or the boy) accessing the Hero, as we’ve said, does not know his limitations; he is romantic about his invulnerability. The warrior, however, through his clarity of thinking realistically assesses his capacities and his limitations in any given situation. ~ Robert L Moore,
296:Our brains are designed to arrive at an accurate picture of the world, and to use that accurate picture to act on the world effectively, at least overall and in the long run. The same computational and neurological capacities that let us make discoveries about physics or biology also let us make discoveries about love. ~ Alison Gopnik,
297:The simplest argument for the thesis of the Background is that the literal meaning of any sentence can only determine its truth conditions or other conditions of satisfaction against a Background of capacities, dispositions, know-how, etc., which are not themselves part of the semantic content of the sentence. You ~ John Rogers Searle,
298:We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before. ~ Idries Shah,
299:My ability to respond is limitless, but my ability to act is limited. I am one hundred percent responsible for everything I am and everything I am not, for my capacities and my incapacities, for my joys and my miseries. I am the one who determines the nature of my experience in this life and beyond. I am the maker of my life. ~ Sadhguru,
300:The good society was, like the good self, a diverse yet harmonious, growing yet unified whole, a fully participatory democracy in which the powers and capacities of the individuals that comprised it were harmonized by their cooperative activities into a community that permitted the full and free expression of individuality. ~ John Dewey,
301:Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship. ~ Eknath Easwaran,
302:We needed a "psychenaut" program to be the opposite of the astronaut program in order to explore the enormous domains and dimensions of inner space. We need inner space exploration. We need to have access to more capacities in order to be adequate stewards of this most incredible process of transformation in human history. ~ Jean Houston,
303:Of course our genes will make some capacities very much easier to learn than others, and of course our genes themselves are not learned. But the point remains that genes themselves are not cognitive capacities, and that anything worth calling a cognitive capacity will depend to some degree on learning and so not be innate. ~ David Papineau,
304:As far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they don't know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are they're developing what's called 'nuclear capability,' which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. That's not a crime. ~ Noam Chomsky,
305:Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it. ~ Bruce Lee,
306:Any single historical event is too complex to be adequately known by anyone. It transcends all the intellectual capacities of men. Our practice is to wait until a sufficient number of details have been forgotten. Of course things seem simpler then! Our memories work that way; we retain the facts which are easiest to think about. ~ B F Skinner,
307:Instruction in sex is as important as instruction in food; yet not only are our adolescents not taught the physiology of sex, but never warned that the strongest sexual attraction may exist between persons so incompatible in tastes and capacities that they could not endure living together for a week much less a lifetime. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
308:Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers. ~ Norman Douglas,
309:How you meet your own commitments is important. Are you doing it by draining energy—driving people relentlessly, or burning them out by making impossible demands? Or are you expanding the capacity of the organization by helping people grow and expand their own capacities? In other words, there’s a right and a wrong way to delegate. ~ Ram Charan,
310:It is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. They should have an exaggerated opinion of our moral fortitude, our aesthetic sensibilities, and our intellectual scope. Why, they should practically imagine us leaping through a window in the nick of time with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and a pistol in the other! ~ Amor Towles,
311:no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever … nor shall … suffer on account of his religious opinions … but all men shall be free to profess … their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. ~ Kevin R C Gutzman,
312:The present dominant values (xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, narcissistic individualism, humanitarianism, bourgeois economism, hedonism, homophilia, permissivenes, etc.) are actually anti-values - values of devirilising weakness, since they deplete a civilization's vital energies and weaken its defensive or affirmative capacities. ~ Guillaume Faye,
313:This in no way implies the existence of multiple executives, each with their own planning and decision-making capacities. Instead, it suggests that the various component executive functions are achieved by a set of interconnected circuits that are spread over several brain regions in the frontal cortex, and even other regions, ~ Joseph E LeDoux,
314:Ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man... What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
315:It is only after knowing him for some time that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. ~ Michael Cunningham,
316:Most Hitler biographers are dismissive of his emotional capacities. The general trend has been to see him as cold and incapable of compassion. But while this certainly applies to his political self, more recent research suggests that he was neither cold nor indifferent towards those closest to him, and this certainly included Speer. ~ Gitta Sereny,
317:Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy. ~ Allen W Wood,
318:There’s the appeal of the young thief who robs you, and climbs back down off your cloud. It’s possible to love that boy, in a wistful and hopeless way. It’s possible to love his greed and narcissism, to grant him that which is beyond your own capacities: heedlessness, cockiness, a self-devotion so pure it borders on the divine. ~ Michael Cunningham,
319:According to one story, Von Neumann was asked to assist with the design of a new supercomputer, required to solve a new and important mathematical problem which was beyond the capacities of existing supercomputers. He asked to have the problem explained to him, solved it in moments with pen and paper and then turned down the request. Von ~ Tim Harford,
320:each of us has the potential, or mental templates, to be saint or sinner, altruistic or selfish, gentle or cruel, submissive or dominant, sane or mad, good or evil. Perhaps we are born with a full range of capacities, each of which is activated and developed depending on the social and cultural circumstances that govern our lives. I ~ Philip G Zimbardo,
321:With support from institutions like the United Nations as well as the donor community, governments can strengthen their national technological and scientific capacities by devising policies to link up to research networks, encourage technology transfer, and build indigenous capabilities through education and collaborative projects. ~ Talal Abu Ghazaleh,
322:Yet apes are intelligent, inquisitive, affectionate and sociable, with capacities for suffering and grief that match our own, and with a grave beauty and dignity which recalls Schopenhauer’s remark that ‘There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared to us – I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. ~ A C Grayling,
323:Wow,” I said. “Are you making this up?” “Hazel Grace, could I, with my meager intellectual capacities, make up a letter from Peter Van Houten featuring phrases like ‘our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity’?” “You could not,” I allowed. “Can I, can I have the email address?” “Of course,” Augustus said, like it was not the best gift ever. ~ John Green,
324:Human beings do not carry civilization in their genes. All that we do carry in our genes are certain capacities- the capacity to learn to walk upright, to use our brains, to speak, to relate to our fellow men, to construct and use tools, to explore the universe, and to express that exploration in religion, in art, in science, in philosophy. ~ Margaret Mead,
325:The capacities teachers need to build among students in order to equip them to become nation builders are: The capacity for research or inquiry; Capacity for creativity and innovation, particularly the creative transfer of knowledge; Capacity to use high technology; Capacity for entrepreneurial leadership; Capacity for moral leadership. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam,
326:People say that a person needs six feet of earth. But in fact it's a corpse that needs six feet of earth, not a person. People don’t need six feet of earth, or even a house in the country, but the whole globe, the whole of nature in its entirety, so they can have the space to express all the capacities and particularities of their free spirit. ~ Anton Chekhov,
327:Phone calls aired on several radio stations voice a raw contempt for the capacities of urban children (“money will not help these children”) but predict the imminent demise of education in the richer districts if their funding is cut back. Money, the message seems to be, is crucial to rich districts but will be of little difference to the poor. ~ Jonathan Kozol,
328:Wow,” I said. “Are you making this up?”
“Hazel Grace, could I, with my meager intellectual capacities, make up a letter from Peter Van Houten featuring phrases like ‘our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity’?”
“You could not,” I allowed. “Can I, can I have the email address?”
“Of course,” Augustus said, like it was not the best gift ever. ~ John Green,
329:Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute. ~ Betty Friedan,
330:Painting is my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. I'm of a certain age, I come from a different tradition and, in any case, I can't do anything else. I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human. ~ Gerhard Richter,
331:these capacities evolved so recently that our brains are, if you will, winging it and improvising on the fly when dealing with metaphor. As a result, we are actually pretty lousy at distinguishing between the metaphorical and literal, at remembering that “it’s only a figure of speech”—with enormous consequences for our best and worst behaviors. ~ Robert M Sapolsky,
332:Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them. ~ George Henry Lewes,
333:The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood. ~ Dion Fortune,
334:In the individual who is characterized by independence without corresponding relatedness, there will develop hostility toward those whom he believes to be the occasion of his isolation. In the individual who is symbiotically dependent there will develop hostility toward those whom he regards as instrumental in the suppression of his capacities and freedom. ~ Rollo May,
335:Christianity is not stoicism. The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling. Detachment is not insensibility. Too many ascetics fail to become great saints precisely because their rules and ascetic practices have merely deadened their humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace. ~ Thomas Merton,
336:Either the Earth System would undergo major phase transitions as a result of unchecked human pressure on nature's capacities and resources or a "Great Transformation" towards global sustainability would be initiated in due course. Neither transitions nor transformations will be manageable without novel forms of global governance and markets. ~ Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,
337:Once environmental inputs are perceived, all organisms possess specific capacities for processing those informational inputs. Every one of them can determine the nature of the incoming information, its potential impact on the individual organism’s health, and can decide what to do in response. They have to be able to do this in order to survive. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
338:Sustainability is especially ripe for political controversy and opposition because fundamentally it is a new paradigm that represents significant challenges to the status quo. The paradigm of sustainability, with its notions of limitations and carrying capacities confronts dominant paradigms of progress which do not recognize limits to unchecked growth ~ Hazel Henderson,
339:The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has. ... One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles. ~ Iris Murdoch,
340:A spiritual pilgrim needs to discern when his or her life is stunted in an old field and find the courage and determination to go to a "new land" that Lord will show. Surely this one of our greatest challenges & capacities - to understand and reorient our lives, aligning ourselves with the God-given rhythms of growth and awakening that vibrate within. ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
341:was fighting the war on a level where it might actually mean something, might have some use, might be a matter of changing people’s souls in their pure existence outside the world, where they might be capable of change, where they might learn what was important and return to life next time with new capacities in their hearts, with new goals in mind. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,
342:If you are born of the artist tribe it is a waste of time to try and function as a priest. You have to be faithful to your angle of vision, and at the same time recognise its partiality. There is a kind of perfection to be achieved in matching oneself to one's capacities at every level. This must, I imagine, do away with strivings, and with illusions too. ~ Lawrence Durrell,
343:Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small—far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
344:My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities. ~ John Cassavetes,
345:Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
346:The Gospel of John tells us that the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of glorious grace and truth, was also the Word through whom all things- all phenomena in nature, all capacities for fruitful interaction, all the kinds of beauty- were made. To honor that Word as he deserves to be honored,evangelicals must know both Christ and what he has made. ~ Mark A Noll,
347:When we read a literary work (or, in some instances, listen to music) our imagination is stimulated, we feel various emotions, and we arrive at new judgments. These attitudes are brought into relation with many others, including our standing tendencies to think and feel in particular ways, and we try to fit our psychological capacities and responses together. ~ Philip Kitcher,
348:All children want to do is play in worlds they create and project on their external world. If allowed to do that, they are constantly building new neural structures for creating internal worlds and projecting them on their external world. And they build up an enormous self-esteem and feeling of power over the external world through their own capacities. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce,
349:...were these Essays of mine considerable enough to deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fall
out that they would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in the middle region. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
350:If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for...all...and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements. ~ Pope John Paul II,
351:For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers – but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
352:Making the future and the road to the future wealth lies in the youth of the present and future, and rebuilding the nation's institutions based on knowledgeable scientific foundations that require promising human capacities derived from college graduates. Universities are the makers of men, we are proud of their role and of the efforts of their administrators. ~ Talal Abu Ghazaleh,
353:The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. ~ Carl Rogers,
354:Money has to undergo a metamorphosis again, it has to relinquish its role in the market economy and engage in an economy of capacities. Then we would be concerned with human creative productivity. And we would come full circle, since each human being can then act within his company as co-creator of the future, can - in full dignity - contribute to shaping this future. ~ Joseph Beuys,
355:No one seriously doubts that if Piraha children are brought up in Boston they'll be speaking Boston English, that is, that the capacities are present, unlike other animals, as far as is known. There's no challenge to the theory - not mine, but everyone's - that the human language faculty provides the means for generation of an infinite array of structured expressions. ~ Noam Chomsky,
356:The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. ~ Carl Rogers,
357:People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well. ~ Abraham Maslow,
358:The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution. Human behavior-like the deepest capacities for emotional respone which drive and guide it-is the circuitous technique by which human genetic material has been and will be kept intact. ~ E O Wilson,
359:Intentional states function only given a set of Background capacities that do not themselves consist in intentional phenomena. Thus, for example, beliefs, desires, and rules only determine conditions of satisfaction—truth conditions for beliefs, fulfillment conditions for desires, etc.—given a set of capacities that do not themselves consist in intentional phenomena. I ~ John Rogers Searle,
360:The man who is extremely and dangerously hungry has no other interest but food. Capacities not useful for the satisfying of hunger are pushed into the background. 'But what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of food and his belly in chronically filled? At once, other (and higher) needs emerge and these, rather than the psychological hungers, dominate the organism. ~ Betty Friedan,
361:We all know that getting old brings with it diminished capacities
compared with our younger days. But there is good science to show that
thinking clearly well into our later years is not something we need to
give up. Memory loss, disorientation and confusion are not inevitable
parts of aging, but problems linked to that all-important lifestyle factor:
diet. ~ T Colin Campbell,
362:To overcome our biological limitations as individuals, we have co-evolved collective systems and capacities - cultural, social, economic, political, scientific, media, educational, public relations, etc. But the flaw in all that is that we have designed them primarily for comfort, profit, power, control, and entertainment rather than for collective intelligence, sanity, and wisdom. ~ Tom Atlee,
363:The gift of the Holy Ghost is a gift of power. The Holy Ghost inspires and heals, guides and warns, enhances our natural capacities, inspires charity and humility, makes us smarter than we are, strengthens us during trials, testifies of the Father and the Son, and shows us "all things" that we should do. He helps us do more and become more than we could ever do or become on our own. ~ Sheri Dew,
364:Sometimes the issue is about whether families and communities think girls are even worthy of an education in the first place. It's about whether girls are valued only for their labor and reproductive capacities or for their minds as well. And it's about whether women are viewed as second-class citizens or as full human beings entitled to the same rights and opportunities as men. ~ Michelle Obama,
365:And the insight was that as people’s capacities wane, whether through age or ill health, making their lives better often requires curbing our purely medical imperatives—resisting the urge to fiddle and fix and control. It was not hard to see how important this idea could be for the patients I encountered in my daily practice—people facing mortal circumstances at every phase of life. ~ Atul Gawande,
366:I have gained and sustained my optimism as a humble student of our living universe, our living Earth, which clearly shows us the way out of our adolescent crisis into a mature global future. The sooner we create our vision of all we desire, set our intention to implement it together, and put our individual capacities into collective action, the greater our chances of success. ~ Elisabet Sahtouris,
367:I am for massive oil and gas and everything else and a lot of energy. Vladimir Putin can't love that. I am for the strongest military that the United States ever had. Putin can't love that. But Hillary Clinton was not for a strong military. And Hillary, my opponent, was for windmills. And she was for other types of energy that don't have the same capacities, at this moment, certainly. ~ Donald Trump,
368:If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the knowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner,
369:If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the k nowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner,
370:Teaching students to value literary masterpieces is our best hope of awakening them to the
infinite capacities and complexities of human experience, of helping them acknowledge and
accept complexity and ambiguity, and of making them love and respect the language that allows
us to smuggle out, and send one another, our urgent, eloquent dispatches from the prison of
self. ~ Francine Prose,
371:I work not only for the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, but also to teach the fact that one can be brilliant without being arrogant, that great intellectual capacity brings great responsibility, that the quest for knowledge should never supplant the joy of learning, that one with great capacities must learn to be tolerant and appreciate those with lesser or different absolutes, ~ H G Bissinger,
372:Our categories arise from the fact that we are neural beings, from the nature of our bodily capacities, from our experience interacting in the world, and from our evolved capacity for basic-level categorization - a level at which we optimally interact with the world. Evolution has not required us to be as accurate above and below the basic level as at the basic level, and so we are not. ~ George Lakoff,
373:As a society, we are typically deeply disassociated from animal cruelty, but more than ever, animal protection organizations are telling the backstory. People are being forced, to confront the realities. At the same time, we have an ever-growing understanding of the intelligence and emotional capacities of animals and an acceptance of the principle that animal cruelty is a moral problem. ~ Wayne Pacelle,
374:Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. ~ Herbert Spencer,
375:And it is not just knowledge that is improved by pausing. So, too, is the ability to build trust, “to form deeper and better connections, not just fast ones, with other human beings,” adds Seidman. “Our ability to forge deep relationships—to love, to care, to hope, to trust, and to build voluntary communities based on shared values—is one of the most uniquely human capacities we have. ~ Thomas L Friedman,
376:Another "advanced" educational method does not mark examination papers for their accuracy; instead, grades are given indicating that the child has done well in relation to his capacities. That is, the teacher assumes divine omniscience, and pretends to know the child's innate capacities absolutely, by some supernal means, instead of judging the specific result of a specific examination. ~ Isabel Paterson,
377:If I was going to sum up my approach to this whole mind issue, I would say this: the question is often formulated in a very bad way - for example, by posing the question in terms of stuff. It's better to start with the things we do know: for example, that there are people and other thinking creatures, who have mental capacities. Our next step should be to say something about these capacities. ~ Tim Crane,
378:(In your callings) you have access to more than your natural capacities, and you do not work alone. The Lord will magnify what you say and what you do in the eyes of the people you serve. He will send the Holy Ghost to manifest to them that what you spoke was true. What you say and do will carry hope and give direction to people far beyond your natural abilities and your own understanding. ~ Henry B Eyring,
379:Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing - too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart remains unfulfilled. ~ Stephen Covey,
380:According to the substantival view, all people are of infinite worth, regardless of their natural or acquired abilities or disabilities, simply because they possess a soul. It may be that certain persons cannot or do not exercise the capacities of their soul. Their intrinsic value, however, is rooted in the fact that they possess a soul, whether or not its capacities are exercised. Responding ~ Gregory A Boyd,
381:The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make. ~ Edward Weston,
382:We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead. ~ Neil Gaiman,
383:A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
384:His plain-English explanation of Stoicism is as follows: ‘A Stoic can be regarded, perhaps, as someone who continually reminds themselves that their plight is not as bad as it may appear, and that our capacities, to deal with both the petty frustrations of daily life and significant turns of bad fortune, are superior (with philosophy’s aid) to how we usually imagine them’ (Seddon, 2006, p. 78). ~ Donald J Robertson,
385:I'm not sure I'm ready for another big research project just yet," I said.
Oh Yeah?" he said, handing me one of the beers. "What else you going to do? You can't fix nothing , you never worked a day in your life. The only thing you know how to do is hang out with niggers like us."
I nearly choked on my beer when he summarized my capacities so succinctly - and, for the most part accurately. ~ Sudhir Venkatesh,
386:I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them you can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them. People have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody... Because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Shog them, hit them hard, give them challenge. That challenge will bring their full capacities to the climax. ~ Rajneesh,
387:I concluded that first of all I had to understand better what I was. Investigate my nature as a woman. I had been excessive, I had striven to give myself male capacities. I thought I had to know everything, be concerned with everything. What did I care about politics, about struggles. I wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. At the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. ~ Elena Ferrante,
388:We are already behaving differently from that bacterial colony in a petri dish, deviating from the fatal S-curve, using our limited but growing global cognitive capacities to anticipate and soften or avoid the crash. We are waking up, and we can see the trends starting to turn. We are slowly rounding the corner on the related problems of poverty and overpopulation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ~ David Grinspoon,
389:For women especially, tuning into the goddesses is a way of homing in on aspects of our own life-energy that we may never have understood or owned. Celebrating the goddesses has the potential not only to tune us to our own sacred capacities, but also to help us work with the hidden and secret forces at play in our lives. When we can do that, we can literally harness these forces for our own transformation. ~ Sally Kempton,
390:Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities. ~ Frances Moore Lappe,
391:To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human. ~ Ivo Andri,
392:Pyotr Petrovitch, who had made his way up from insignificance, was morbidly given to self-admiration, had the highest opinion of his intelligence and capacities, and sometimes even gloated in solitude over his image in the glass. But what he loved and valued above all was the money he had amassed by his labour, and by all sorts of devices: that money made him the equal of all who had been his superiors. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
393:To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human. ~ Ivo Andric,
394:What are the steps to follow for (1) sadhana and (2) silence of the mind?

   (1) Do work as sadhana. You offer to the Divine the work you do to the best of your capacities and you leave the result to the Divine. (2) Try to become conscious first above your head, keeping the brain as silent as possible. If you succeed and the work is done in that condition, then it will become perfect.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
395:I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt. ~ William Stanley Jevons,
396:What I wish to show by these feats of strength is that prayer and meditation can definitely increase one's outer capacities. I hope that by doing this I will be able to inspire many people to pray and meditate sincerely as part of their regular daily routine. my message is that if one needs strength, then uncovering one's inner strength through prayer and meditation is the fastest and most effective way to get it. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
397:The Pygmies and the Bushmen, these oldest of all peoples, remind us that our capacities for mutuality, cooperation, and empathy are every bit as real and every bit as much a part of our humanity as our capacities for greed, competition, and exclusiveness. Raising their children with unlimited respect and treating each person as having infinite worth, they have survived longer than any other culture known to science. ~ John Robbins,
398:Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
399:The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it. ~ Edward Weston,
400:When I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reasonable thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world. ~ John Locke,
401:goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification" is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the Stanley Cup. His finding underscores the role of emotional intelligence as a meta-ability, determining how well or how poorly people are able to use their other mental capacities. ~ Daniel Goleman,
402:Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it’s about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have become estranged. That’s what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it’s about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. ~ Joshua Foer,
403:Magic and its remedies deal with borders, markers, distinctions, insides and outsides, the limits of bodies, and also that which breaches these boundaries; bodily fluids, exchanges of objects through bodies and across thresholds, words that pass through the guard of the ear and enter the mind of the hearer. Women’s bodies by virtue of their reproductive capacities, are seen as more open, more grotesque, less autonomous ~ Diane Purkiss,
404:One of the central problems with bringing up children in our day is the constant temptation to underestimate their capacities. We teach them profane and irreverent little ditties, not psalms and hymns. We give them moralistic little stories, not biblical doctrine and ethics. We expect them to act as though they have no brains or souls until they have graduated from college. We aim at nothing, and we hit it every time. ~ Douglas Wilson,
405:adore Thee in a spirit of reparation for all the priests of the Church, but especially for those who never, or hardly ever, stop in Thy presence, there to put down their burdens, and to receive from Thee new strength, new lights, new capacities to love, to pardon, and to bless. I do not want to leave this tabernacle today. I want, at every instant, to remain immersed in the adoration for which Thou waitest from Thy priests. ~ Anonymous,
406:The U theory suggests that the central integrating thought ... will emerge from building three integrated capacities: a new capacity for observing that no longer fragments the observer from what's observed; a new capacity for stillness that no longer fragments who we really are from what's emerging; and a new capacity for creating alternative realities that no longer fragments the wisdom of the head, heart and hand. ~ Betty Sue Flowers,
407:I want to suggest a pretty radical idea about what family is for. Family is about the forming of persons. Being a person is a gift, like life itself—we are born as human beings made in the image of God. But while in one sense a person is simply what we are as human beings, we are also able to become—to grow in capacities that are only potentially present within us at first. Family shapes us in countless ways. But I want to ~ Andy Crouch,
408:The egocentricity which motivated it was not that of the spoiled, but of the too little spoiled; the lonely. Had she been an artist she would have painted a self-portrait; instead she decorated two rooms, charging them with objects which some visitor, some day, would recognize and understand. And through that understanding he would divine all the capacities and longings she had found in herself and was unable to communicate. ~ Ira Levin,
409:The three branches of somaesthetics: the analytic study of the body's role in perception, experience, and action and thus in our mental, moral, and social life; the pragmatic study of methodologies to improve our body-mind functioning and thus expand our capacities of self-fashioning; and the practical branch that investigates such pragmatic methods by testing them on our own flesh in concrete experience and practice. ~ Richard Shusterman,
410:A successful life for a man or for a woman seems to me to lie in the knowledge that one has developed to the limit the capacities with which one was endowed; that one has contributed something constructive to family and friends and to a home community; that one has brought happiness wherever it was possible; that one has earned one's way in the world, has kept some friends, and need not be ashamed to face oneself honestly. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt,
411:The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities. ~ Eric Hoffer,
412:Understand that bodies are shaped by culture from the very get-go,” explains Fausto-Sterling. “If you neglect a child at birth, their brain stops developing and they’re pretty messed up. If you highly stimulate a child, if they’re within a normal developmental range, they now develop all sorts of capacities you didn’t know they had or didn’t have the potential to develop. So the question always goes back to how development works. ~ Angela Saini,
413:No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
414:It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature’s plainest danger-signals. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
415:There are five of us. We've all played in various bands together, in different combinations. I know that Todd [Cook] and Tony [Bailey] are my favorite rhythm section - they're just like a unit. I guess we've all just played together in various capacities, so when the band was coming together, it was sort of like we just chose members because they had similar sensibilities and also because they're just cool. We all got along real well. ~ David Pajo,
416:We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other’s powers in a curious sort of homage—heard in adult life decades down the line—to a small child’s awe at their own parents’ apparently miraculous capacities. ~ Alain de Botton,
417:Think of our DNA. In the last million years, our DNA hasn't changed at all. It's really much the same as it was in the jungle, a million, two millions years ago. But in the last 200 years, our destructive capacities have increased many, many millions of times over. Why don't we see intelligent signals from outer space? Because in all likelihood, once the civilization reaches the point our civilization has reached, it destroys itself. ~ Stephen Hawking,
418:All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me. ~ Margaret Fuller,
419:he child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and colour. Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will - a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood's capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
420:The child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and colour. Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will - a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood's capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
421:We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other’s powers in a curious sort of homage—heard in adult life decades down the line—to a small child’s awe at their own parents’ apparently miraculous capacities. To ~ Alain de Botton,
422:Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization...I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. ~ Seymour Papert,
423:Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves. ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted. ~ Paul Goodman,
424:a woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence. ~ Frederick Douglass,
425:With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked for us at an earlier stage. We find ourselves in an environment that pelts us with more challenges than our current self can manage. If we don't grow bigger, we can become bitter. When our problems become too big for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities. That growth is qualitative. We become deeper, kinder to ourselves and others, and more capable of bliss. ~ Mary Pipher,
426:If all persons with any trace of homosexual history, or those who were predominantly homosexual, were eliminated from the population today, there is no reason for believing that the incidence of the homosexual in the next generation would be materially reduced. The homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal. ~ Alfred Kinsey,
427:There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness. ~ Aristotle,
428:[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence. ~ Frederick Douglass,
429:Our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another. ~ Margaret J Wheatley,
430:Sorrow is God's plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls' capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly. ~ Lettie Cowman,
431:A person who makes full use of and exploits his talents, potentialities, and capacities. Such a person seems to be fulfilling himself and doing the best he is capable of doing. The self-actualized person must find in his life those qualities that make his living rich and rewarding. He must find meaningfulness, self-sufficiency, effortlessness, playfulness, richness, simplicity, completion, necessity, perfection, individuality, beauty, and truth. ~ Abraham Maslow,
432:The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. ~ Erich Fromm,
433:Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer,
434:Through it [Science] we believe that man will be saved from misery and degradation, not merely acquiring new material powers, but learning to use and to guide his life with understanding. Through Science he will be freed from the fetters of superstition; through faith in Science he will acquire a new and enduring delight in the exercise of his capacities; he will gain a zest and interest in life such as the present phase of culture fails to supply. ~ Ray Lankester,
435:We are all each of us riddles, when unknown one to the other. The plain map of human powers and purposes, helps us not at all to thread the labyrinth each individual presents in his involution of feelings, desires and capacities; and we must resemble, in quickness of feeling, instinctive sympathy, and warm benevolence, the lovely daughter of Huntley, before we can hope to judge rightly of the good and virtuous of our fellow-creatures. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
436:The way to an extraordinary life lies in exploring ourselves, in learning of our greatest capacities and in understanding who we fundamentally are as people. Then, equipped with this essential knowledge, we can go out into the world to do what we have been wired to do and create the goodness that we have been placed here to create. Remember, you have a duty to shine, and this world will be less of a place if you choose to play small with your life. ~ Robin S Sharma,
437:The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody's wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent. ~ Catharine Beecher,
438:...there are pleasures to be had from books beyond being lightly entertained. There is the pleasure of being challenged; the pleasure of feeling one’s range and capacities expanding; the pleasure of entering into an unfamiliar world, and being led into empathy with a consciousness very different from one’s own; the pleasure of knowing what others have already thought it worth knowing, and entering a larger conversation. (The New Yorker, 13 Aug 2014) ~ Rebecca Mead,
439:no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
440:I live in an unethical society that coarsens the sensibilities and thwarts the capacities for goodness of most people but makes available for minority consumption an astonishing array of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures. Those who don’t enjoy (in both senses) my pleasures have every right, from their side, to regard my consciousness as spoiled, corrupt, decadent. I, from my side, can’t deny the immense richness of these pleasures, or my addiction to them. ~ Susan Sontag,
441:What you say is quite true. A simple, straight and sincere call and aspiration from the heart is the one important thing and more essential and effective than capacities. Also to get the consciousness to turn inwards, not remain outward-going is of great importance - to arrive at the inner call, the inner experience, the inner Presence. The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I,
442:In making a path like the Buddha, we discover our own capacities for relationship. Doing this is like feeling our way in the dark. We need a healthy appreciation for what kind of obstacles we are facing within ourselves, and we need a method for working our way around those obstacles. It is in this sense that the path is the goal - opening leads to further opening. The Buddha's meditative teachings are about finding and incorporating a method around our obstacles. ~ Mark Epstein,
443:Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the last best conveys the idea of assisting through cooperation the natural capacities of the individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion of an energy brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance from the one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests the fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a certain continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. ~ John Dewey,
444:But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. ~ John Dewey,
445:As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper. ~ Rachel Carson,
446:I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul. ~ Nicolas Malebranche,
447:Tolstoy twice travelled abroad, visiting Germany, France, and England, and studying the educational systems, which seemed to him very bad. Children born with different tastes and capacities are put through the same course of lessons, just as coffee beans of different sizes are ground to the same grade. And this is done, not because it is best for them, but because it is easiest for the teachers, and because the parents lead artificial lives and neglect their own children. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
448:You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement. Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority. All people are born with different constitutions. Never compare with others. Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength. Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. ~ B K S Iyengar,
449:Conservatives believe government's principal functions are the preservation of freedom and removal of restraints on the individual. Liberalism's ascent in the first two-thirds of this century reflected the new belief that government should also confer capacities on individuals. Liberalism's decline in the final third of this century has reflected doubts about whether government can be good at that, or whether government that is good at that is good for the nation's character. ~ George Will,
450:This is the essence of psychological rationalism: We grow into our rationality as caterpillars grow into butterflies. If the caterpillar eats enough leaves, it will (eventually) grow wings. And if the child gets enough experiences of turn taking, sharing, and playground justice, it will (eventually) become a moral creature, able to use its rational capacities to solve ever harder problems. Rationality is our nature, and good moral reasoning is the end point of development. ~ Jonathan Haidt,
451:For a team to succeed, responsibility must go down deep into the organization, down to the roots. Getting that to happen requires a leader who will delegate responsibility and authority to the team. Stephen Covey remarked, “People and organizations don’t grow much without delegation and completed staff work, because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.” Good leaders seldom restrict their teams; they release them. ~ John C Maxwell,
452:As we enter the 21st Century it is clear that we have entered an unprecedented global age in which our diverse cultures, religions, philosophies, worldviews and perspectives encounter one another in the marketplace of our global village. It is now clear that our future sustainability on this planet calls for radical advances in our rational and human capacities to negotiate the powerful forces between worlds as the human family moves towards a sustainable global civilization. ~ Ashok Gangadean,
453:This is the idea of personality; that is to say, the reunion of presentations, the remembrance of all past impressions, the imagination of future phenomena. It is the notion of my body, of my capacities, of my name, of my social position, of the part I play in the world ; it is an ensemble of moral, political, religious thoughts, etc.; it is a world of ideas, the most considerable, perhaps, that we can ever know, for we are far from having made the tour of the domain of personality. ~ Anonymous,
454:To them, violence, power, cruelty, were the supreme capacities of men who had definitely lost their place in the universe and were much too proud to long for a power theory that would safely bring them back and reintegrate them into the world. They were satisfied with blind partisanship in anything that respectable society had banned, regardless of theory or content, and they elevated cruelty to a major virtue because it contradicted society’s humanitarian and liberal hypocrisy. ~ Hannah Arendt,
455:The fabric of human life is woven with relationships. Once we thematize the importance of dialogue, the multiplicity of ongoing and created situations in which dialogical skills can be nurtured abound. As we have seen, this requires us to slow down and turn toward each other, having a clear sense of the relationship between our current footing in dialogue with one another and the future we are trying to create. The nurture of dialogical capacities is essential to human liberation. ~ Mary Watkins,
456:Ho yes! I am a abject slave, and a toiling, moiling, constant-working, always-being-found-fault-with, never-giving-satisfactions, nor-having-no-time-to-clean-oneself, potter's wessel—an't I, miss! Ho yes! My situations is lowly, and my capacities is limited, and my duties is to humble myself afore the base degenerating daughters of their blessed mothers as is fit to keep companies with holy saints but is born to persecutions from wicked relations—and to demean myself before them as ~ Charles Dickens,
457:Creative Living, Defined So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? Look, I don’t know what’s hidden within you. I have no way of knowing such a thing. You yourself may barely know, although I suspect you’ve caught glimpses. I don’t know your capacities, your aspirations, your longings, your secret talents. But surely something wonderful is sheltered inside you. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
458:He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small—far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
459:...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights? ~ Peter Singer,
460:You must purge yourself before finding faults in others.
When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake.
This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement.
Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority.
All people are born with different constitutions.
Never compare with others.
Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength.
Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. ~ B K S Iyengar,
461:Humility,” Paul answered. “That’s what distinguishes those who can turn these facilities around from those who can’t. Leaders who succeed are those who are humble enough to be able to see beyond themselves and perceive the true capacities and capabilities of their people. They don’t pretend to have all the answers. Rather, they create an environment that encourages their people to take on the primary responsibility for finding answers to the challenges they and their facilities face. ~ The Arbinger Institute,
462:Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not particularly meant for its benefit and use. If Nature gives to us capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kindness and goodness and tenderness on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to conceive a Being must be for our benefit and use; it would not be for our benefit and use if it were a lie. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton,
463:Christopher Wright makes a virtually identical conclusion about the significance of Genesis 3:22:
God accepts that humans have indeed breached the Creator-creature distinction. Not that humans have now become gods but that they have chosen to act as though they were-defining and deciding for themselves what they will regard as good and evil. Therein lies the root of all other forms of idolatry: we deify our own capacities, and thereby make gods of ourselves and our choices and all their implications. ~ G K Beale,
464:While we may continue to use the words
smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may
persist for certain purposes, the monopoly
of those who believe in a single general
intelligence has come to an end. Brain
scientists and geneticists are documenting
the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses. ~ Howard Gardner,
465:As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel. But if you hope to mobilize your inner capacities for growth and for healing and to take charge in your life on a new level, a certain kind of effort and energy on your part will be required.... It will take conscious effort on your part to move in a direction of healing and inner peace. This means learning to work with the very stress and pain that is causing you to suffer. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
466:Because God has originated the power’s and capacities of a creature from nothing, he is entitled to all the agency of these faculties without paying for it; as the artificer of a watch is entitled to all the motion of the watch, without coming under obligation to the watch. Even this comparison is inadequate; for the maker of the watch did not create the materials out of which it is made. But God creates the very substance itself out of which man’s faculties of mind and body are made. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd,
467:Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience. ~ Lance Armstrong,
468:"The true purpose of education," says one, "is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop to their fullest extent the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us." He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion. ~ William H. Crogman, "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), in Talks for the Times (1896), p. 282,
469:Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even it if goes wrong, it lives. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
470:We project our own capacities - for good as well as evil - onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. ~ Jan Philipp Sendker,
471:My knowledge is, if you will follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, every man and woman will be put in possession of the Holy Ghost; every person will become a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and an expounder of truth. They will know things that are, that will be, and that have been. They will understand things in heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth, things of time, and things of eternity, according to their several callings and capacities. ~ Brigham Young,
472:Woman is not a fixed reality but a becoming; she has to be compared with man in her becoming; that is, her possibilities have to be defined: what skews the issues so much is that she is being reduced to what she was, to what she is today, while the question concerns her capacities; the fact is that her capacities manifest themselves clearly only when they have been realized: but the fact is also that when one considers a being who is transcendence and surpassing, it is never possible to close the books. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
473:No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark. ~ Daniel Defoe,
474:Honoring the important and necessary changes in the adolescent mind and brain rather than disrespecting them is crucial for both teens and their parents. When we embrace these needed changes, when we offer teens the support and guidance they need instead of just throwing up our hands and thinking we’re dealing with an “immature brain that simply needs to grow up,” or “raging hormones in need of taming,” we enable adolescents to develop vital new capacities that they can use to lead happier and healthier lives. ~ Daniel J Siegel,
475:Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. ~ John Stuart Mill,
476:By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the world. ~ Erich Fromm,
477:All of the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. ~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche,
478:For centuries, we in the West have thought of ourselves as rational animals whose mental capacities transcend our bodily nature. In this traditional view our minds are abstract, logical, unemotionally rational, consciously accessible, and, above all, able to directly fit and represent the world. Language has a special place in thie view of what a human is - it is a privileged, logical symbol system internal to our minds that transparently expresses abstract concepts that are defined in terms of the external world itself. ~ George Lakoff,
479:"The pride of the intellect: The intellect is the most incredible human capacity. It is the highest of all human capacities, actually. However, it is also the thing that can go most terribly wrong, because the intellect can become arrogant about its own existence and its accomplishments, and it can fall in love with its own products. That's what happens with ideologies. You become obsessed with a human-constructed dogma of which you believe is 100% right, and it eradicates the necessity of anything transcendent."  ~ Jordan Peterson,
480:There is no evolutionary pressure to create minds capable of forming sciences; it just happened. Evolutionary pressure has not led to higher rates of reproduction for people capable of solving scientific problems or creating new scientific ideas. So if, in fact, the science-forming capacities evolved for other reasons, it would not be too surprising if those particular structures that have developed proved to be rather special in their nature, reflecting the contingencies of their evolution or the working of physical law. ~ Noam Chomsky,
481:The secrets of her body were in her eyes—the zygote new thing in the world, a new world but formed of remembered materials: the blastoderm, the wildly splitting cells, and folds and nodes, the semblance of a thing, projections to be arms and legs and vague rays of ganglia, gill slits on teh forming head, projections to be fingers and two capacities from which to see one day, and then, a little man, whole formed, no bigger than the stub of a pencil and bathed in warm liquor, drawing food from the mother bank and growing. ~ John Steinbeck,
482:Once you have an equalization instrument in place, as you have in Canada, there arise tremendous bureaucratic values - bureaucratic rent so to speak - in maintaining the system that you have. To shift to a system that paid the transfers directly to individuals, by having differential rates of federal income tax levied to adjust to provincial fiscal capacities, which would be my preference, you would have huge bureaucratic opposition. People would try to protect the rents they have in the current system of institutions. ~ James M Buchanan,
483:"The pride of the intellect: The intellect is the most incredible human capacity. It is the highest of all human capacities, actually. However, it is also the thing that can go most terribly wrong, because the intellect can become arrogant about its own existence and its accomplishments, and it can fall in love with its own products. That's what happens with ideologies. You become obsessed with a human-constructed dogma of which you believe is 100% right, and it eradicates the necessity of anything transcendent."  ~ Jordan B Peterson,
484:Creativity, I believe, is inherent in all of us. We are the progeny of almighty God. God is defined in many ways: all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing; everlasting; the lawgiver; the ultimate source of love, beauty, justice, and happiness. Most of all, he is the creator. He created the universe, and those who inhabit it; and, in creating us, he made us in his own image, so that his personality and capacities, however feebly, are reflected in our minds, bodies, and immortal spirits. So we are, by our nature, creators as well. ~ Paul Johnson,
485:Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person. ~ Karen Armstrong,
486:When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
487:When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: “natural” qualities and those called truly “human” are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
488:I can say that the happiest period of my life has been since I emerged from the shadows and superstitions of the old theologies, relieved from all gloomy apprehensions of the future, satisfied that as my labors and capacities were limited to this sphere of action, I was responsible for nothing beyond my horizon, as I could neither understand nor change the condition of the unknown world. Giving ourselves, then, no trouble about the future, let us make the most of the present, and fill up our lives with earnest work here. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
489:I was, in short, but one generation removed from the South, which was now undergoing a new convulsion over whether black children had the same rights, or capacities, for education as did the children of white people. This is a criminally frivolous dispute, absolutely unworthy of this nation; and it is being carried on, in complete bad faith, by completely uneducated people. (We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.) ~ James Baldwin,
490:The apprentice Christian may not rise so high but, once his heart is governed by Faith, it is reasonable for Faith to draw on his other capacities to support him. Sebond’s doctrine of illumination helps us to do so effectively and to draw religious strength from a knowledge of God’s creation: [God] has left within these lofty works the impress of his Godhead: only our weakness stops us from discovering it. He tells us himself that he makes manifest his unseen workings through those things which are seen. (‘Apology’, p. 498) ~ Michel de Montaigne,
491:Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures. ~ Christian Smith,
492:If you look at all the variables in nature that are said
to determine human “sex,” you can’t possibly find one that will unequivocally split the species into two. Each of the so-called criteria of sexedness is itself a continuum—including chromosomal variables, genital and gonadal variations,
reproductive capacities, endocrinological proportions, and any other criterion you could think of. Any or all of these different variables may line up in any number of ways, and all of the variables may vary independently of one another. ~ John Stoltenberg,
493:When you study the lives of all great achievers-those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made things happen-you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggle, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of these four intelligences are: for mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice. ~ Stephen Covey,
494:The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood—that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
495:The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. ~ Walter Lippmann,
496:A moral system based on continuous rather than categorical thinking gives us a biological and evolutionary foundation for the expansion of the moral sphere to include nonhuman animals, based on objective criteria of genetic relatedness, cognitive abilities, emotional capacities, moral development, and especially the capacity to feel pain and suffer. This is, in fact, what it means to be a sentient being, and for this reason I worded the first principle of this science-based moral system as the survival and flourishing of sentient beings. ~ Michael Shermer,
497:The capacities that develop in the earliest years may be harder to measure on tests of kindergarten readiness than abilities like number and letter recognition, but they are precisely the skills, closely related to executive functions, that researchers have recently determined to be so valuable in kindergarten and beyond: the ability to focus on a single activity for an extended period, the ability to understand and follow directions, the ability to cope with disappointment and frustration, the ability to interact capably with other students. ~ Paul Tough,
498:There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes early become governed by strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading. We tend to perceive things schematically, for example, rather than in detail, or we represent a class of diverse things by some sort of averaged "typical instance. ~ Jerome Bruner,
499:Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. ~ Jan Philipp Sendker,
500:Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions. ~ Denise Levertov,
501:The ever-mounting glut of waste materials is characteristic by-product of modern consumer society. It might even be argued that capitalism's continual need to find of generate markets means that disposibility and waste have become the spine of the system. To consume means, literally, to destroy or expend, and in the garbage crisis we confront the underlying truth of a society in which enormous productive capacities and market forces have harnessed human needs and desires, without regard to the long or even short-term future of life on the planet. ~ Stuart Ewen,
502:Those who applaud social production and networked amateurism, the colorful cacophony that is the Internet, and the creative capacities of everyday people to produce entertaining and enlightening things online, are right to marvel. There is amazing inventiveness, boundless talent and ability, and overwhelming generosity on display. Where they go wrong is thinking that the Internet is an egalitarian, let alone revolutionary, platform for our self-expression and development, that being able to shout into the digital torrent is adequate for democracy. ~ Astra Taylor,
503:The mitochondria in our cells, that power our metabolism, were formerly free living bacteria, as are the chloroplasts that power those of plants. All complex life-forms are generated through just this kind of cooperative joining, over long evolutionary time, with information built upon information, complexity always increasing in order to more fully stabilize the system. And all such symbiogenic joinings produce life-forms that are not only more complex but whose capacities cannot be predicted from a study of the parts that joined together. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
504:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
   ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,
505:Consciousness and its sensory capacities, he claimed, are “doubtless still modifiable in directions as unthinkable to me as my eyesight would have been unthinkable to the oyster,”90 and the human being has “evoked in greatest multiplicity the unnumbered faculties latent in the irritability of a speck of slime” (HP 1:76). In short, just as it has in the history of life on this planet, consciousness will continue to evolve from the normal to the supernormal, and this to the extent that it can gain “a completer control over innate but latent faculty. ~ Jeffrey J Kripal,
506:I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism—a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect. ~ Thomas Mann,
507:Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward without choice or effort and there is no trend solely in the right direction. Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution. ~ George Gaylord Simpson,
508:Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom. ~ Germaine Greer,
509:We feared pain much earlier than we apprehended guilt, and were delighted with the sensations of pleasure, before we had capacities to be charmed with the beauty of rectitude. To this power, thus early established, and incessantly increasing, it must be remembered that almost every man has, in some part of his life, added new strength by a voluntary or negligent subjection of himself; for who is there that has not instigated his  appetites by indulgence, or suffered them, by an unresisting neutrality, to enlarge their dominion, and multiply their demands? ~ Samuel Johnson,
510:My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. ~ Dale Carnegie,
511:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives. ~ James W Fowler,
512:Listen, we are human beings. Listen, we are inclined to love. Love is there, but we need to be taught how. We want to stand upright, we want to walk, but someone needs to hold our hand and balance us a bit, and guide us a bit, and scoop us up when we fall.

Listen, we fall. Love is there but we have to learn it—and its shapes and its possibilities. I taught myself how to stand on my own two feet, but I could not teach myself how to love.

We have a capacity for language. We have a capacity for love. We need other people to release those capacities. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
513:Some innate capacity - some part of the human genetic endowment - enters into language acquisition. That much is uncontroversial among those who believe that humans are part of the natural world. If it were not true, would be a miracle that my granddaughter reflexively identified some elements of the blooming buzzing confusion as language-related and went on to acquire capacities of the kind that you and I are now exercising, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, bee...), presented with exactly the same data, could not take the first step, let alone the later ones. ~ Noam Chomsky,
514:The cognitive capacities of near-term fetuses are even more remarkable. For example, fetuses can distinguish between two pairs of nonsense syllables (“biba” versus “babi”). How do you know? Get this—Mom says “Biba, biba, biba” repeatedly while fetal heart rate is monitored. “Boring (or perhaps lulling),” thinks the fetus, and heart rate slows. Then Mom switches to “babi.” If the fetus doesn’t distinguish between the two, heart rate deceleration continues. But if the difference is noted—“Whoa, what happened?”—heart rate increases. Which is what DeCasper reported.61 ~ Robert M Sapolsky,
515:it enables us to imagine ourselves in someone else’s place, and to ask how we would feel and what we would do if we were this other person. No matter how poorly we use or fail to use or even abuse these capacities, they are the rudiments of our ability to begin to love our neighbor, to have ethical sensitivity, to see truth, to create beauty, to devote ourselves to ideals, and to die for them if need be. To fulfill these potentialities is to be a person. This is what is meant when it is stated in the Hebrew-Christian religious tradition that man is created in the image of God. ~ Rollo May,
516:Nor is it in fact a purely human knowledge bound by the context and categories of the human mind. Rather, metaphysics, which some of his translators render as metaphysic in order to emphasize its non-multiple but unitary nature, is the science of Ultimate Reality, attainable through the intellect and not reason, of an essentially suprahuman character and including in its fullness the whole of man's being. It is a sacred science or scientia sacra, a wisdom which liberates and which requires not only certain mental capacities but also moral and spiritual qualifications. It ~ Frithjof Schuon,
517:That Francis Bacon retains his reputation gained, is not strange to any that knows him. The unusual words wherewith he had spangled his speech, were rather gracious for their propriety than strange for their novelty, and like to serve both for occasions to report and means to remember his argument. Certain sentences of his , somewhat obscure, and as it were presuming upon their capacities will, I fear, make some of them rather admire than commend him. In sum, all is as well as words can make it, and if it please Her Majesty to add deeds, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook. ~ Edward Coke,
518:I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds. ~ Jean Vanier,
519:Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estrangedmemory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. ~ Joshua Foer,
520:The author suggests we aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to make the experience of aging better. In what ways could we improve aging in our daily lives and as a culture? 6. Did you read Alice Hobson’s story as an inspiring one, or as a cautionary tale? 7. Even with diminishing capacities, Felix found ways to give his life in a retirement community purpose by helping fellow residents, mentoring younger doctors, and caring for his wife. What activities might you envision doing that would bring you fulfillment in your retirement when you might face some physical limitations? ~ Atul Gawande,
521:If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
522:Dear Sir: My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. Sincerely, ~ Dale Carnegie,
523:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
   ~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,
524:If you do not divulge the contents of your silent soliloquies and other imaginings, I have no other sure way of finding out what you have been saying or picturing to yourself. But the sequence of your sensations and imaginings is not the sole field in which your wits and character are shown; perhaps only for lunatics is it more than a small corner of that field. I find out most of what I want to know about your capacities, interests, likes, dislikes, methods and convictions by observing how you conduct your overt doings, of which by far the most important are your sayings and writings. ~ Gilbert Ryle,
525:One day, riding along, we were talking about Joan's great talents, and he said, 'But, greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.' I said, like an unthinking fool, 'The seeing eye?—I shouldn't count on that for much—I suppose we all have it.' 'No,' he said; 'very few have it.' Then he explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect. ~ Mark Twain,
526:I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the divinity of this, the work of God. We respect those of other churches. We desire their friendship and hope to render meaningful service with them. We know they all do good, but we unabashedly state—and this frequently brings criticism upon us—that this is the true and living Church of our Father in Heaven and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,
527:[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection. ~ Nicholas Carr,
528:There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be. ~ Thomas Merton,
529:We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.
This is a difficult process because of how restricted our capacities for attention usually are. We do not suspend our judgments easily, nor do we generally have access to our childhood capacity for curiosity and exploration. Our attentional resources are hijacked early in our lives by our need to manage the intrusive or ignoring familial environments in which we are immersed. As a result, many of us end up in unreal states, stuck in our heads, unaware of our bodies, and unaware of being unaware. ~ Mark Epstein,
530:It’s conceivable that in the future the evolutionary purpose, rather than the organization, will become the entity around which people gather. A specific purpose will attract people and organizations in fluid and changing constellations, according to the need of the moment. People will connect in different capacities—fulltime, part-time, freelance, volunteering—and organizations will join forces, or disband, in reaction to what best serves the purpose at the moment. The boundaries of an organization might be harder to trace, and the very notion of an organization less relevant. Creating ~ Frederic Laloux,
531:And the history of our own nation! Was it not chosen by Providence to become the leading nation on earth? And does it not tower mountain high over other nations? Is it not the gem of the ocean? Is it not incomparably virtuous, ideal, and brave? The result of such ridiculous teaching is a dull, shallow patriotism, blind to its own limitations, with bull-like stubbornness, utterly incapable of judging of the capacities of other nations. This is the way the spirit of youth is emasculated, deadened through an over-estimation of one's own value. No wonder public opinion can be so easily manufactured. ~ Emma Goldman,
532:Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
533:Use-induced cortical reorganization, says Taub, "involves alterations different from mere learning and memory. Rather than producing just increased synaptic strength at certain junctions, which is believed to underlie learning, some unknown mechanism is instead producing wholesale topographic reorganization." And more: we are seeing evidence of the brain's ability to remake itself throughout adult life, not only in response to outside stimuli but even in response to directed mental effort. We are seeing, in short, the brain's potential to correct its own flaws and enhance its own capacities. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,
534:Use-induced cortical reorganization, says Taub, “involves alterations different from mere learning and memory. Rather than producing just increased synaptic strength at certain junctions, which is believed to underlie learning, some unknown mechanism is instead producing wholesale topographic reorganization.” And more: we are seeing evidence of the brain’s ability to remake itself throughout adult life, not only in response to outside stimuli but even in response to directed mental effort. We are seeing, in short, the brain’s potential to correct its own flaws and enhance its own capacities. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,
535:Optimists about human capacities might hail the rapid shift toward mass rule, but Guizot was not among them. Let everyone examine himself deeply; he will discover "an incessant war between good and bad inclinations, between reason and caprice, duty and passion." This combat makes democracy the agent of disorder, for it is the "unleashing of all human nature," including egotism and the revolutionary spirit. True, "democratic France owe much to the emperor Napoleon," but that was not a compliment; Napoleon had both embraced democracy and scorned liberty. Indeed, Guizot thought, the two were incompatible. ~ Peter Gay,
536:The Italian neofascists were learning from the U.S. reactionaries how to achieve fascism's class goals within the confines of quasi-democratic forms: use an upbeat, Reaganesque optimism; replace the jackbooted militarists with media-hyped crowd pleasers; convince people that government is the enemy - especially its social service sector - while strengthening the repressive capacities of the state; instigate racist hostility and antagonisms between the resident population and immigrants; preach the mythical virtues of the free market; and pursue tax and spending measures that redistribute income upward. ~ Michael Parenti,
537:Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally present, intensely and harmoniously. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
538:Love begins with the experience of being understood in highly supportive and uncommon ways. They grasp the lonely parts of us; we don’t have to explain why we find a particular joke so funny; we have the same people; we both want to try that rather specialised sexual scenario.
It cannot continue. When we run up against the reasonable limits of our lovers’ capacities for understanding, we mustn’t blame them for dereliction. They were not tragically inept. They couldn’t fully fathom who we were – and we could do no better. Which is normal. No one properly gets, or can fully sympathize with, anyone else. ~ Alain de Botton,
539:I think [the scientific method is] the only method we have to try to get some approximate understanding of the world. I don't have faith that it'll reach the truth or even that it's leading us in a true direction. In fact, as someone committed to the scientific method I'm also committed to it's consequences and among them are that you and I and the rest of the species are organic creatures who have our specific capacities and limitations and we simply don't know and have no reason to believe that these capacities are such that we can gain the truth about the world. We do our best but that's the most we can do. ~ Noam Chomsky,
540:There is a striking feature of the twentieth century… the musical creation of the 20th century is qualitatively different from the 18th century, in that it lacks that immediate access or short-term access that was true of the past… I have no doubt that if we took two children of today two groups and taught one of them Mozart Haydn & Beethoven and the other Schoenberg and post Schoenbergian music, that there would be very substantial difference in their capacity to comprehend and deal with it, and that may reflect, and in fact if that’s correct it would reflect, something about our innate musical capacities. ~ Noam Chomsky,
541:All the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. There's no sense in trying to judge it as more or less elevated in relation to other paths to realization. ~ Namkhai Norbu,
542:Now, the desire for money, Thomas Aquinas pointed out, knows no limits, whereas all natural wealth, represented in the concrete form of food, clothing, furniture, houses, gardens, fields, has definite limits of production and consumption, fixed by the nature of the commodity and the organic needs and capacities of the user. The idea that there should be no limits upon any human function is absurd: all life exists within very narrow limits of temperature, air, water, food; and the notion that money alone, or power to command the services of other men, should be free of such definite limits is an aberration of the mind. ~ Lewis Mumford,
543:Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news—the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers—at great cost to the rest of your life. ~ John Irving,
544:It is true that the speculator may happen to go astray in his estimate of future prices. What is usually overlooked in considering this possibility is that under the given conditions it is far beyond the capacities of most people to foresee the future any more correctly. If this were not so, the opposing group of buyers or sellers would have got the upper hand in the market. The fact that the opinion accepted by the market has later proved to be false is lamented by nobody with more genuine sorrow than by the speculators who held it. They do not err of malice prepense; after all, their object is to make profits, not losses. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
545:Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother’s uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self. ~ Abraham H Maslow,
546:One might be tempted to extol as an advance over Sophocles the radical tendency of Euripides to produce a proper relation between art and the public. But "public," after all, is a mere word. In no sense is it a homogeneous and constant quantity. Why should the artist be bound to accommodate himself to a power whose strength lies solely in numbers? And if, by virtue of his endowments and aspirations, he should feel himself superior to every one of these spectators, how could he feel greater respect for the collective expression of all these subordinate capacities than for the relatively highest-endowed individual spectator? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
547:Every day new souls kept springing up [within me] beside the host of old ones, making clamorous demands and creating confusion; and now I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been. The few capacities and pursuits in which I happened to be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more than a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf. ~ Hermann Hesse,
548:Without this faculty of man and beast alike to recognize identities across the variations of difference, to make allowance for changed conditions, and to preserve the framework of a stable world, art could not exist. When we open our eyes under water we recognize objects, shapes, and colors although through an unfamiliar medium. When we first see pictures we see them in an unfamiliar medium. This is more than a mere pun. The two capacities are interrelated. Every time we meet with an unfamiliar type of transposition, there is a brief moment of shock and a period of adjustment-but it is an adjustment for which the mechanism exists in us. ~ E H Gombrich,
549:In asking philosophical questions, we use a reason shaped by the body, a cognitive unconscious to which we have no direct access, and metaphorical thought of which we are largely unaware. The fact that abstract thought is mostly metaphorical means that answers to philosophical questions have always been, and always will be, mostly metaphorical. In itself, that is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact about the capacities of the human mind. But it has major consequences for every aspect of philosophy. Metaphorical thought is the principal tool that makes philosophical insight possible and that constrains the forms that philosophy can take. ~ George Lakoff,
550:Contradiction. In the rational realm, the word was a blistering condemnation. Proof of flawed logic. To expose it in an adversary’s position was akin to delivering a deathblow, and she well recalled the triumphant gleam in his eyes in the instant he struck. But, she wondered now, where was the crime in that most human of capacities: to carry in one’s heart a contradiction, to leave it unchallenged, immune to reconciliation; indeed, to be two people at once, each true to herself, and neither denying the presence of the other? What vast laws of cosmology were broken by this human talent? Did the universe split asunder? Did reality lose its way? ~ Steven Erikson,
551:Humans weren’t always human in this third sense, as far as we can tell. In the beginning, Homo sapiens seems not to have created art, played music, invented new tools, worked out the motions of the planets, or worshiped gods in the celestial sphere. These capacities accumulated slowly, over tens of thousands of years. Sometimes a new trait—a new kind of art, a new kind of construction—arose, only to fade out. But over the long run, as the other human species disappeared, these attributes built up in us, until perhaps fifty thousand years ago something resembling modern humankind—“behaviorally modern” humans, in the jargon—was loose in the world. ~ Charles C Mann,
552:In our vital need ... science has nothing to say to us. It excludes in principle precisely the question which man, given over in our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most burning: questions about the meaning or meaninglessness of this whole human existence. Do not these questions, universal and necessary for all men, demand universal reflections and answers based on rational insight? In the final analysis they concern man as a free, self-determining being in his behaviour toward the human and extrahuman surrounding world and free in regard to his capacities for rationally shaping himself himself and his surrounding world. ~ Edmund Husserl,
553:Contradiction. In the rational realm, the word was a blistering condemnation. Proof of flawed logic. To expose it in an adversary’s position was akin to delivering a deathblow, and she well recalled the triumphant gleam in his eyes in the instant he struck. But, she wondered now, where was the crime in that most human of capacities: to carry in one’s heart a contradiction, to leave it unchallenged, immune to reconciliation; indeed, to be two people at once, each true to herself, and neither denying the presence of the other? What vast laws of cosmology were broken by this human talent? Did the universe split asunder? Did reality lose its way? ~ Steven Erikson,
554:If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinate characteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacities of this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causal relationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we must somehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, in other words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack of characteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself. ~ George H Smith,
555:This highly developed mycelial/plant root system connects all the plants in a particular ecorange into one self-organized whole that, itself, possesses capacities not perceivable in any of the parts. In essence, a large, self-organized neural network develops. This leads to the emergence of a unique identity in every identifiable ecorange on Earth. It is possible then, if you reclaim your capacity to feel, to make intelligent contact with the intelligence of any ecorange in which you are embedded to establish rapport and deep friendship and to learn from that relationship, to, in fact, learn to “think like a mountain” from the mountain itself ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
556:Brothers in God,” he said simply, “you are not entering upon a limited mission. You are to aim at nothing less than the complete regeneration and salvation of a society. If children now die, they are to be saved. If minds are now ignorant, they are to be enlightened. If idols flourish, they are to be supplanted by the word of Jesus. And if a road is mired and useless, it is to be paved and made straight. If there is among you any man or woman with a hundred capacities, he will find in Owhyhee full outlet for all of them. Spend yourselves in Christ so that in later years it may be said of you, ‘They came to a nation in darkness; they left it in light.’  ~ James A Michener,
557:the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities … His appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring—and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures forever ... the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. ~ Joseph Conrad,
558:If rewards come from solving problems and if different people have differing capacities for solving different types of problems, then disputes as to what problems most require solution can only be expected. Engineers and accountants, to take an obvious example, differ widely in the type of problem that they can solve competently. They notoriously disagree on whether the reverse salients blocking the growth of a particular enterprise are financial or technological in nature. Similarly, engineers with different skills and types of experience may also disagree on whether, for example, the technological reverse salients are hardware problems or software problems. ~ Wiebe E Bijker,
559:Plasticity in all the brain's systems is an innately determined characteristic. This may sound like a nature-nurture contradiction, but it is not. An innate capacity for synapses to record and store information is what allows systems to encode experiences. If the synapses of a particular brain system cannot change, this system will not have the ability to be modified by experience and to maintain the modified state. As a result, the organism will not be able to learn and remember through the functioning of that system. All learning, in other words, depends ont he operation of genetically programmed capacities to learn. Learning involves the nurturing of nature. ~ Joseph E LeDoux,
560:Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. (...) And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities, that the task of the critic must be assessed. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to See more, to Hear more, to Feel more. ~ Susan Sontag,
561:If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinate
characteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacities
of this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causal
relationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we must
somehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, in
other words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack of
characteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself. ~ George H Smith,
562:Take language, one of the few distinctive human capacities about which much is known. We have very strong reasons to believe that all possible human languages are very similar; a Martian scientist observing humans might conclude that there is just a single language, with minor variants. The reason is that the particular aspect of human nature that underlies the growth of language allows very restricted options. Is this limiting? Of course. Is it liberating? Also of course. It is these very restrictions that make it possible for a rich and intricate system of expression of thought to develop in similar ways on the basis of very rudimentary, scattered, and varied experience. ~ Noam Chomsky,
563:Love has so many different faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all."
"Why does it have to be so difficult?"
"Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities--for good as well as evil--onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. ~ Jan Philipp Sendker,
564:Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,
565:I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women’s nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men’s, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. ~ John Stuart Mill,
566:What we call isolation in the political sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse.Isolation and loneliness are not the same"...."While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities.But totalitarian domination as a form of government is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. it bases its self on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is the most radical and desperate experiences of man ~ Hannah Arendt,
567:When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness. No powerful mind stops within itself: it is always stretching out and exceeding its capacities. It makes sorties which go beyond what it can achieve: it is only half-alive if it is not advancing, pressing forward, getting driven into a corner and coming to blows; [B] its inquiries are shapeless and without limits; its nourishment consists in [C] amazement, the hunt and [B] uncertainty,20 as Apollo made clear enough to us by his speaking (as always) ambiguously, obscurely and obliquely, not glutting us but keeping us wondering and occupied.21 It is an irregular activity, never-ending and without pattern or target. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
568:The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object....

If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. ~ John Locke,
569:The place-seeker will resort to methods from which self-respecting men would shrink with as much aversion as the ancient Jew shrank from contact with the leper. The true purpose of education is not office. "The true purpose of education," says one, "is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop to their fullest extent the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us." He, therefore, who fixes a limit of any kind to his intellectual attainments dwarfs himself, and cramps the growth of that mind given to us by the Creator, and capable of indefinite expansion. ~ William H. Crogman, "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), in Talks for the Times (1896), p. 282,
570:If the teacher, if anyone, is to be an example of a whole person to others, he must first strive to be a whole person. Without the courage to confront one's inner as well as one's outer worlds, such wholeness is impossible to achieve. Instrumental reason alone cannot lead to it. And there precisely is a crucial difference between man and machine: Man, in order to become whole, must be forever an explorer of both his inner and his outer realities. His life is full of risks, but risks he has the courage to accept, because, like the explorer, he learns to trust his own capacities to endure, to overcome. What could it mean to speak of risk, courage, trust, endurance, and overcoming when one speaks of machines. ~ Joseph Weizenbaum,
571:The electoral victories of Thatcher (1979) and Reagan (1980) are often viewed as a distinctive rupture in the politics of the postwar period. I understand them more as consolidations of what was already under way throughout much of the 1970s. The crisis of 1973-5 was in part born out of a confrontation with the accumulated rigidities of government policies and practices built up during the Fordist-Keynesian period. Keynesian policies had appeared inflationary as entitlements grew and fiscal capacities stagnated. Since it had always been part of the Fordist political consensus that redistributions should be funded out of growth, slackening growth inevitably meant trouble for the welfare state and the social wage. ~ David Harvey,
572:Rather, a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people, often men or his children within heterosexual relationships that also uphold white supremacy, and who are in turn deemed entitled to her services. This might be envisaged as the de facto legacy of coverture law—a woman’s being “spoken for” by her father, and afterward her husband, then son-in-law, and so on. And it is plausibly part of what makes women more broadly somebody’s mother, sister, daughter, grandmother: always somebody’s someone, and seldom her own person. But this is not because she’s not held to be a person at all, but rather because her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty. ~ Kate Manne,
573:Though words are often described as tools, they may be more properly regarded as the cells of a complex living structure, units quickly mobilized in orderly formations to function on particular occasions for particular uses. Every member of the community has access to this linguistic organization and can use it up to the capacities of his experience and intelligence, his emotional responsiveness, and his insight. At no point, except by the invention of writing, has language ever been the monopoly of a dominant minority, despite class differentiations of usage; while the medium itself is so complex and so subtle that no centralized system of control was ever, even after the invention of writing, completely effective. ~ Lewis Mumford,
574:The book of Job offers some remarkable insights into the ways these higher animals relate to humans and shows that God endowed soulish animals with unique capacities to serve and please humanity, each creature in its own special way. Job even provides a top ten list of animals that have played essential roles both in the launch of civilization and in sustaining human well-being today. The ancient observer describes how the different kinds of soulish animals offer valuable instruction and assistance to humanity. In chapters 8–11, I describe some of the amazing attributes soulish creatures manifested long before humans even existed, which readied them to meet humanity’s needs from the very first moment people appeared on Earth. ~ Hugh Ross,
575:To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is... The whole surface of consciousness - for consciousness -is- a surface - must be kept clear of all great imperatives. Beware even of every great word, every great pose! So many dangers that the instinct comes too soon to "understand itself" --.

Meanwhile, the organizing idea that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down - it begins to command, slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads; it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as a means toward a whole - one by one, it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task, "goal," "aim," or "meaning. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
576:We don’t like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a nature twisted by sin, the route to joy always involves the very worst sort of internal suffering we can imagine. We rebel at that thought. We weren’t designed to hurt. The physical and personal capacities to feel that God built into us were intended to provide pleasures, like good health and close relationships. When they don’t, when our head throbs with tension and our heart is broken by rejection, we want relief. With deep passion, we long to experience what we were designed to enjoy. ~ Larry Crabb,
577:In frustration, he candidly said, “I'm here only because you invited me to come and I'll be happy to leave if you'd like me to because I'd rather be home playing with our new pet rabbit right now.” What happened next took him by surprise. The scowl on this woman's face suddenly turned into a look of curiosity, and she immediately asked me all about our new rabbit. She told me that she and her husband love rabbits. This led us to talk more about our personal interests, and eventually turned to why we were involved in our respective capacities, why what we did mattered, and how we could work with one another in a mutually beneficial fashion.​ The outcome was one of the largest sales Robert had made to that point in his career. ~ James M Kouzes,
578:Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities. We would endeavour to deal with each child as a unit, and to educate it so as to produce the most harmonious and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes should find their full natural development. We should aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish. ~ H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy p. 215, (1889),
579:Functional or technical capacity is now recognized through having a degree after one’s name; but if we are truly concerned with the total development of the human being, our approach is entirely different. An individual who has the capacity may take a degree and add letters after his name, or he may not, as he pleases. But he will know for himself his own deep capabilities, which will not be framed by a degree, and their expression will not bring about that self-centered confidence which mere technical capacity usually breeds. Such confidence is comparative and, therefore, antisocial. Comparison may exist for utilitarian purpose; but it is not for the educator to compare the capacities of his students and give greater or lesser evaluation. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
580:Thus, when Paul says, "Praise the Lord all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him" (Rom. 15:11), he is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worth and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world. His true greatness will be manifest in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty. His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial preferences that make us happy most of the time. His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul. Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory. ~ John Piper,
581:There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life, we are made for an act that gathers up all the powers and capacities of our being and offers them simultaneously and forever to God. The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely that our owns lives have a particular importance and purpose, and which urges us to find out our vocation, seeks in so doing to bring us to a decision that will dedicate our lives irrevocably to their true purpose. The man who loses this sense of his own personal destiny, and who renounces all hope of having any kind of vocation in life has either lost all hope of happiness or else has entered upon some mysterious vocation that God alone can understand. ~ Thomas Merton,
582:Nevertheless, Dewey believes (as we all do, when we are not playing the skeptic) that there are better and worse resolutions to human predicaments – to what he calls “problematical situations.” He believes that of all the methods for finding better resolutions, the “scientific method” has proved itself superior to Peirce’s methods of “tenacity,” “authority,” and “what is agreeable to reason.” For Dewey, the scientific method is simply the method of experimental inquiry combined with free and full discussion – which means, in the case of social problems, the maximum use of the capacities of citizens for proposing courses of action, for testing them, and for evaluating the results. And, in my view, that is all that Dewey really needs to assume. (Putnam 1991, p. 227)10 ~ Richard J Bernstein,
583:Those who are ignorant and perverse in their thought are constantly in trouble and pain, because they cannot get as much of the superfluous things as a certain other person possesses. They as a rule expose themselves to great dangers... for the purpose of obtaining that which is superfluous and not necessary. When they thus meet with the consequences of the course which they adopt, they complain of the decrees and the judgements of God; they begin to blame the time, and wonder at the want of justice in its changes; that it has not enabled them to acquire great riches... for the purpose of driving themselves to voluptuousness beyond their capacities, as if the whole Universe existed only for the purpose of giving pleasure to these low people. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190),
584:Colonisation is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence. In addition to military and administrative chiefs and a veritable army of churchmen, the Belgians dispatched scientists to Rwanda. The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along. Tutsis had a ‘nobler’, more ‘naturally’ aristocratic dimensions than the ‘coarse’ and ‘bestial’ Hutus. On the ‘nasal index’ for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose. ~ Philip Gourevitch,
585:It often happens that men pull in a certain political, social, or familiar harness simply because they never have time to ask themselves whether the position they stand in and the work they accomplish are right; whether their occupations really suit their inner desires and capacities, and give them the satisfaction which everyone has the right to expect from his work. Active men are especially liable to find themselves in such a position. Every day brings with it a fresh batch of work, and a man throws himself into his bed late at night without having completed what he had expected to do; then in the morning he hurries to the unfinished task of the previous day. Life goes, and there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that one's life is taking. So it was with me. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin,
586:The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
587:we are not just talking about hydrogen and oxygen combining into water; we are talking about carbon, hydrogen, and other elements combining into living beings that breathe, move around, and reproduce. In other words, matter must not only have the potential to produce new properties; it must also have the hidden potential to come alive! Matter must, under propitious conditions, be able to manifest itself in forms as diverse as ants that can find their way home across an unmarked landscape using the sun as their compass; or birds that can in winter recover hundreds of food items stored in the fall; or bats that can navigate and find prey in the dark using a form of sound signals called echolocation. Evolution can show why these capacities were selected, but it cannot account for how matter came to possess ~ Anonymous,
588:What do you study?"

"As much as we know of the different sciences. We have, within our limits, a good deal of knowledge of anatomy, physiology, nutrition—all that pertains to a full and beautiful personal life. We have our botany and chemistry, and so on—very rudimentary, but interesting; our own history, with its accumulating psychology."

"You put psychology with history—not with personal life?"

"Of course. It is ours; it is among and between us, and it changes with the succeeding and improving generations. We are at work, slowly and carefully, developing our whole people along these lines. It is glorious work—splendid! To see the thousands of babies improving, showing stronger clearer minds, sweeter dispositions, higher capacities—don't you find it so in your country? ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
589:Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves. ~ Thomas Merton,
590:...if one civilized man were doomed to pass a dozen years amid a race of intractable savages, unless he had power to improve them, I greatly question whether, at close of that period, he would not have become, at least, a barbarian himself. And I, as I could not make my young companions better, feared exceedingly that they would make me worse- would gradually bring my feelings, habits, capacities, to the level of their own; without, however, imparting to me their light-heartedness and cheerful vivacity. Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and I trembled lest my very moral perceptions should be come deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. ~ Anne Bront,
591:So, it is a basic function of education to help you to find out what you really love to do, so that you can give your whole mind and heart to it, because that creates human dignity, that sweeps away mediocrity, the petty bourgeois mentality. That is why it is very important to have the right teachers, the right atmosphere, so that you will grow up with the love which expresses itself in what you are doing. Without this love your examinations, your knowledge, your capacities, your position and possessions are just ashes, they have no meaning; without this love your actions are going to bring more wars, more hatred, more mischief and destruction. All this may mean nothing to you, because outwardly you are still very young, but I hope it will mean something to your teachers—and also to you, somewhere inside. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
592:So, it is a basic function of education to help you to find out what you really love to do, so that you can give your whole mind and heart to it, because that creates human dignity, that sweeps away mediocrity, the petty bourgeois mentality. That is why it is very important to have the right teachers, the right atmosphere, so that you will grow up with the love which expresses itself in what you are doing. Without this love your examinations, your knowledge, your capacities, your position and possessions are just ashes, they have no meaning; without this love your actions are going to bring more wars, more hatred, more mischief and destruction. All this may mean nothing to you, because outwardly you are still very young, but I hope it will mean something to your teachers-and also to you, somewhere inside. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
593:The process of transforming the heart can be difficult because as we open it, we inevitably encounter our own pain and become more aware of the pain of others. In fact, much of our personality is designed to keep us from experiencing this suffering. We close down the sensitivity of our hearts so that we can block our pain and get on with things, but we are never entirely successful in avoiding it. Often, we are aware of our suffering just enough to make ourselves and everyone around us miserable. Carl Jung's famous dictum that "neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering" points to this truth. But if we are not willing to experience our own hurt and grief, it can never be healed. Shutting out our real pain also renders us unable to feel joy, compassion, love, or any of the other capacities of the heart. ~ Don Richard Riso,
594:While there are more neural connections within a half brain than between the two halves, there are still massive connections across the hemispheres. Even so, cutting those connections does little to one’s sense of conscious experience. That is to say, the left hemisphere keeps on talking and thinking as if nothing had happened even though it no longer has access to half of the human cortex. More important, disconnecting the two half brains instantly creates a second, also independent conscious system. The right brain now purrs along carefree from the left, with its own capacities, desires, goals, insights, and feelings. One network, split into two, becomes two conscious systems. How could one possibly think that consciousness arises from a particular specific network? We need a new idea to cope with this fact. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga,
595:Though human consciousness plays such a central part, and is the basis of all his creative and constructive activities, man is nevertheless no god: for his spiritual illumination and self-discovery only carry through and enlarge nature's creativity. Man's reason now informs him that even in his most inspired moments he is but a participating agent in a larger cosmic process he did not originate and can only in the most limited fashion control. Except through the expansion of his consciousness, his littleness and his loneliness remain real. Slowly, man has found out that, wonderful though his mind is, he must curb the egoistic elations and delusions it promotes; for his highest capacities are dependent upon the cooperation of a multitude of other forces and organisms, whose life-courses and life-needs must be respected. ~ Lewis Mumford,
596:For example, at the very end of Leviathan, their discussion of "making" leads Shapin and Schaffer to express their overall conclusions in a way that involves a real confusion. They say: "It is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know" (1985, 344)• This is a classic
example of a false dichotomy. Neither we alone nor reality alone is "responsible" for human knowledge. The rough answer is that both are responsible for it; knowledge involves an interaction between the two. Even this formulation is imperfect; human knowledge is part of reality, not something separate from or outside it. But, speaking roughly, in order to understand knowledge, we need both a theory of human thought, language, and social interaction, and a theory of how these human capacities are connected to the world outside us. ~ Peter Godfrey Smith,
597:Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom?…It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. “Happiness is good for the body,” Proust tells us, “but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.” These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a genuine priority is the development of our mental capacities, the implication is that we would be better off being unhappy than content, better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza. (Proust writes) A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us. ~ Alain de Botton,
598:What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life. ~ Lewis Mumford,
599:Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement. When children are oppositional, defensive, numbed out, or enraged, it’s also important to recognize that such “bad behavior” may repeat action patterns that were established to survive serious threats, even if they are intensely upsetting or off-putting. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
600:It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of my youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation [...] The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our given capacities presented itself, half consciously and half unconsciously, as the highest goal. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it. ~ Albert Einstein,
601:circuitry. Studies of neurological patients with damaged prefrontal–limbic circuitry confirm that their cognitive capacities may remain intact, while their emotional intelligence abilities are impaired. 11 This neurological fact clearly separates these competencies from purely cognitive abilities like intelligence, technical knowledge, or business expertise, which reside in the neocortex alone. Biologically speaking, then, the art of resonant leadership interweaves our intellect and our emotions. Of course, leaders need the prerequisite business acumen and thinking skills to be decisive. But if they try to lead solely from intellect, they’ll miss a crucial piece of the equation. Take, for example, the new CEO of a global company who tried to change strategic directions. He failed, and was fired after just one year on the job. “He thought he could ~ Daniel Goleman,
602:It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question. ~ John Stuart Mill,
603:When the narrow bourgeois form has been peeled away, what is wealth, if not the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers etc., of individuals, produced in universal exchange? What, if not the full development of human control over the forces of nature — those of his own nature as well as those of so-called “nature"? What, if not the absolute elaboration of his creative dispositions, without any preconditions other than antecedent historical evolution which make the totality of this evolution — i.e., the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick — an end in itself? What is this, if not a situation where man does not reproduce in any determined form, but produces his totality? Where he does not seek to remain something formed by the past, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? ~ Karl Marx,
604:Demonstrations of limitations in the way humans process and store information have generated much controversy among researchers in the cognitive sciences. A major theme concerns the capacity of working memory. Separate verbal, spatial, and visual object working memory systems can be distinguished (1-3), but similar estimates of their capacities have been established. These estimates have sometimes been made in terms of “magical numbers,” which have ranged from seven to about four words, numbers, or locations (4). In line with these results, recent studies suggest that it is possible to retain information of up to four objects in visual working memory (5-9). ~ Olsson Henrik, Poom Leo, Treisman Anne (2005). "Visual memory needs categories". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 102(24): 8776–8780. doi:10.1073/pnas.0500810102. PMC 1150822. PMID 15937119.,
605:Production organized by workers builds new relations among producers—relations of cooperation and solidarity; it furthermore allows workers to end “the crippling of body and mind” and the loss of “every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity” (Marx) that comes from the separation of head and hand characteristic of capitalist production. As long as workers are prevented from developing their capacities by combining thinking and doing in the workplace, they remain alienated and fragmented human beings whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things. Further, as long as this production is carried out for their private gain rather than that of society, they look upon others (and, indeed, each other) as means to their own ends and thus remain alienated, fragmented, and crippled. Social production, thus, is a condition for the full development of the producers. ~ Anonymous,
606:blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on—if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies—their name is legion—and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifying ballast—the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
607:In Jump Time’s developing hybrid world, capacities once nurtured in separate societies are available to the entire family of humankind. This is a stupendous happening, as important as the discovery of new continents during the time of the great sea journeys. For the first time in human history the genius of the human race is available for all to harvest. These rediscovered capacities may be evolutionary accelerators, now being gathered from many places, times, and cultures to awaken our species to who we are and what we yet may be and do. Often, however, it is not comfortable. We can for a time find ourselves strangers in a very strange land, wishing we could return to the comforts of a more insular and familiar worldview. Yet when we get beyond the shutterings of our local cultural trance, we gain the courage to nurture the emerging forms of the possible human and the possible society. ~ Jean Houston,
608:...the advanced intellectual capacities of human beings...are extremely poor candidates for evolutionary explanation....But the capacity to form cosmological and subatomic theories takes us so far from the circumstances in which our ability to think would have had to pass its evolutionary tests that there would be no reason whatever, stemming from the theory of evolution, to rely on it in extension to those subjects. In fact if, per impossible, we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results beyond a very limited and familiar range. An evolutionary explanation of our theorizing faculty would provide absolutely no confirmation of its capacity to get at the truth. Something else must be going on if the process is really taking us toward a truer and more detached understanding of the world. ~ Thomas Nagel,
609:As we have seen, the modern mind has a distorted image of itself that leads it to neglect some of its own most valuable learning capacities. We now know that the brain is built to linger as well as to rush, and that slow knowing sometimes leads to better answers. We know that knowledge makes itself known through sensations, images, feelings and inklings, as well as through clear, conscious thoughts. Experiments tell us that just interacting with complex situations without trying to figure them out can deliver a quality of understanding that defies reason and articulation. Other studies have shown that confusion may be a vital precursor to the discovery of a good idea. To be able to meet the uncertain challenges of the contemporary world, we need to heed the message of this research, and to expand our repertoire of ways of learning and knowing to reclaim the full gamut of cognitive possibilities. ~ Guy Claxton,
610:Stories teach us in ways we can remember. They teach us that each woman responds to birth in her unique way and how very wide-ranging that way can be. Sometimes they teach us about silly practices once widely held that were finally discarded. They teach us the occasional difference between accepted medical knowledge and the real bodily experiences that women have - including those that are never reported in medical textbooks nor admitted as possibilities in the medical world. They also demonstrate the mind/body connection in a way that medical studies cannot. Birth stories told by women who were active participants in giving birth often express a good deal of practical wisdom, inspiration, and information for other women. Positive stories shared by women who have had wonderful childbirth experiences are an irreplaceable way to transmit knowledge of a woman's true capacities in pregnancy and birth. ~ Ina May Gaskin,
611:The computer is usually seen as a solely beneficial invention, which liberates human fantasy and facilitates efficient design work. I wish to express my serious concern in this respect, at least considering the current role of the computer in education and the design process. Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as working with models put the designer in a haptic contact with the object, or space. In our imagination, the object is simultaneously held in the hand and inside the head, and the imagined and projected physical image is modelled by our embodied imagination. We are inside and outside of the conceived object at the same time. ~ Juhani Pallasmaa,
612:The older Puritans had trampled down all fleshly impulses; these newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon the spiritual cravings. But in the increasingly spiritistic inclination of physics itself, Behaviorism and Fundamentalism had found a meeting place. Since the ultimate stuff of the physical universe was now said to be multitudinous and arbitrary “quanta” of the activity “spirits”, how easy was it for the materialistic and the spiritistic to agree? At heart, indeed, they were never very far apart in mood, though opposed in doctrine. The real cleavage was between the truly spiritual view on the one hand, and the spiritistic and materialistic on the other. Thus the most materialistic of Christian sects and the most doctrinaire of scientific sects were not long in finding a formula to express their unity, their denial of all those finer capacities which had emerged to be the spirit of man. ~ Olaf Stapledon,
613:You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
614:Alongside the general fetishism of the state that manifests in the Venezuelan context as a fetishization of Chavez the man, there stands as well an equal and opposite fetish of what has been called “horizontalism,” the fetish of refusing or ignoring the state a priori as in Holloway’s insistence that ‘the world cannot be changed through the state.” To fetishize means to worship something human as though it were divine, and I hope that the literal fetishism of both positions is clear: the first refuses to see the state (and Chavez) as produced by human hands and therefore subject to radical transformation; the second—in its denial of human organizational capacities, of organic leadership through struggle. and of the delegation of power—sees such transformation as utterly impossible and futile. For both, in other words, the state is a superhuman entity to be either worshipped or feared but never transformed. ~ George Ciccariello Maher,
615:55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.08,
616:It [writing] has enormous meta-cognitive implications. The power is this: That you cannot only think in ways that you could not possibly think if you did not have the written word, but you can now think about the thinking that you do with the written word. There is danger in this, and the danger is that the enormous expressive and self-referential capacities of the written word, that is, the capacities to keep referring to referring to referring, will reach a point where you lose contact with the real world. And this, believe me, is very common in universities. There's a technical name for it, I don't know if we can use it on television, it's called "bullshit." But this is very common in academic life, where people just get a form of self-referentiality of the language, where the language is talking about the language, which is talking about the language, and in the end, it's hot air. That's another name for the same phenomenon. ~ John Rogers Searle,
617:The ego is continuously, zealously, in search of the world. Compelled to navigate among beacons emitting conflicting and fragmentary signals and exposed to internal pressures of its own, it seeks to extract as much information from its sensations and perceptions as it can. It works to ward off dangers and to repeat pleasures. It organizes, with impressive efficiency, the individual's capacities for response and his encounters with men and things. It reasons, calculates, remembers, compares, thus equipping men to grope their way toward the future. Its appraisals are never beyond suspicion; they are bound to be distorted by conflicts and compromised by traumas. Thus the outside world never really enters the mind unscathed; the impressions with which the individual must work are so many mental representations of the real thing. But the ego, obeying its appetite for experience, bravely continues to determine what is and more difficult, what can be. ~ Peter Gay,
618:As we just saw, in this learning process we assume from the start that as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter how ill or how despairing you may be feeling in a given moment. But if you hope to mobilize your inner capacities for growth and for healing and to take charge in your life on a new level, a certain kind of effort and energy on your part will be required. The way we put it is that it can be stressful to take the stress reduction program. I sometimes explain this by saying that there are times when you have to light one fire to put out another. There are no drugs that will make you immune to stress or to pain, or that will by themselves magically solve your life’s problems or promote healing. It will take conscious effort on your part to move in a direction of healing, inner peace, and well-being. This means learning to work with the very stress and pain that are causing you to suffer. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
619:It must be about six o’clock. My knees are tense. I realise that what I used to refer to, to Mother Sugar, as “the housewife’s disease”has taken hold of me. The tension in me, so that peace has already gone away from me, is because the current has been switched on: I must-dress-Janet-get-her-breakfast-send-her-off-to-school-get-Michael’s-breakfast-don’t-forget-I’m-out-of-tea-etc.-etc. With this useless but apparently unavoidable tension resentment is also switched on. Resentment against what? An unfairness. That I should have to spend so much of my time worrying over details. The resentment focuses itself on Michael; although I know with my intelligence it has nothing to do with Michael. And yet I do resent him, because he will spend his day, served by secretaries, nurses, women in all kinds of capacities, who will take this weight off him. I try to relax myself, to switch off the current. But my limbs have started to ache, and I must turn over. ~ Doris Lessing,
620:A crucial point here is that understanding is not only a matter of reflection, using finitary propositions, on some preexistent, already determinate experience. Rather, understanding is the way we "have a world," the way we experience our world as a comprehensible reality. Such understanding, therefore, involves our whole being - our bodily capacities and skills, our values, our moods and attitudes, our entire cultural tradition, the way in which we are bound up with a linguistic community, our aesthetic sensibilities, and so forth. I short, our understanding is our mode of "being in the world." It is the way we are meaningfully situated in our world through our bodily interactions, our cultural institutions , our linguistic tradition, and our historical context. Our more abstract reflective acts of understanding (which may involve grasping of finitary propositions) are simply an extension of our understanding in this more basic sense of "having a world. ~ Mark Johnson,
621:Extend the sphere," Madison wrote, and, "you take in a greater variety of parties and interests," and you make it difficult for either a mob majority or a tyrannical minority to unite "to invade the rights of other citizens."

Whatever one's take on any of the debates of the day (especially the debate over slavery), and whatever one's philosophical understanding of the relationship of republicanism to land, commerce, finance, and labor, most agreed on practicalities. Also wanted to remove Spain from the Mississippi; also wanted the capacities to pacify hostile native Americans and put down rebellions of poor people; and all wanted Great Britain to get out of the way of their commerce.

All wanted "room enough," as Thomas Jefferson would put it in his 1800 inaugural address, to be protected from Europe's "exterminating havoc."

Expansion became the answer to every question, the solution to all problems, especially those two caused by expansion. ~ Greg Grandin,
622:How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember...No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory...Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estranged...memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. ~ Joshua Foer,
623:A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetise the injuries of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera's twin capacities, to subjectivise reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs as strengthen them. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images. ~ Susan Sontag,
624:Freud's greatest discovery, the one which lies at the root of psychodynamics, is that the great cause of much psychological illness is the fear of knowledge of oneself-one one's emotions, impulses, memories, capacities, potentialities, of ones' destiny. We have discovered that fear of knowledge of oneself is very often isomorphic with, and parallel with, fear of the outside world.

And what is this fear, but a fear of the reality of creation in relation to our powers and possibilities:

In general this kind of fear is defensive, in the sense that it is a protection of our self-esteem, of our love and respect for ourselves. We tend to be afraid of any knowledge that could cause us to despise ourselves or to make us feel inferior, weak, worthless, evil, shameful. We protect ourselves and our ideal image of ourselves by repression and similar defenses, which are essentially techniques by which we avoid becoming conscious of unpleasant or dangerous truths. ~ Ernest Becker,
625:The suppression of ecstasy and condemnation of pleasure by patriarchal religion have left us in a deep, festering morass. The pleasures people seek in modern times are superficial, venal, and corrupt. This is deeply unfortunate, for it justifies the patriarchal condemnation of pleasure that rotted out our hedonistic capacities in the first place! Narcissism is rampant, having reached a truly global scale. It now appears to have entered the terminal phase known as “cocooning,” the ultimate state of isolation. Dissociation from the natural world verges on complete disembodiment, represented in Archontic ploys such as “transhumanism,” cloning, virtual reality, and the uploading of human consciousness into cyberspace. The computer looks due to replace the cross as the primary image of salvation. It is already the altar where millions worship daily. If the technocrats prevail, artificial intelligence and artificial life will soon overrule the natural order of the planet. ~ John Lamb Lash,
626:[A man] finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law, [where] men... let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species - in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him, and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes. ~ Immanuel Kant,
627:[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ~ John Stuart Mill,
628:…it is far too simplistic to claim that the specter of this self-engendering monster pursuing its ends regardless of any human or environmental concern is an ideological abstraction, and to insist that one should never forget that, behind this abstraction, lie real people and natural objects on whose productive capacities and resources capital’s circulation is based and on which it feeds like a gigantic parasite. (…) the fate of whole swathes of society and sometimes of whole countries can be decided by the speculative dance of Capital, which pursues its goal of profitability with a blessed indifference to how its movements will affect social reality. Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, (…) its violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals with their “evil” intentions, but is purely “objective”, systemic, anonymous—quite literally a conceptual violence, the violence of a Concept whose self-deployment rules and regulates social reality. ~ Slavoj i ek,
629:The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by
their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to
have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed
ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the
acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that
neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our
nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have
exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's
capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can
do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy
failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to
thee what thou hast left undone? ~ Henry David Thoreau,
630:I sat and smoked my cigar until I lapsed into thought. “You are going on,” I said to myself, “to become an old man, without being anything and without really undertaking to do anything. Wherever you look about you . . . you see the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit mankind by making life easier and easier, some by railways, others by omnibuses and steamboats, others by the telegraph, others by easily apprehended compendiums and short recitals of everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age who make spiritual existence in virtue of thought easier and easier, yet more and more significant. And what are you doing?” . . . [S]uddenly this thought flashed through my mind: “You must do something, but inasmuch as with your limited capacities it will be impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must undertake to make something harder.” This notion pleased me immensely. . . . I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
631:The most important factor in every function is: ‘Is it under our control or not?’ So when imagination is under our control we do not even call it imagination; we call it by various names—visualization, creative thinking, inventive thinking—you can find a name for each special case. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, then we call it imagination. Again, there is another side of imagination which we miss in ordinary understanding. This is that we imagine non-existent things—non-existent capacities, for instance. We ascribe to ourselves powers which we do not have; we imagine ourselves to be self-conscious although we are not. We have imaginary powers and imaginary self-consciousness and we imagine ourselves to be one, when really we are many different ‘I’s. There are many such things that we imagine about ourselves and other people. For instance, we imagine that we can ‘do’, that we have choice; we have no choice, we cannot ‘do’, things just happen to us. ~ P D Ouspensky,
632:In urbanisation, the suburbs are just as monocultural (as agriculture), with a lifestyle that maximises the excessive consumption of material goods in an astonishingly wasteful manner and with isolating and individualising social effects. Capital dominates the practices whereby we collectively and even individually relate to nature. It disregards anything other than functionalist aesthetic values. In its ruinous approach to the sheer beauty and infinite diversity of a natural world (of which we are all a part) it exhibits its own utterly barren qualities. If nature is fecund, given over to the perpetual creation of novelty, then capital cuts that novelty into pieces and reassembles the bits into pure technology. Capital carries within itself a dessicating definition not only of the teeming diversity of the natural world but of the tremendous potentiality of human nature to evolve freely its own capacities and powers. Capital's relation to nature and human nature is alienating in the extreme. ~ David Harvey,
633:...I believe there is a legitimate aim of transcendence that is more modest and perhaps more realistic. We may not be able to rule out the skeptical possibility, and we may not be able to ground our normal capacity for understanding on something in which we can have even greater confidence; but it may still be possible to show how we can reasonably retain our natural confidence in the exercise of understanding, in spite of the apparent contingencies of our nature and formation. The hope is not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically self-undermining, and that does not require us to deny the obvious. The aim would be to offer a plausible picture of how we fit into the world.

Even in this more modest enterprise both theism and naturalistic reductionism fall short. Theism does not offer a sufficiently substantial explanation of our capacities, and naturalism does not offer a sufficiently reassuring one. ~ Thomas Nagel,
634:THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DEITY MEDITATION On a personal, psychological level, deity meditation gives us access to a power that works on a deeper level than is available through conventional psychology. The transformative power of the goddess energies can untangle psychic knots, calling forth specific transformative forces within the mind and heart. It can cleanse our mental and emotional bodies, put us in touch with the protective powers within us, and deeply change the way we see the world. More than that, it can shift the way we see ourselves, giving us the power to see the divine qualities we already hold. For women especially, tuning in to the goddesses is a way of homing in on aspects of our own life-energy that we may never have understood or owned. Celebrating the goddesses has the potential not only to tune us to our own sacred capacities, but also to help us work with the hidden and secret forces at play in our lives. When we can do that, we can literally harness these forces for our own transformation. GODDESS ~ Sally Kempton,
635:Just as a countless multitude of churches, of monasteries with cupolas, domes and crosses is scattered across holy, pious Rus, so countless multitudes of tribes, generations and peoples throng in motley diversity and rush over the face of the earth. And each people that bears within it the pledge of mighty powers, and is filled with the creative capacities of soul, with its own bright singularity and other gifts from God, each has marked itself in its own original way with its own word, through which, in giving expression to any subject at all, it reflects, in so expressing, a part of its own character. With a deep knowledge of the heart and a wise grasp of life will the word of the Briton resound; like a flippant fop will the ephemeral word of the Frenchman glitter and burst; ingeniously will the German contrive his shrewdly spare word, which is not accessible to all; but there is no word so sweeping, so bold, so torn from under the heart itself, so bubbling and quivering with life, as the aptly uttered Russian word. ~ Nikolai Gogol,
636:The brain’s response to messages from its environment is shaped by its experiences—experiences not only during gestation and infancy, as most neuroscientists were prepared to accept, but by our experiences throughout life. The life we live, in other words, shapes the brain we develop. To Merzenich, the real significance of the findings was what they said about the origins of behavior and mental impairments. “This machine we call the brain is being modified throughout life,” he mused almost twenty years later. “The potential for using this for good had been there for years. But it required a different mindset, one that did not view the brain as a machine with fixed parts and defined capacities, but instead as an organ with the capacity to change throughout life. I tried so hard to explain how this would relate to both normal and abnormal behavior. But there were very few takers. Few people grasped the implications.” For a while, it appeared that the monkeys’ brains were a lot more adaptable than the research community’s. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,
637:We understand something of our tremendous capacities as image-bearers of God and how terribly, terribly wrong those capacities can go when we don’t use them in submission to God. As we begin to understand more of our own brokenness, of our own sinful rebellion, we—strange as it may seem—begin to understand more of his love. Sometimes people make a distinction between “hellfire” preachers on the one hand and preachers that understand God’s love on the other. But that distinction is no more than a caricature. Preachers who talk only about God’s love talk about it less and less with every sermon they preach, because there is less and less in their own mind that God loves us in spite of. There’s less and less of a problem that has been dealt with. There’s less and less weight that Christ has carried. There’s less and less of an extent to which he has gone in his love for us. When, on the other hand, we begin to understand the reality of our sinful rebellion against God, then we begin to understand more of God’s love for us in Christ. ~ Anonymous,
638:It became clear that Keisha Blake could not start something without finishing it. If she climbed onto the boundary wall of Caldwell, she was compelled to walk the entire wall, no matter the obstructions in her path (beer cans, branches). This compulsion, applied to other fields, manifested itself as "intelligence." Every unknown word sent her to a dictionary--in search of something like "completion"--and every book led to another book, a process that, of course, could never be completed. This route through early life gave her no small portion of joy, and, indeed, it seemed at first that her desires and her capacities were basically aligned. She wanted to read things--could not resist wanting to read things--and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook for intelligence was in fact only a sort of mutation of the will? ~ Zadie Smith,
639:Freud focused on the puzzling development of conscience. He reasoned that the child begins life with a sense that all are present to serve him. A youngster eventually recognizes that others exist but not initially that they are complex beings with their own thoughts and relationships. Freud discovered that the child’s life changes dramatically when he realizes that others are subjects, just as he is: subjects in their own right (Covitz 2016). Until that time, the child understands others more or less only in their capacities to satisfy his needs: as either good or bad, as satisfying his demands or not. When the child accepts the complexity of family relationships and is able to understand that Mom and Dad have an independent relationship, he has begun to embrace them as subjects (i.e., as doers) with their own thoughts, feelings, and relationships. He has, Freud would say, developed a conscience (an uber-Ich, or a “Guiding I”). Those who fail to accept others as subjects in their own right comprise the personality-disordered subgroup of humanity. ~ Bandy X Lee,
640:I propose that what we call “consciousness” is a feeling forming a backdrop to, or attached to, a current mental event or instinct. It is best grasped by considering a common engineering architecture called layering, which allows complex systems to function efficiently and in an integrated fashion, from atoms to molecules, to cells, to circuits, to cognitive and perceptual capacities. If the brain indeed consists of different layers (in the engineering sense), then information from a micro level may be integrated at higher and higher layers until each modular unit itself produces consciousness. A layer architecture allows for new levels of functioning to arise from lower-level functioning parts that could not create the “higher level” experience alone. It is time to learn more about layering and the wonders it brings to understanding brain architecture. We are on the road to realizing that consciousness is not a “thing.” It is the result of a process embedded in an architecture, just as a democracy is not a thing but the result of a process. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga,
641:Many cultural stories worldwide present the domination system as the only human alternative. Fairy tales romanticize the rule of kings and queens over “common people.” Classics such as Homers Illiad and Shakespeare’s kings trilogy romanticize “Heroic violence.” Many religious stories present men’s control, even ownership, of women as normal and moral.

These stories came out of the times that oriented much more closely to a “pure” domination system. Along with newer stories that perpetuate these limited beliefs about human nature, they play a major role in how we view our world and how we live in it. But precisely because stories are so important in shaping values, new narratives can help change unhealthy values.

Of particular importance are new stories about human nature. We need new narratives that give us a more complete and accurate picture of who we are and who we can be - stories that show that our enormous capacities for consciousness, creativity and caring are integral to human evolution, that these capacities are what make us distinctively human. ~ Riane Eisler,
642:Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of “fun,” constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger “high.” A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now. Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing—too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person’s capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart is unfulfilled. Where is the security, the guidance, the wisdom, and the power? At the low end of the continuum, in the pleasure of a fleeting moment. ~ Stephen R Covey,
643:Anarchism recognizes only the relative significance of ideas, institutions, and social forms. It is, therefore, not a fixed, self-enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and to affect wider circles in more manifold ways. For the Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and tum them to social account. The less this natural development of man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious will human personality become, the more will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown. ~ Rudolf Rocker,
644:Worship is the dynamics of the soul and Metabolism is the dynamics of the body; both can cause disease or promote Health. The heart -through the choices which it makes- cures disbelief, and the mind -through the observations it registers and processes- tightens the whole body with the soul. Shutting down the heart will eventually lead to man's perdition, while shutting down the mind will eventually decouple the body from the soul leaving it to communicably operate on its biological senses alone and drawing the person thereby nearer to Kingdom Animalia. If it weren't for the mind, the heart wouldn't have been able to make choices; and if it weren't for the heart, the mind would have turned man into fauna. After all, animals neither have the luxury of choices which the humans enjoy based on their mental capacities, nor the mercy and compassion that man is capable of upholding; for that man were originally created on a significantly higher rank and were endowed with many more qualities. Man was given the choice of belief; animals have loose souls; and plants don't even have souls. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,
645:Plainly stated, I believe consciousness is an instinct. Many organisms, not just humans, come with it, ready-made. That is what instincts are, something organisms come with. Living things have an organization that allows life and ultimately consciousness to exist, even though they are made from the same materials as the non-living natural world that surrounds them. And instincts envelop organisms from bacteria to humans. Survival, sex, resilience, and walking are commonly thought to be instincts, but so, too, are more complex capacities such as language and sociality—all are instincts. The list is long, and we humans seem to have more instincts than other creatures. Yet there is something special about the consciousness instinct. It is no ordinary instinct. In fact, it seems so extraordinary that many think only we humans can lay claim to it. Even if that’s not the case, we want to know more about it. And because we all have it, we all think we have insight into it. As we will see, it is a slippery, complex instinct situated in the universe’s most impenetrable organ, the brain. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga,
646:...the qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones Henry Kissinger has, and Walt Rostow has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians—none, none that you don't have. The only difference is, I don't pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I'd refuse—because I don't understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there's nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think but there's nothing deep—if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they've been kept a carefully guarded secret. ~ Noam Chomsky,
647:By one estimate, approximately 20 billion synapses are pruned every day between childhood and early adolescence. It’s survival of the busiest. Like a cable TV subscription canceled because nobody’s watching, synaptic connections that aren’t used weaken and vanish. Here is where the power of genes falls off rapidly: genes may lead neurons to make their initial, tentative connections and control the order in which different regions of the brain (and thus physical and mental capacities) come on line, but it’s the environmental inputs acting on the plasticity of the young nervous system that truly determine the circuits that will power the brain. Thus, from the earliest stages of development, laying down brain circuits is an active rather than a passive process, directed by the interaction between experience and the environment. The basic principle is this: genetic signals play a large role in the initial structuring of the brain. The ultimate shape of the brain, however, is the outcome of an ongoing active process that occurs where lived experience meets both the inner and the outer environment. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,
648:Platonick Love
INDEED I must confess,
When souls mix 't is an happiness;
But not complete till bodies too do combine,
And closely as our minds together join:
But half of heaven the souls in glory taste,
Till by love in heaven, at last,
Their bodies too are plac'd.
In thy immortal part
Man, as well as I, thou art;
But something't is that differs thee and me;
And we must one even in that difference be.
I thee, both as a man and woman, prize;
For a perfect love implies
Love in all capacities.
Can that for true love pass,
When a fair woman courts her glass?
Something unlike must in love's likeness be;
His wonder is, one, and variety:
For he, whose soul nought but a soul can move,
Does a new Narcissus prove,
And his own image love.
That souls do beauty know,
'T is to the bodies' help they owe;
If, when they know 't, they straight abuse that trust,
And shut the body from't, 't is as unjust
As if I brought my dearest friend to see
My mistress, and at th' instant he
Should steal her quite from me.
~ Abraham Cowley,
649:It becomes ever increasingly clear to many students of man and of the contemporary scene that the crucial difficulty with which we are confronted lies in the fact that the development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical over-maturity and emotional backwardness? ~ Erich Fromm,
650:The moderate person contains opposing capacities to the nth degree. A moderate person can start out hot on both ends, both fervent in a capacity for rage and fervent in a desire for order, both Apollonian at work and Dionysian at play, both strong in faith and deeply doubtful, both Adam I and Adam II. A moderate person can start out with these divisions and rival tendencies, but to live a coherent life, the moderate must find a series of balances and proportions. The moderate is forever seeking a series of temporary arrangements, embedded in the specific situation of the moment, that will help him or her balance the desire for security with the desire for risk, the call of liberty with the need for restraint. The moderate knows there is no ultimate resolution to these tensions. Great matters cannot be settled by taking into account just one principle or one viewpoint. Governing is more like sailing in a storm: shift your weight one way when the boat tilts to starboard, shift your weight the other way when it tilts to port—adjust and adjust and adjust to circumstances to keep the semblance and equanimity of an even keel. ~ David Brooks,
651:Direct action meant that the goal of any and all of these activities was to provide ways for people to get in touch with their own powers and capacities, to take back the power of naming themselves and their lives. It was to be distinguished from more conventional political activity even in a democratic system. Instead of attempting to make change by forming interest groups to pressure politicians, anarchists insisted that we learn to think and act for ourselves by joining together in organizations in which our experience, our perception, and our activity can guide and make the change. Knowledge does not precede experience, it flows from it: "We begin by deciding to work, and through working, we learn ... We will learn how to live in libertarian communism by living in it." People learn how to be free only by exercising freedom: "We are not going to find ourselves ... with people ready-made for the future ... Without the continued exercise of their faculties, there will be no free people ... The external revolution and the internal revolution presuppose one another, and they must be simultaneous in order to be successful. ~ Martha A Ackelsberg,
652:Maybe I wanted to be crushed, too. To be ready you need to be tired, and you need to have seen a great deal, or what you consider to have been a great deal- we all have such different capacities, are able to absorb and sustain vastly different quantities of visions and pain- and at that moment I started thinking that I had seen enough, that in general I'd had my fill and that in terms of visual stimulation the week thus far has shown me enough and that I was sated. The rock-running in Senegal was enough, the kids and their bonjours- that alone would prepare me for the end; if I couldn't be thankful enough having been there I was sick and ungrateful, and I would not be ungrateful, not ever, I would always know the gifts given me, I would count them and keep them safe! I had had so much so I would be able to face the knife in the alley and accept it all, smiling serenely, thankful that I'd be taken while riding the very crest of everything. I had been on a plane! A tiny percentage of all those who'd ever lived would ever be on an airplane- and had seen Africa rushing at me like something alive and furious. I could be taken and eaten by these wet alleyways without protest. ~ Dave Eggers,
653:Exquisitely sensitive to her infant’s nonverbal messages, the “good” mother empathically divines the needs of her baby with near clairvoyant accuracy, relying on her capacity to regressively revive in herself this early communication channel that, Spitz felt, is lost to most adults. She senses why her infant is crying, a mystery to others, and is able to respond correctly. Each accurate reading and satisfying intervention—picking him up, feeding him, jostling him, soothing him—becomes another interaction in the essential cycle of meaning-making. Spitz saw these repetitions as also helping the infant sort out feeling states into discernible, sequential categories with beginnings and endings (for example: I was upset, then I felt better), contributing to the laying down of memory traces of recognizable experience. Thus Spitz offered psychoanalysis a very different kind of developmental progression, adding to the unfolding psychosexual sequence of drive discharge (from oral to anal to phallic to oedipal) the increasing structuralization of ego capacities which emerge, in the first year of life, within crucial transformations in the relationship to the libidinal object. ~ Stephen A Mitchell,
654:I concluded that first of all I had to understand better what I was. Investigate my nature as a woman. I had been excessive, I had striven to give myself male capacities. I thought I had to know everything, be concerned with everything. What did I care about politics, about struggles. I wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. I had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice. To what secret pacts with myself had I consented, just to excel. And now, after the hard work of learning, what must I unlearn. Also, I had been forced by the powerful presence of Lila to imagine myself as I was not. I was added to her, and I felt mutilated as soon as I removed myself. Not an idea, without Lila. Not a thought I trusted, without the support of her thoughts. Not an image. I had to accept myself outside of her. The gist was that. Accept that I was an average person. What should I do. Try again to write. Maybe I didn’t have the passion. I merely limited myself to carrying out a task. So don’t write anymore. Find some job. Or act the lady, as my mother said. Shut myself up in the family. Or turn everything upside down. Home. Children. Husband. ~ Elena Ferrante,
655:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18,
656:[T]he mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce his purpose from his works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and overweight our feeble reason till it fell, and we were drowned in the depths of our own vanity. For what is the first result of man's increased knowledge interpreted from Nature's book by the persistent effort of his purblind observation? Is it not but too often to make him question the existence of his Maker, or indeed of any intelligent purpose beyond his own? The truth is veiled, because we could no more look upon her glory than we can upon the sun. It would destroy us. Full knowledge is not for man as man is here, for his capacities, which he is apt to think so great, are indeed but small. The vessel is soon filled, and, were one thousandth part of the unutterable and silent wisdom that directs the rolling of those shining spheres, and the force which makes them roll, pressed into it, it would be shattered into fragments. ~ H Rider Haggard,
657:There are probably two key aspects of culture that stand out as being uniquely human. One is religion and the other is story-telling. There is no other living species, whether ape or crow, that do either of these. They are entirely and genuinely unique to humans. We know they must be unique to humans because both require language for their performance and transmission, and only humans have language of sufficient quality to allow that. What is important about both is that they require us to live in a virtual world, the virtual world of our minds. In both cases, we have to be able to imagine that another world exists that is different to, and separate from, the world we experience on an everyday basis. We have to be able to detach ourselves from the physical world, and mentally step back from it. Only when we can do this are we able to wonder whether the world has to be the way it is and why, or imagine other parallel worlds that might exist, whether these are the fictional worlds of story-telling or para-fictional6 spirit worlds. These peculiar forms of cognitive activity are not trivial evolutionary by-products, but capacities that play – and have played – a fundamental role in human evolution. ~ Robin I M Dunbar,
658:The modern age has carried with it a theoretical glorification of labor and has resulted in a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society. The fulfilment of the wish, therefore, like the fulfilment of wishes in fairy tales, comes at a moment when it can only be self-defeating. It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won. Within this society, which is egalitarian because this is labor’s way of making men live together, there is no class left, no aristocracy of either a political or spiritual nature from which a restoration of the other capacities of man could start anew. Even presidents, kings, and prime ministers think of their offices in terms of a job necessary for the life of society, and among the intellectuals, only solitary individuals are left who consider what they are doing in terms of work and not in terms of making a living. What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse. ~ Hannah Arendt,
659:How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it’s about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have become estranged. That’s what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it’s about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. ~ Joshua Foer,
660:One of the questions I asked Ken was “what’s your vision of an ideal education curriculum for children?” This is what Ken told me: Humanity is flying way under its full potential simply because we do not educate for the whole or complete human being. We educate for just a small part, a slice, a fragment of just what’s possible for us. . . . Because according to the great wisdom traditions around the world—not only do humans possess typical states of consciousness like waking, dreaming, or deep sleep, they also possess profoundly high states of consciousness like enlightenment or awakening—and none of our education systems teach ANY of that. Now, all of these factors I’ve mentioned . . . none of these are rare, isolated, esoteric, far-out, strange, or occult. They are all some of the very most basic and most fundamental potentials of a human being everywhere. They are simply human 101. Yet we don’t educate human 101. We educate something like human 1/10. So yes, I firmly believe that we can bring about health on this planet for the planet and the humans on it if we started educating the whole person with all their fundamental potentials and capacities and skills and stopped this fragmented, partial, broken system that we have now. Consciousness ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
661:A few years ago I heard Jerome Kagan, a distinguished emeritus professor of child psychology at Harvard, say to the Dalai Lama that for every act of cruelty in this world there are hundreds of small acts of kindness and connection. His conclusion: "To be benevolent rather than malevolent is probably a true feature of our species." Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Numerous studies of disaster response around the globe have shown that social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma.

Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else's mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,
662:Men were funny, aye, so they were, and the most amusing thing about them was how little they knew it. Men, with their swaggering, belt-hitching names for themselves. Men, so proud of their muscles, their drinking capacities, their eating capacities; so everlastingly proud of their pricks. Yes, even in these times, when a good many of them could shoot nothing but strange, bent seed that produced children fit only to be drowned in the nearest well. Ah, but it was never their fault, was it, dear? No, always it was the woman—her womb, her fault. Men were such cowards. Such grinning cowards. These three had been no different from the general run. The old one with the limp might bear watching—aye, so he might, a clear and overly curious pair of eyes had looked out at her from his head—but she saw nothing in them she could not deal with, came it to that. Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn’t the gods made them with the most vulnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel? Kick them there and they curled up like snails. Caress them there and their brains melted. Anyone who doubted that second bit of wisdom need only look at her night’s second bit of business, the one which still lay ahead. ~ Stephen King,
663:This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleas’d God, in his Providence, and in the Government of the Works of his Hands, to take from so great a Part of the World of his Creatures, the best uses to which their Faculties, and the Powers of their Souls are adapted; yet that he has bestow’d upon them the same Powers, the same Reason, the same Affections, the same Sentiments of Kindness and Obligation, the same Passions and Resentments of Wrongs, the same Sense of Gratitude, Sincerity, Fidelity, and all the Capacities of doing Good, and receiving Good, that he has given to us; and that when he pleases to offer to them Occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay, more ready to apply them to the right Uses for which they were bestow’d, than we are; and this made me very melancholly sometimes, in reflecting as the several Occasions presented, how mean a Use we make of all these, even though we have these Powers enlighten’d by the great Lamp of Instruction, the Spirit of God, and by the Knowledge of his Word, added to our Understanding; and why it has pleas’d God to hide the like saving Knowledge from so many Millions of Souls, who if I might judge by this poor Savage, would make a much better use of it than we did. ~ Daniel Defoe,
664:It seems to be little noticed that this yearning to dragoon and terrify all persons who happen to be lucky is at the bottom of the puerile radicalism now prevailing among us, just as it is at the bottom of Ku Kluxery. The average American radical today likes to think of himself as a profound and somber fellow, privy to arcana not open to the general; he is actually only a poor fish, with distinct overtones of the jackass. What ails him, first and last, is simply envy of his betters. Unable to make any progress against them under the rules in vogue, he proposes to fetch them below the belt by making the rules over. He is no more an altruist than J. Pierpont Morgan is an altruist, or Jim Farley, or, indeed, Al Capone. Every such rescuer of the downtrodden entertains himself with gaudy dreams of power, far beyond his natural fortunes and capacities. He sees himself at the head of an overwhelming legion of morons, marching upon the fellows he envies and hates. He thinks of himself in his private reflections (and gives it away every time he makes a speech or prints an article) as a gorgeous amalgam of Lenin, Mussolini and Genghis Khan, with the Republic under his thumb, his check for any amount good at any bank, and ten million heels clicking every time he winks his eye. ~ H L Mencken,
665:But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in—by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man. We know the causes are complex and subtle … . First, Negroes are trapped—as many whites are trapped—in inherited, gate-less poverty. They lack training and skills. They are shut in, in slums, without decent medical care. Private and public poverty combine to cripple their capacities … . We are trying to attack these evils through our poverty program, through our education program, through our medical care and our other health programs, and a dozen more of the Great Society programs that are aimed at the root causes of this poverty. But there is a second cause—much more difficult to explain, more deeply grounded, more desperate in its force. It is the devastating heritage of long years of slavery; and a century of oppression, hatred, and injustice. For Negro poverty is not white poverty … . These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. The ~ George Lakoff,
666:Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
667:[How do I do it?] Well, it's always a mystery, because you don't know why you get depleted or recharged. But this much I know. I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential. And I've learned from the Bhagavad-Gita and other teachings of our culture to detach myself from the results of what I do, because those are not in my hands. The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me to take on the next challenge, because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy. ~ Vandana Shiva,
668:The Twenty Tenets of Holons
1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things, or processes, but of holons.
2. Holons display four fundamental capacities:
a. self-preservation,
b. self-adaptation,
c. self-transcendence.
d. self-dissolution.
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
5. Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor.
6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higer; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
7. "The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is 'shallow' or 'deep'; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its 'span'" (A. Koestler).
8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
9. Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it.
10. Holarchies coevolve.
11. The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth.
12. Evolution has directionality:
a. Increasing complexity.
b. Increasing differentiation/integration.
c. Increasing organisation/structuration.
d. Increasing relative autonomy.
e. Increasing telos.
   ~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality, 1995, p. 35-78.,
669:Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone. That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. If it were not for our direct evidence in the first-person case, the hypothesis would seem unwarranted; almost mystical, perhaps. Yet we know, directly, that there is conscious experience. The question is, how do we reconcile it with everything else we know? ~ David J Chalmers,
670:You’ve probably also noted the impacts of virtual distraction on your own and others’ behaviors: memory loss, inability to concentrate, being asked to repeat what you just said, miscommunication the norm, getting lost online and wasting time you don’t have, withdrawing from the real world. The list of what’s being lost is a description of our best human capacities—memory, meaning, relating, thinking, learning, caring. There is no denying the damage that’s been done to humans as technology took over—our own Progress Trap. The impact on children’s behavior is of greatest concern for its present and future implications. Dr. Nicolas Kardaras, a highly skilled physician in rehabilitation, is author of Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to Break the Trance. He describes our children’s behavior in ways that I notice in my younger grandchildren: “We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices. Worse, we see children who become bored, apathetic, uninteresting and uninterested when not plugged in.”17 These very disturbing behaviors are not just emotional childish reactions. Our children are behaving as addicts deprived of their drug. Brain imaging studies show that technology stimulates brains just like cocaine does. ~ Margaret J Wheatley,
671:Well, I think people should be able to live in a society where they can exercise these kinds of internal drives and develop their capacities freely instead of being forced into the narrow range of options that are available to most people in the world now. And by that, I mean not only options that are objectively available, but also options that are subjectively available―like, how are people allowed to think, how are they able to think? Remember, there are all kinds of ways of thinking that are cut off from us in our society―not because we're incapable of them, but because various blockages have been developed and imposed to prevent people from thinking in those ways. That's what indoctrination is about in the first place, in fact―and I don't mean somebody giving you lectures: sitcoms on television, sports that you watch, every aspect of the culture implicitly involves an expression of what a "proper" life and a "proper" set of values are, and that's all indoctrination.
So I think what has to happen is, other options have to be opened up to people―both subjectively, and in fact concretely: meaning you can do something about them without great suffering. And that's one of the main purposes of socialism, I think: to reach a point where people have the opportunity to decide freely for themselves what their needs are, and not just have the "choices" forced on them by some arbitrary system of power. ~ Noam Chomsky,
672:These groups [of disaffected youth] are not small, and they will grow larger. Certainly they are suffering. Demonstrably they are not getting enough out of our wealth and civilization. They are failing to assimilate much of the culture. As was predictable, most of the authorities and all of the public spokesmen explain it by saying there has been a failure of socialization. They say that the background conditions have interrupted socialization and must be improved. And, not enough effort has been made to guarantee belonging, there must be better bait or punishment.

But perhaps there has not been a failure to communicate. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the young men and is unacceptable.

In this book I shall therefore take the opposite tack and ask, 'Socialization to what? to what dominant society and available culture?' And if this question is asked, we must at once ask the other question, 'Is the harmonious organization to which the young are inadequately socialized, perhaps against human nature, or not worthy of human nature, and therefore there is difficulty in growing up?' If this is so, the disaffection of the young is profound and it will not be finally remediable by better techniques of socializing. Instead, there will have to be changes in our society and its culture, so as to meet the appetites and capacities of human nature, in order to grow up. ~ Paul Goodman,
673:Now, to look is one of the most difficult things in life – or to listen – to look and listen are the same. If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset. Most of us have lost touch with nature. Civilisation is tending more and more towards large cities; we are becoming more and more an urban people, living in crowded apartments and having very little space even to look at the sky of an evening and morning, and therefore we are losing touch with a great deal of beauty. I don’t know if you have noticed how few of us look at a sunrise or a sunset or the moonlight or the reflection of light on water. Having lost touch with nature we naturally tend to develop intellectual capacities. We read a great many books, go to a great many museums and concerts, watch television and have many other entertainments. We quote endlessly from other people’s ideas and think and talk a great deal about art. Why is it that we depend so much upon art? Is it a form of escape, of stimulation? If you are directly in contact with nature; if you watch the movement of a bird on the wing, see the beauty of every movement of the sky, watch the shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another, do you think you will want to go to any museum to look at any picture? Perhaps it is because you do not know how to look at all the things about you that you resort to some form of drug to stimulate you to see better. There ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
674:In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,
675:Muslim scholars have identified four essential qualities in human beings, which have been identified in earlier traditions as well. Imam al-Ghazālī and Fakhruddīn al-Rāzī adopted them, as did Imam Rāghib al-Isfahānī in his book on ethics. According to Imam al-Ghazālī, the first of them is quwwat al-ʿilm, known in Western tradition as the rational soul, which is human capacity to learn. The next one, quwwat al-ghaḍab, which may be called the irascible soul, is the capacity that relates to human emotion and anger. The third element, quwwat alshahwah, known as the concupiscent soul, is related to appetite and desire. The fourth power, quwwat al-ʿadl, harmonizes the previous three powers and keeps them in balance so that no one capacity overtakes and suppresses the others. In Western tradition, these capacities correspond to what is known as cardinal virtues. Muslims call them ummahāt al-faḍā’il. They are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice (ḥikmah, shajāʿah, ʿiffah, and ʿadl). When the rational soul is balanced, the result is wisdom. Whoever is given wisdom has been given much good (QUR’AN , 2:269). Wisdom, according to Imam al-Ghazālī, is found in one who is balanced, who is neither a simpleton nor a shrewd, tricky person. If there is a deficit in the rational soul, the result is foolishness. When the rational soul becomes excessive and inordinately dominant, the result is trickery and the employment of the intellect toward the exploitation of others. ~ Hamza Yusuf,
676:When Postman wrote the introduction to his important book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he set forth the stance he adopts by contrasting the warnings of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think…. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.34 ~ D A Carson,
677:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],
678:Reinvention is my philosophy, if you want to call it that,” he says, looking out the window. “Imagination is the key to creating a life that is ever new.” Stanley turns his eyes to me. “We are each of us a changeling person,” he says. “We are not going to be the same decade after decade. Wisdom results from confronting not only one’s desires and capacities but also one’s limitations.” “The Layers,” one of Stanley’s best-loved poems, is his crystallization of this wisdom. I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road is precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes. ~ Mark Matousek,
679:The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?)...
   The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. Already, we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted. We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy. ~ Julian Huxley, Transhumanism,
680:There are, of course, innumerable subdivisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that’s their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood – that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It’s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There’s no need for much anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right; they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
681:Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize. However, this is so only in appearance. The modern age has carried with it a theoretical glorification of labor and has resulted in a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society. The fulfilment of the wish, therefore, like the fulfilment of wishes in fairy tales, comes at a moment when it can only be self-defeating. It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won. Within this society, which is egalitarian because this is labor’s way of making men live together, there is no class left, no aristocracy of either a political or spiritual nature from which a restoration of the other capacities of man could start anew. Even presidents, kings, and prime ministers think of their offices in terms of a job necessary for the life of society, and among the intellectuals, only solitary individuals are left who consider what they are doing in terms of work and not in terms of making a living. What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse. To ~ Hannah Arendt,
682:When Sanātana Gosvāmī asked Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu about the svarūpa of every living being, the Lord replied that the svarūpa or constitutional position of the living being is the rendering of service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. If we analyze this statement of Lord Caitanya, we can easily see that every living being is constantly engaged in rendering service to another living being. A living being serves other living beings in two capacities. By doing so, the living entity enjoys life. The lower animals serve human beings as servants serve their master. A serves B master, B serves C master and C serves D master and so on. Under these circumstances, we can see that one friend serves another friend, the mother serves the son, the wife serves the husband, the husband serves the wife and so on. If we go on searching in this spirit, it will be seen that there is no exception in the society of living beings to the activity of service. The politician presents his manifesto for the public to convince them of his capacity for service. The voters therefore give the politician their valuable votes, thinking that he will render valuable service to society. The shopkeeper serves the customer, and the artisan serves the capitalist. The capitalist serves the family, and the family serves the state in the terms of the eternal capacity of the eternal living being. In this way we can see that no living being is exempt from rendering service to other living beings, and therefore we can safely conclude that service is the constant companion of the living being and that the rendering of service is the eternal religion of the living being. ~ Anonymous,
683:Once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are severed, once the individual faces the world outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses re-open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the world. This second course never reunites him with the world in the way he was related to it before he merged as an “individual,” for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible if it were prolonged. This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatening panic; it is also characterized by the more or less complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. Thus it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities. ~ Erich Fromm,
684:We have noticed that, since man’s advent, there has been a certain slowing down of the passive and somatic transformations of the organism in favour of the conscious and active metamorphoses of the individual absorbed in society. We find the artificial carrying on the work of the natural; and the transmission of an oral or written culture being superimposed on genetic forms of heredity (chromosomes). Without denying the possibility or even probability of a certain prolongation in our limbs, and still more in our nervous system, of the orthogenetic processes of the past, I am inclined to think that their influence, hardly appreciable since the emergence of Homo sapiens, is destined to dwindle still further. As thought regulated by a sort of quantum law, the energies of life seem unable to spread in one region or take on a new form except at the expense of a lowering elsewhere. Since man’s arrival, the evolutionary pressure seems to have dropped in all the non-human branches of the tree of life. And now that man has become an adult and has opened up for himself the field of mental and social transformations, bodies no longer change appreciably; they no longer need to in the human branch; or if they still change, it will only be under our industrious control. It may well be that in its individual capacities and penetration our brain has reached its organic limits. But the movement does not stop there. From west to east, evolution is henceforth occupied elsewhere, in a richer and more complex domain, constructing, with all minds joined together, mind. Beyond all nations and races, the inevitable taking-as-a-whole of mankind has already begun. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man,
685:human nature of their origins runs counter to the prevailing cultural view of the ancient Near East. In the Genesis narrative, we see man becoming a contributor under God in the ongoing work of creation, through the development of culture. We learn that city life is not to be seen as simply a punishment for humanity after the banishment from the garden. Rather the city has inherent capacities for bringing human beings together in such a way that enhances both security and culture making. However, as can be seen in the line of Cain, these capacities, under the influence of sin and rebellion against God, can be generators of great evil. The song of Lamech, Cain’s descendant, shows the Cainite city dwellers using all their advances to form a culture of death (Gen 4:23 – 24). Here is the first clear indicator of the dual nature of the city. Its capability for enormous good — for the culture-making creation of art, science, and technology — can be used to produce tremendous evil. Henri Blocher does not consider it a coincidence that the first mention of anti-God culture making is tied to the first instance of city building, but he warns against drawing the wrong conclusion: It is no doubt significant that [in Genesis 4] progress in arts and in engineering comes from the “city” of the Cainites. Nevertheless, we are not to conclude from this that civilization as such is… the fruit of sin. Such a conclusion would lead us to Manichaeism or to the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau… The Bible condemns neither the city (for it concludes with the vision of the City of God) nor art and engineering.14 Blocher may be responding to writers such as Geerhardus Vos, who in his Biblical Theology points to “the problem ~ Timothy J Keller,
686:If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term. ~ Aristotle,
687:When difficulties confront him he no longer blames them upon the inscrutable enmity of remote and ineffable powers; he blames them upon his own ignorance and incompetence. And when he sets out to remedy that ignorance and to remove that incompetence he does not look to any such powers for light and leading; he puts his whole trust in his own enterprise and ingenuity. Not infrequently he overestimates his capacities and comes to grief, but his failures, at worst, are much fewer than the failures of his fathers. Does pestilence, on occasion, still baffle his medicine? Then it is surely less often than the pestilences of old baffled sacrifice and prayer. Does war remain to shame him before the bees, and wasteful and witless government to make him blush when he contemplates the ants? Then war at its most furious is still less cruel than Hell, and the harshest statutes ever devised by man have more equity and benevolence in them than the irrational and appalling jurisprudence of the Christian God.

Today every such man knows that the laws which prevail in the universe, whatever their origin in some remote and incomprehensible First Purpose, manifest themselves in complete impersonality, and that no representation to any superhuman Power, however imagined, can change their operation in the slightest. He knows that when they seem arbitrary and irrational it is not because omnipotent and inscrutable Presences are playing with them, as a child might play with building blocks; but because the human race is yet too ignorant to penetrate to their true workings. The whole history of progress, as the modern mind sees it, is a history of such penetrations. ... Each in its turn has narrowed the dominion and prerogative of the gods. ~ H L Mencken,
688:The twentieth-century mystic Thomas Merton wrote, “There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular—and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.”20 Merton elegantly articulates how the pressure of the create-on-demand world can cause us to look sideways at our peers and competitors instead of looking ahead. The process of discovering and refining your voice takes time. Unnecessary Creation grants you the space to discover your unique aptitudes and passions through a process of trial, error, and play that won’t often be afforded to you otherwise. Initiating a project with no parameters and no expectations from others also forces you to stay self-aware while learning to listen to and follow your intuition. Both of these are crucial skills for discovering your voice. It’s completely understandable if you’re thinking, “But wait—I hardly have time to breathe, and now you want me to cram something else into my schedule, just for my own enjoyment?” It’s true that every decision about where we spend our time has an opportunity cost, and dedicating time to Unnecessary Creation seems like a remarkably inefficient choice. In truth, it is inefficient. Consider, however, the opportunity cost of spending your life only on pragmatics. You dedicate your time to pleasing everyone else and delivering on their expectations, but you never get around to discovering your deeper aptitudes and creative capacities. Nothing is worth that. ~ Jocelyn K Glei,
689:The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (The Politics of Rescue) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action.
Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over "inferior" races? The United States' armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old.
The Red Cross, with government approval, separated the blood donations of black and white. It was, ironically, a black physician named Charles Drew who developed the blood bank system. He was put in charge of the wartime donations, and then fired when he tried to end blood segregation. Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs. A spokesman for a West Coast aviation plant said: "The Negro will be considered only as janitors and in other similar capacities.... Regardless of their training as aircraft workers, we will not employ them." Roosevelt never did anything to enforce the orders of the Fair Employment Practices Commission he had set up. ~ Howard Zinn,
690:Since McDougall contrasts the behaviour of a
highly organised group with what has just been described,
we shall be particularly interested to learn
in what this organisation consists, and by what
factors it is produced. The author enumerates five
principal conditions '
for raising collective mental
life to a higher level.
The first and fundamental condition is that there
should be some degree of continuity of existence in
the group. This may be either material or formal:
the former, if the same individuals persist in the
group for some time; and the latter, if there is
developed within the group a system of fixed positions
which are occupied by a succession of individuals.
The second condition is that in the individual
member of the group some definite idea should be
formed of the nature, composition, functions and
capacities of the group, so that from this he may
develop an emotional relation to the group as a
whole.
The third is that the group should be brought
into interaction (perhaps in the form of rivalry) with
other groups similar to it but differing from it in
many respects.
The fourth is that the group should possess
traditions, customs and habits, and especially such as
determine the relations of its members to one
another.
The fifth is that the group should have a definite
structure, expressed in the specialisation and differentiation
of the functions of its constituents.
According to McDougall, if these conditions
are fulfilled, the psychological disadvantages of the
group formation are removed. The collective lowering
of intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawing
the performance of intellectual tasks from the group
and reserving them for individual members of it. ~ Sigmund Freud,
691:Historically speaking, a mathematical technique known as renormalization was developed to grapple with the quantitative implications of severe, small-scale (high-energy) quantum field jitters. When applied to the quantum field theories of the three nongravitational forces, renormalization cured the infinite quantities that had emerged in various calculations, allowing physicists to generate fantastically accurate predictions. However, when renormalization was brought to bear on the quantum jitters of the gravitational field, it proved ineffective: the method failed to cure infinities that arose in performing quantum calculations involving gravity.

From a more modern vantage point, these infinities are now viewed rather differently. Physicists have come to realize that en route to an ever-deeper understanding of nature's laws, a sensible attitude to take is that any given proposal is provisional, and-if relevant at all-is likely capable of describing physics only down to some particular length scale (or only up to some particular energy scale). Beyond that are phenomena that lie outside the reach of the given proposal. Adopting this perspective, it would be foolhardy to extend the theory to distances smaller than those within its arena of applicability (or to energies above its arena of applicability). And with such inbuilt cutoffs (much as described in the main text), no infinities ever arise. Instead, calculations are undertaken within a theory whose range of applicability is circumscribed from the outset. This means that the ability to make predictions is limited to phenomena that lie within the theory's limits-at very short distances (or at very high energies) the theory offers no insight. The ultimate goal of a complete theory of quantum gravity would be to lift the inbuilt limits, unleashing quantitative, predictive capacities on arbitrary scales. ~ Brian Greene,
692:According to the man, who identified himself as Morton Thornton, the night got real long and by midnight, he was darn well wed to one of the lovelier inhabitants of the dish, a comely middle-aged amoeba of unknown parentage named Rita. When he was rescued on the morning of the following day, Morton plumb forgot about his single-celled nuptials and went back to his daytime job tasting the contents of open pop bottles for backwash and cigarette butts. Only sixteen years later, when a brilliant Sacajawea Junior High roving reporter—who shall remain nameless—discovered the product of this union lurking among us right here at Sac Junior High, was Morton’s long-held secret discovered. “This intrepid reporter was present three weeks into Dale Thornton’s third try at seventh grade, when the young Einstein bet this reporter and several other members of the class that he could keep a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth from the beginning of fifth period Social Studies until the bell. The dumb jerk only lasted twenty minutes, after which he sprinted from the room, not to be seen for the rest of the day. When he returned on the following morning, he told Mr. Getz he had suddenly become ill and had to go home, but without a written excuse (he probably didn’t have a rock big enough for his dad to chisel it on) he was sent to the office. The principal, whose intellectual capacities lie only fractions of an IQ point above Dale’s, believed his lame story, and Dale was readmitted to class. Our dauntless reporter, however, smelled a larger story, recognizing that for a person to attempt this in the first place, even his genes would have to be dumber than dirt. With a zeal rivaled only by Alex Haley’s relentless search for Kunta Kinte, he dived into Dale’s seamy background, where he discovered the above story to be absolutely true and correct. Further developments will appear in this newspaper as they unfold. ~ Chris Crutcher,
693:Disciple : What part does breathing exercise - Pranayama - play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo : It sets the Pranic - vital - currents free and removes dullness of the brain so that the higher consciousness can come down. Pranayama does not bring dullness in the brain. My own experience, on the contrary, is that brain becomes illumined. When I was practising Pranayama at Baroda, I used to do it for about five hours in the day, - three hours in the morning and two in the evening. I found that the mind began to work with great illumination and power. I used to write poetry in those days. Before the Pranayama practice, usually I wrote five to eight lines per day; and about two hundred lines in a month. After the practice I could write 200 lines within half an hour. That was not the only result. Formerly my memory was dull. But after this practice I found that when the inspiration came I could remember all the lines in their order and write them down correctly at any time. Along with these enhanced functionings I could see an electrical activity all round the brain, and I could feel that it was made up of a subtle substance. I could feel everything as the working of that substance. That was far from your carbon-dioxide!

Disciple : How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo : It is the Pranic - vital - currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined.
~ Sri Aurobindo, A B Purani, Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, 19-9-1926,
694:The emergence of society—the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices—from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere, has not only blurred the old borderline between private and political, it has also changed almost beyond recognition the meaning of the two terms and their significance for the life of the individual and the citizen. Not only would we not agree with the Greeks that a life spent in the privacy of “one’s own” (idion), outside the world of the common, is “idiotic” by definition, or with the Romans to whom privacy offered but a temporary refuge from the business of the res publica; we call private today a sphere of intimacy whose beginnings we may be able to trace back to late Roman, though hardly to any period of Greek antiquity, but whose peculiar manifoldness and variety were certainly unknown to any period prior to the modern age. This is not merely a matter of shifted emphasis. In ancient feeling the privative trait of privacy, indicated in the word itself, was all-important; it meant literally a state of being deprived of something, and even of the highest and most human of man’s capacities. A man who lived only a private life, who like the slave was not permitted to enter the public realm, or like the barbarian had chosen not to establish such a realm, was not fully human. We no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word “privacy,” and this is partly due to the enormous enrichment of the private sphere through modern individualism. However, it seems even more important that modern privacy is at least as sharply opposed to the social realm—unknown to the ancients who considered its content a private matter—as it is to the political, properly speaking. The decisive historical fact is that modern privacy in its most relevant function, to shelter the intimate, was discovered as the opposite not of the political sphere but of the social, to which it is therefore more closely and authentically related. The ~ Hannah Arendt,
695:city builders and rebuilders (Jerusalem) and city-loving exiles (Babylon). In New Testament times, the people of God become city missionaries (indeed, New Testament writings contain few glimpses of nonurban Christianity). Finally, when God’s future arrives in the form of a city, his people can finally be fully at home. The fallen nature of the city — the warping of its potential due to the power of sin — is finally overcome and resolved; the cultural mandate is complete; the capacities of city life are freed in the end to serve God. All of God’s people serve him in his holy city. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION 1. Keller writes, “The church should continue to relate to the human cities of our time, not as the people of God did under Abraham, Moses, or David, but as they did during the time of the exile.” In what ways is the situation of the Christian church different from that of the exiles in Babylon? In what ways is it similar? How does this affect the mission of the church today? 2. From Acts 17 through the end of the book of Acts, Paul has strategically traveled to the intellectual (Athens), commercial (Corinth), religious (Ephesus), and political (Rome) centers of the Roman world. What are the centers of power and influence in your own local context? How is your church seeking to strategically reach these different centers of cultural influence? 3. Keller writes, “Then, as now, the cities were filled with the poor, and urban Christians’ commitment to the poor was visible and striking.” Do you believe this is still true of the Christian church? If so, give an example. If not, how can this legacy be recaptured? 4. Keller writes, “Gardening (the original human vocation) is a paradigm for cultural development. A gardener neither leaves the ground as is, nor does he destroy it. Instead, he rearranges it to produce food and plants for human life. He cultivates it. (The words culture and cultivate come from the same root.) Every vocation is in some way a response to, and an extension of, the primal, ~ Timothy J Keller,
696:What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life.

This lack of close personal involvement in the daily routine brings a general loss of contact with reality: instead of continuous interplay between the inner and the outer world, with constant feedback or readjustment and with stimulus to fresh creativity, only the outer world-and mainly the collectively organized outer world of the power system-exercises authority: even private dreams must be channeled through television, film, and disc, in order to become acceptable.

With this feeling of alienation goes the typical psychological problem of our time, characterized in classic terms by Erik Erikson as the 'Identity Crisis.' In a world of transitory family nurture, transitory human contacts, transitory jobs and places of residence, transitory sexual and family relations, the basic conditions for maintaining continuity and establishing personal equilibrium disappear. The individual suddenly awakens, as Tolstoi did in a famous crisis in his own life at Arzamas, to find himself in a strange, dark room, far from home, threatened by obscure hostile forces, unable to discover where he is or who he is, appalled by the prospect of a meaningless death at the end of a meaningless life. ~ Lewis Mumford,
697:Language both required additional cognitive capacities and made new ones possible, and these changes took space and connections to achieve. The space problem was solved, as we saw earlier, by moving some things around in existing cortical space, and also by adding more space. But the connection problem was only partially solved. The part that was solved, connectivity within cortical processing networks, made the enhanced cognitive capacities of the hominid brain possible. But the part that hasn't been fully solved is connectivity between cognitive systems and other parts of the mental trilogy-emotional and motivational systems. This is why a brilliant mathematician or artist, or a successful entrepreneur, can like anyone else fall victim to sexual seduction, road rage, or jealousy, or be a child abuser or rapist, or can have a crippling depression or anxiety. Our brain has not evolved to the point where the new systems that make complex thinking possible can easily control the old systems that give rise to our base needs and motives, and emotional reactions. This doesn't mean that we're simply victims of our brains and should just give in to our urges. It means that downward causation is sometimes hard work. Doing the right thing doesn't always flow naturally from knowing what the right thing to do is.

In the end, then, the self is maintained by systems that function both explicitly and implicitly. Through explicit systems, we try to willfully dictate who we are, and how we will behave. But we are only partially effective in doing so, since we have imperfect conscious access to emotional systems, which play such a crucial role in coordinating learning by other systems. In spite of their importance, though, emotion systems are not always active and have only episodic influence on what other brain systems learn and store. Furthermore, because there are multiple independent emotion systems, the episodic influence of any one system is itself but a component of the total impact of emotions on self-development. ~ Joseph E LeDoux,
698:Game-free intimacy is or should be the most perfect form of human living.

Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologically impossible for most people, the bulk of time in serious social life is taken up with playing games. Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him. In this connexion it should be remembered that the essential feature of a game is its culmination, or payoff. The principal function of the preliminary moves is to set up the situation for this payoff, but they are always designed to harvest the maximum permissible satisfaction at each step as a secondary product.

Games are passed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children.

Raising children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games.

Many games are played most intensely by disturbed people, generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play.

The attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.

Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, think and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained.

First, the weight of a whole tribal or family historical tradition has to be lifted. The same must be done with the demands of contemporary society at large, and finally advantages derived from one's immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Following this, the individual must attain personal and social control, so that all the classes of behaviour become free choices subject only to his will. He is then ready for game-free relationships. ~ Eric Berne,
699:Excellence itself, aretē as the Greeks, virtus as the Romans would have called it, has always been assigned to the public realm where one could excel, could distinguish oneself from all others. Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required, and this presence needs the formality of the public, constituted by one’s peers, it cannot be the casual, familiar presence of one’s equals or inferiors.40 Not even the social realm—though it made excellence anonymous, emphasized the progress of mankind rather than the achievements of men, and changed the content of the public realm beyond recognition—has been able altogether to annihilate the connection between public performance and excellence. While we have become excellent in the laboring we perform in public, our capacity for action and speech has lost much of its former quality since the rise of the social realm banished these into the sphere of the intimate and the private. This curious discrepancy has not escaped public notice, where it is usually blamed upon an assumed time lag between our technical capacities and our general humanistic development or between the physical sciences, which change and control nature, and the social sciences, which do not yet know how to change and control society. Quite apart from other fallacies of the argument which have been pointed out so frequently that we need not repeat them, this criticism concerns only a possible change in the psychology of human beings—their so-called behavior patterns—not a change of the world they move in. And this psychological interpretation, for which the absence or presence of a public realm is as irrelevant as any tangible, worldly reality, seems rather doubtful in view of the fact that no activity can become excellent if the world does not provide a proper space for its exercise. Neither education nor ingenuity nor talent can replace the constituent elements of the public realm, which make it the proper place for human excellence. 7 ~ Hannah Arendt,
700:As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it’s somewhat arbitrary, but I don’t insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There are, of course, innumerable sub- divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that’s their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood—that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It’s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There’s no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive la guerre éternelle—till the New Jerusalem, of course! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
701:Practice using these two unique human capacities: first, see yourself going to the office this afternoon, or home tonight, and finding it in a terrible situation. The house is a total disaster. No one has done his or her job; all the commitments made have been unfulfilled. And you’re tired and beat up. Now, imagine yourself responding to that reality in a mature, wise, self-controlled manner. See the effect that has on someone else. You didn’t confess their sins. You started to pitch in. You were cheerful, helpful, pleasant. And your behavior will prick the conscience of others and allow the consequences agreed upon to happen. You just used two unique human capacities: imagination and conscience. You didn’t rely on memory; if you had relied on memory or history, you might have lost your cool, made judgments of other people, and exacerbated conditions. Memory is built into your past responses to the same or similar stimuli. Memory ties you to your past. Imagination points you to your future. Your potential is unlimited, but to potentiate is to actualize your capabilities no matter what the conditions. In the book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany in World War II, tells how he exercised the power to choose his response to his terrible conditions. One day he was subjected to experiments on his body. And he discovered, “I have the power to choose.” And he looked for meaning. He believed that if you have a meaning (purpose or cause), if you have a why, you can live with any what. The development of his professional life came out of that one insight. He was raised in the Freudian tradition of psychic determinism. He learned it was a lie. It wasn’t based on science. It came from the study of sick people—neurotics and psychotics—not from the study of healthy, creative, effective people. He didn’t go to his memory, he went to his imagination and conscience. You, too, can progress along the continuum from futility and old habits to faith, hope, and inner security through the exercise of conscience and imagination. ~ Stephen R Covey,
702:Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. From this complacence, the critics have been emboldened to assume a dictatorial power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the masters, and have the assurance to give laws to those authors from whose predecessors they originally received them. The critic, rightly considered, is no more than the clerk, whose office it is to transcribe the rules and laws laid down by those great judges whose vast strength of genius hath placed them in the light of legislators, in the several sciences over which they presided. This office was all which the critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever dare to advance a sentence, without supporting it by the authority of the judge from whence it was borrowed. But in process of time, and in ages of ignorance, the clerk began to invade the power and assume the dignity of his master. The laws of writing were no longer founded on the practice of the author, but on the dictates of the critic. The clerk became the legislator, and those very peremptorily gave laws whose business it was, at first, only to transcribe them. Hence arose an obvious, and perhaps an unavoidable error; for these critics being men of shallow capacities, very easily mistook mere form for substance. They acted as a judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless letter of law, and reject the spirit. Little circumstances, which were perhaps accidental in a great author, were by these critics considered to constitute his chief merit, and transmitted as essentials to be observed by all his successors. To these encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule that every man must dance in chains. To ~ Henry Fielding,
703:Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place. The possibility of co-ordination through voluntary co-operation rests on the elementary—yet frequently denied—proposition that both parties to an economic transaction benefit from it, provided the transaction is bi-laterally voluntary and informed. Exchange can therefore bring about co-ordination without coercion. A working model of a society organized through voluntary exchange is a free private enterprise exchange economy—what we have been calling competitive capitalism. In its simplest form, such a society consists of a number of independent households—a collection of Robinson Crusoes, as it were. Each household uses the resources it controls to produce goods and services that it exchanges for goods and services produced by other households, on terms mutually acceptable to the two parties to the bargain. It is thereby enabled to satisfy its wants indirectly by producing goods and services for others, rather than directly by producing goods for its own immediate use. The incentive for adopting this indirect route is, of course, the increased product made possible by division of labor and specialization of function. Since the household always has the alternative of producing directly for itself, it need not enter into any exchange unless it benefits from it. Hence, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit from it. Co-operation is thereby achieved without coercion. Specialization of function and division of labor would not go far if the ultimate productive unit were the household. In a modern society, we have gone much farther. We have introduced enterprises which are intermediaries between individuals in their capacities as suppliers of service and as purchasers of goods. And similarly, specialization of function and division of labor could not go very far if we had to continue to rely on the barter of product for product. In consequence, money has been introduced as a means of facilitating exchange, and ~ Milton Friedman,
704:like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody’s time. “If you can’t it get done in eight hours a day,” he said, “it’s not worth doing.” That’s been my philosophy ever since. Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification. To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid. In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization: experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others. ~ Phil Jackson,
705:what makes life worth living when we are old and frail and unable to care for ourselves? In 1943, the psychologist Abraham Maslow published his hugely influential paper “A Theory of Human Motivation,” which famously described people as having a hierarchy of needs. It is often depicted as a pyramid. At the bottom are our basic needs—the essentials of physiological survival (such as food, water, and air) and of safety (such as law, order, and stability). Up one level are the need for love and for belonging. Above that is our desire for growth—the opportunity to attain personal goals, to master knowledge and skills, and to be recognized and rewarded for our achievements. Finally, at the top is the desire for what Maslow termed “self-actualization”—self-fulfillment through pursuit of moral ideals and creativity for their own sake. Maslow argued that safety and survival remain our primary and foundational goals in life, not least when our options and capacities become limited. If true, the fact that public policy and concern about old age homes focus on health and safety is just a recognition and manifestation of those goals. They are assumed to be everyone’s first priorities. Reality is more complex, though. People readily demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice their safety and survival for the sake of something beyond themselves, such as family, country, or justice. And this is regardless of age. What’s more, our driving motivations in life, instead of remaining constant, change hugely over time and in ways that don’t quite fit Maslow’s classic hierarchy. In young adulthood, people seek a life of growth and self-fulfillment, just as Maslow suggested. Growing up involves opening outward. We search out new experiences, wider social connections, and ways of putting our stamp on the world. When people reach the latter half of adulthood, however, their priorities change markedly. Most reduce the amount of time and effort they spend pursuing achievement and social networks. They narrow in. Given the choice, young people prefer meeting new people to spending time with, say, a sibling; old people prefer the opposite. Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future. ~ Atul Gawande,
706:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
707:Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our mind; the first is to receive representations (receptivity of impressions), the second is the faculty of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity of concepts). Through the first an object is *given* to us, through the second the object is *thought* in relation to that representation (which is a mere determination of the mind). Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts can yield knowledge. Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical when they contain sensation (sensation presupposes the actual presence of the object). They are *pure* when no sensation is mixed in with the representation. Sensation may be called the matter of sensible knowledge. Pure intuition, therefore, contains only the form under which something is intuited, and the pure concepts contains only the form of thinking an object in general. Pure intuitions and pure concepts alone are possible *a priori*, empirical intuitions and empirical concepts only *a posteriori*.

We call *sensibility* the *receptivity* of our mind to receive representations insofar as it is in some wise affected, while the *understanding*, on the other hand, is our faculty of producing representations by ourselves, or the *spontaneity* of knowledge. We are so constituted that our intuition can never be other than *sensible*; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the contrary, which enables us to *think* the object of sensible intuition is the *understanding*. Neither of these properties is to be preferred to the other. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible (i.e., to add the object to them in intuition) as to make our intuitions understandable (i.e., to bring them under concepts). These two faculties or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding cannot intuit anything, the senses cannot think anything. Only from their union can knowledge arise. But this is no reason for confounding their respective contributions; rather, it gives us a strong reason for carefully separating and distinguishing the one from the other. We therefore distinguish the science of the rules of sensibility in general, i.e., aesthetic, from the science of the rules of the understanding in general, i.e., logic."

―Transcendental Doctrine of Elements. Transcendental Logic: The Idea of a Transcendental Logic ~ Immanuel Kant,
708:MAN: Mr. Chomsky, I’m wondering what specific qualifications you have to be able to speak all around the country about world affairs?
 
None whatsoever. I mean, the qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones Henry Kissinger has, and Walt Rostow has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians—none, none that you don’t have. The only difference is, I don’t pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I’d refuse—because I don’t understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there’s nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think, but there’s nothing deep—if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they’ve been kept a carefully guarded secret.
In fact, I think the idea that you’re supposed to have special qualifications to talk about world affairs is just another scam—it’s kind of like Leninism [position that socialist revolution should be led by a “vanguard” party]: it’s just another technique for making the population feel that they don’t know anything, and they’d better just stay out of it and let us smart guys run it. In order to do that, what you pretend is that there’s some esoteric discipline, and you’ve got to have some letters after your name before you can say anything about it. The fact is, that’s a joke.
 
MAN: But don’t you also use that system too, because of your name-recognition and the fact that you’re a famous linguist? I mean, would I be invited to go somewhere and give talks?
 
You think I was invited here because people know me as a linguist? Okay, if that was the reason, then it was a bad mistake. But there are plenty of other linguists around, and they aren’t getting invited to places like this—so I don’t really think that can be the reason. I assumed that the reason is that these are topics that I’ve written a lot about, and I’ve spoken a lot about, and I’ve demonstrated a lot about, and I’ve gone to jail about, and so on and so forth—I assumed that’s the reason. If it’s not, well, then it’s a bad mistake. If anybody thinks that you should listen to me because I’m a professor at M.I.T., that’s nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it. And the idea that you’re supposed to have special qualifications to talk about things that are common sense, that’s just another scam—it’s another way to try to marginalize people, and you shouldn’t fall for it. ~ Noam Chomsky,
709:he importance and influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can scarcely be exaggerated. A century after Darwin’s death, the great evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Ernst Mayr, wrote, ‘The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed prior to 1859… The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin went far beyond the confines of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age.’1 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s biographers, contend, ‘Darwin is arguably the best known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker—even Freud or Marx—this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.’2 In the words of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is… Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.’3 Dennett goes on to add, ‘If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.’4 The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Darwin begin their introduction by stating, ‘Some scientific thinkers, while not themselves philosophers, make philosophers necessary. Charles Darwin is an obvious case. His conclusions about the history and diversity of life—including the evolutionary origin of humans—have seemed to bear on fundamental questions about being, knowledge, virtue and justice.’5 Among the fundamental questions raised by Darwin’s work, which are still being debated by philosophers (and others) are these: ‘Are we different in kind from other animals? Do our apparently unique capacities for language, reason and morality point to a divine spark within us, or to ancestral animal legacies still in evidence in our simian relatives? What forms of social life are we naturally disposed towards—competitive and selfish forms, or cooperative and altruistic ones?’6 As the editors of the volume point out, virtually the entire corpus of the foundational works of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes to Kant to Hegel, has had to be re-examined in the light of Darwin’s work. Darwin continues to be read, discussed, interpreted, used, abused—and misused—to this day. As the philosopher and historian of science, Jean Gayon, puts it, ‘[T]his persistent positioning of new developments in relation to a single, pioneering figure is quite exceptional in the history of modern natural science. ~ Charles Darwin,
710:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
   ~ Georges Van Vrekhem,
711:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
   A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
   The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
712:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
   In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
   In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
   The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,
713:We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. ~ Neil Postman,
714:The Angel In The House. Book Ii. Canto Xi.
Preludes.
I Platonic Love
Right art thou who wouldst rather be
A doorkeeper in Love's fair house,
Than lead the wretched revelry
Where fools at swinish troughs carouse.
But do not boast of being least;
And if to kiss thy Mistress' skirt
Amaze thy brain, scorn not the Priest
Whom greater honours do not hurt.
Stand off and gaze, if more than this
Be more than thou canst understand,
Revering him whose power of bliss,
Angelic, dares to seize her hand,
Or whose seraphic love makes flight
To the apprehension of her lips;
And think, the sun of such delight
From thine own darkness takes eclipse.
And, wouldst thou to the same aspire,
This is the art thou must employ,
Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire
Unknown capacities of joy.
II A Demonstration
Nature, with endless being rife,
Parts each thing into ‘him’ and ‘her,’
And, in the arithmetic of life,
The smallest unit is a pair;
And thus, oh, strange, sweet half of me,
If I confess a loftier flame,
If more I love high Heaven than thee,
I more than love thee, thee I am;
And, if the world's not built of lies,
Nor all a cheat the Gospel tells,
If that which from the dead shall rise
Be I indeed, not something else,
There's no position more secure
168
In reason or in faith than this,
That those conditions must endure,
Which, wanting, I myself should miss.
III The Symbol
As if I chafed the sparks from glass,
And said, ‘It lightens,’ hitherto
The songs I've made of love may pass
For all but for proportion true;
But likeness and proportion both
Now fail, as if a child in glee,
Catching the flakes of the salt froth,
Cried, ‘Look, my mother, here's the sea.’
Yet, by the help of what's so weak,
But not diverse, to those who know,
And only unto those I speak,
May far-inferring fancy show
Love's living sea by coasts uncurb'd,
Its depth, its mystery, and its might,
Its indignation if disturb'd,
The glittering peace of its delight.
IV Constancy rewarded
I vow'd unvarying faith, and she,
To whom in full I pay that vow,
Rewards me with variety
Which men who change can never know.
The Wedding.
Life smitten with a feverish chill,
The brain too tired to understand,
In apathy of heart and will,
I took the woman from the hand
Of him who stood for God, and heard
Of Christ, and of the Church his Bride;
The Feast, by presence of the Lord
And his first Wonder, beautified;
The mystic sense to Christian men;
The bonds in innocency made,
169
And gravely to be enter'd then
For children, godliness, and aid,
And honour'd, and kept free from smirch;
And how a man must love his wife
No less than Christ did love His Church,
If need be, giving her his life;
And, vowing then the mutual vow,
The tongue spoke, but intention slept.
'Tis well for us Heaven asks not how
We take this oath, but how 'tis kept.
II
O, bold seal of a bashful bond,
Which makes the marriage-day to be,
To those before it and beyond,
An iceberg in an Indian sea!
III
‘Now, while she's changing,’ said the Dean,
‘Her bridal for her travelling dress,
‘I'll preach allegiance to your queen!
‘Preaching's the thing which I profess;
‘And one more minute's mine! You know
‘I've paid my girl a father's debt,
‘And this last charge is all I owe.
‘She's your's; but I love more than yet
‘You can; such fondness only wakes
‘When time has raised the heart above
‘The prejudice of youth, which makes
‘Beauty conditional to love.
‘Prepare to meet the weak alarms
‘Of novel nearness: recollect
‘The eye which magnifies her charms
‘Is microscopic for defect.
‘Fear comes at first; but soon, rejoiced,
‘You'll find your strong and tender loves,
‘Like holy rocks by Druids poised,
‘The least force shakes, but none removes.
‘Her strength is your esteem; beware
‘Of finding fault; her will's unnerv'd
‘By blame; from you 'twould be despair;
‘But praise that is not quite deserv'd
170
‘Will all her noble nature move
‘To make your utmost wishes true.
‘Yet think, while mending thus your Love,
‘Of matching her ideal too!
‘The death of nuptial joy is sloth:
‘To keep your mistress in your wife,
‘Keep to the very height your oath,
‘And honour her with arduous life.
‘Lastly, no personal reverence doff.
‘Life's all externals unto those
‘Who pluck the blushing petals off,
‘To find the secret of the rose.—
‘How long she's tarrying! Green's Hotel
‘I'm sure you'll like. The charge is fair,
‘The wines good. I remember well
‘I stay'd once, with her Mother, there.
‘A tender conscience of her vow
‘That Mother had! She's so like her!’
But Mrs. Fife, much flurried, now
Whisper'd, ‘Miss Honor's ready, Sir.’
IV
Whirl'd off at last, for speech I sought,
To keep shy Love in countenance;
But, whilst I vainly tax'd my thought,
Her voice deliver'd mine from trance:
‘Look, is not this a pretty shawl,
‘Aunt's parting gift.’ ‘She's always kind,’
‘The new wing spoils Sir John's old Hall:
‘You'll see it, if you pull the blind.’
I drew the silk: in heaven the night
Was dawning; lovely Venus shone,
In languishment of tearful light,
Swathed by the red breath of the sun.
171
~ Coventry Patmore,
715:For instance, a popular game with California occultists-I do not know its inventor-involves a Magic Room, much like the Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room contains an Omniscient Computer.
   To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy. You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.) So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
   There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So, the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher. (Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade teacher-imprint vulnerability again-but that of the second grade teacher tends to get lost.)
   When the computer has dug out the name of your second grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how well it can be made to perform.
   It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
   After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment, feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer. Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you seem to them.
   This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for some shocks which might be disagreeable at first. This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are functionally identical."
   This computer is much more powerful and scientifically advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions as: 1. I am at cause over my body. 2. I am at cause over my imagination. 3.1 am at cause over my future. 4. My mind abounds with beauty and power. 5.1 like people, and people like me.
   Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.
   This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer, etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the metaprogrammer. "Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist, repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent; that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our revisions, meta-selves of our selves. "Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is. Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity. Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of your mind as mind 1 , and the mind which contemplates that mind as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating mind 1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon all students of yoga. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising,
716:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
   Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?

   ... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
   When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
   It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
   Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
   And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
   Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
   And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
   And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
   There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,
717: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,

IN CHAPTERS [263/263]



  145 Integral Yoga
   8 Philosophy
   6 Education
   6 Christianity
   5 Theosophy
   4 Yoga
   3 Psychology
   3 Poetry
   3 Occultism
   1 Sufism
   1 Kabbalah
   1 Hinduism
   1 Fiction


  105 Sri Aurobindo
   83 The Mother
   41 Satprem
   23 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   9 A B Purani
   6 Rudolf Steiner
   4 Swami Krishnananda
   3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   3 Plotinus
   3 Aldous Huxley
   2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   2 Jordan Peterson
   2 Edgar Allan Poe


   32 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   15 The Life Divine
   11 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   9 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   9 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   8 The Human Cycle
   8 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   7 On Education
   7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   6 Letters On Yoga IV
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   5 Theosophy
   5 Questions And Answers 1956
   5 Letters On Yoga II
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   4 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   4 The Secret Doctrine
   4 Questions And Answers 1954
   4 Questions And Answers 1953
   4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   4 On the Way to Supermanhood
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   4 Agenda Vol 10
   4 Agenda Vol 08
   4 Agenda Vol 04
   4 Agenda Vol 03
   3 The Perennial Philosophy
   3 Talks
   3 Record of Yoga
   3 Questions And Answers 1955
   3 Letters On Yoga I
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 Agenda Vol 13
   3 Agenda Vol 12
   3 Agenda Vol 06
   3 Agenda Vol 05
   3 Agenda Vol 02
   3 Agenda Vol 01
   2 Words Of The Mother II
   2 Vedic and Philological Studies
   2 The Secret Of The Veda
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Poe - Poems
   2 Maps of Meaning
   2 Letters On Poetry And Art
   2 Isha Upanishad
   2 Hymn of the Universe


0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We perceive that as Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence.
  But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions.

01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will, to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought, it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattwic buddhi, follow the dharma, fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kama and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma. The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise
  God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
  Sakti.

0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the fortuity of lifes circumstances has placed you in contact with these things. An absolutely worthless man may be in a very high position, and a man who might have marvelous capacities of creation and organization may find himself toiling in a quite limited and inferior position, whereas he would be a wholly useful individual if the world were sincere.
   It is this artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth that appeared so shocking to me that one wonders how, in a world as false as this one, we can arrive at any truthful evaluation of things.

0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And so, physically, the body followed. My body has been taught to express the inner experience to a certain extent. In the body there is the body-force or the body-form or the body-spirit (according to the different schools, it bears a different name), and this is what leaves the body last when one dies, usually taking a period of seven days to leave.2 With special training, it can acquire a conscious lifeindependent and consciousto such a degree that not only in a state of trance (in trance, it frequently happens that one can speak and move if one is slightly trained or educated), but even in a cataleptic state it can produce sounds and even make the body move. Thus, through training, the body begins to have somnambulistic capacitiesnot an ordinary somnambulism, but it can live an autonomous life.3 This is what took place, yesterday evening it was like that I had gone out of my body, but my body was participating. And then I was pulled downwards: my hand, which had been on the arm of the chair, slipped down, then the other hand, then my head was almost touching my knees! (The consciousness was elsewhere, I saw it from outsideit was not that I didnt know what I was doing, I saw it from outside.) So I said, In any case, this has to stop somewhere because if it continues, my head (laughing) is going to be on the ground! And I thought, But what is there at the bottom of this hole?
   Scarcely had these words been formulated when there I was, at the bottom of the hole! And it was absolutely as if a tremendous, almighty spring were there, and then (Mother hits the table) vrrrm! I was cast out of the abyss into a vastness. My body immediately sat straight up, head on high, following the movement. If someone had been watching, this is what he would have seen: in a single bound, vrrrm! Straight up, to the maximum, my head on high.

0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   X knows very little about your true work and what Swami has been able to explain to him is rather inadequate, for I do not believe that he himself understands it very well. So I shall have to try to make myself understood quite clearly to X and tell him exactly and simply what it is you need. The word transformation is too abstract. Each mantra has a very specific actionat least I believe soand I must be able to tell X in a concrete way the exact powers or capacities you are now seeking, and the general goal or the particular results required. Then he will find the mantra or mantras that apply.
   My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)

0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Consider the case of a woman with many friends, and these friends are very fond of her for her special capacities, her pleasant company, and because they feel they can always learn something from her. Then all of a sudden, through a quirk of circumstances, she finds herself socially ostracizedbecause she may have gone off with another man, or may be living with someone out of wedlockall those social mores with no value in themselves. And all her friends (I dont speak of those who truly love her), all her social friends who welcomed her, who smiled so warmly when passing her on the street, suddenly look the other way and march by without a glance. This has happened right here in the Ashram! I wont give the details, but it has happened several times when something conflicted with accepted social norms: the people who had shown so much affection, so much kindness oh! Sometimes they even said, Shes a lost woman!
   I must say that when this happens here. In the world at large it seems quite normal, but when this happens here it always gives me a bit of a shock, in the sense that I say to myself, So theyre still at that level!

0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In the end, it would be a very interesting attempt: a stimulant for peoples intuitive capacities, instead of taking them all for donkeys and spoon-feeding them, going yum-yum-yum-yum-yum so that theyll digest it!
   (silence)

0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was a truly stupendous experience, petty though the object is (she is insignificant, without any great substance or powera very minor incarnation; she does have certain not quite human capacities, but they are so veiled by a tiny human personality that scarcely anyone but I can see them).
   And in the experience there was no difference between my physical and my inner being (actually, its that way more and more for me); even physically, externally, there was a kind of love full of adoration, and so spontaneousnot even any sense of wonder! And there was such a formidable Power in it, formidable from the standpoint of the entire earth. It lasted one hour. After an hour, the experience slowly began to fade (it had to fade for purely practical reasons). But it left me so confident of a radical changenot a total change, for it wasnt permanent but so radical that even outwardly, way down below in me, something was saying, Ah, how will the meditations with X be now? I caught Myself not thinking, not myself: someone thought like that, somewhere way down below. This pulled me out of the experience and I wondered, Thats strange, whos thinking like that? It was one of the personalities4 (in terms of work, its the one that gives each action its proper place), someone way down below, spontaneously feeling: But thats going to change the meditations! What will they be like now? When I returned and began to look at things with the usual discernment, I told myself that perhaps there actually will be a change.

0 1962-01-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Note from Mother to Satprem concerning his question of January 9, on the capacities required to gain access to the supramental world:)
   Capacity for indefinite

0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The people on that ship had these two capacities: one, the capacity for indefinite expansion of consciousness on all planes, including the material; and two, limitless plasticity in order to follow the movement of the Becoming.
   It was taking place in the subtle physical. The people who had patches on their bodies and had to be sent back were always the ones who lacked the plasticity those two movements required. But the main thing was the movement of expansion; the progressive movement, the movement of following the Becoming, seemed to be a subsequent preoccupation for those who had landed. The preparation on the boat concerned that capacity for expansion.

0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It can happen in different ways. Quite often I was informed by a small entity or some being or other. Sometimes the aura protected meall sorts of things. My life was rarely limited to the physical body. And this is useful, its good. Necessary alsoit enhances your capacities. Thon told me right from the start: You people deprive yourselves of the most useful kind of senses, EVEN FOR ORDINARY LIFE. If you develop your inner senses (he gave them fabulous names), you can. And its true, absolutely true, we can know infinitely more than we normally do, merely by using our own senses. And not only mentally but vitally and even physically as well.
   But what is the method?

0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   They are more like seeds, capacities destined to develop later in the new race, and the seed has been made to grow and bloom as an example, before the thing happens on a larger scalethey are examples.
   Theres another man whose disciples say has been living for a hundred and fifty-four years; Ill show you his photo (Mother goes to look for the photo). D. goes to see him twice a month, and yesterday or the day before, he said to D., You know, the greatest miracle I know of is having been able to gather more than a thousand people together for a spiritual undertaking! (Mother laughs wholeheartedly) Its funny! One thousand two hundred people is the Ashrams official figure. Having been able to draw together a group of more than one thousand two hundred people for a spiritual undertaking!

0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Nothing spectacular whatsoeverspectacular, you know, thats what people enjoy. Nothing of the sort. For instance, there are two things that give you (and others too) a sense that youre making progress: one is the direct knowledge of whats happening in a given place; the other is the foreknowledge of coming events. Well, ever since the beginning of my Yoga, the two possibilities or capacities have been there, with all the admixture (as Sri Aurobindo says) of the movements of the mind, which befuddles everything. Already around 1910, not only was the capacity there (it would come off and on), but along with it, a discernment which showed me the mixture, and thus left me without any certainty. In this regard, therefore, I cant even say there has been a big change the change is in the proportion, its just a question of proportion: proportion in the certainty, proportion in the accuracy, proportion in the mixture. The mixture keeps decreasing, the certainty keeps increasing but thats all. With, now and then (but that has always happened), now and then, a clear, precise, definite indicationbang! Its a bit more frequent. Thats all. So? Sixty-three years. Sixty-three years of methodical effort, of constant will, of opportunities for the workpeople who want quick results, they make me laugh, you know!
   This body isnt even one that is unprepared. It had capabilities, it was born with certain capabilities and was prepared for all kinds of experiences. There was also the sort of intuitive discernment Sri Aurobindo refers to, it had been there since my earliest childhoodveiled, mixed, no doubt, but present all the same, it was there. Afterwards, it was purified, developed, streng thened, the mixture lessened and the body was somewhat (laughing) to perfect itself it went through quite a great deal of friction of all types. Its certainly more apt today than it was fifty years ago, there isnt a shadow of doubt about it! But you understand, theres nothing to boast about!

0 1963-06-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its not much, not a large part of the being that would like to know. It happens when the body feels quite bizarre, not at all, AT ALL as it was before, but also not at all as it thinks it should be. A transitional period which is truly unsatisfactory, in the sense that you no longer feel the strength you had, the capacities you had, but you dont feel at all the Power and capacities you expect eitheryou are halfway between, neither like this nor like that. With, now and then, some absolutely bewildering things, things that make you stare wide-eyed, Oh, thats how it is! But at the same time, such tiresome limitations, tiresome.
   That is the part (a completely childish part) which needs a little encouragement: Come on, dont worry, youre on the right track. But thats childish. The only way is to keep quiet and go on without worrying.

0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Begin again in a little baby? (Mother shakes her head negatively) Theres the rub, you see. When Sri Aurobindo left, he said, I will return in a being formed supramentallyentirely conscious, with full capacities.
   On June 29

0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Not that way, not the way we understand compliments. I was looking into the way the Truth has to make use of mental capacities to express itself. (Because youre asked to silence the mind, and when you succeed in doing so, you really do succeed, but but thats not the aim; its only a means, its to change your way of functioning.) So I was looking at the way the mind has to function in the true life (the supramental life, since Sri Aurobindo said he called supramental the manifestation of Truth and Light). Anyway, I was looking. I was conducting a kind of terrestrial survey, wondering, Are there on earth mentalities that are ready to receive and manifestespecially manifest that vibration properly? And I heard the Lord answer me something (I am translating, naturally): But why are you looking so far afield? You have the fitting instrument with you. And it was you. So I thought, Thats fine.
   I didnt voice any doubt on His judgment!

0 1964-01-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its own, a place where every human being of goodwill, sincere in his aspiration, could live freely as a citizen of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and in capacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasures and material enjoyment. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not with a view to passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts, but to enrich ones existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organize; everyones bodily needs would be provided for equally, and in the general organization, intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed not by increased pleasures and powers in life, but by greater duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its art formspainting, sculpture, music, literaturewould be accessible to all equally, the ability to share in the joys it brings being limited solely by ones capacities and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place, money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social position. There, work would not be for earning ones living, but the means to express oneself and develop ones capacities and possibilities, while at the same time being of service to the group as a whole, which would in turn provide for everyones subsistence and field of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, ordinarily based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in trying to do ones best, of collaboration and real brotherhood.
   The earth is not ready to realize such an ideal, for humanity does not yet possess either the knowledge necessary to understand and adopt it or the conscious force indispensable for its execution. This is why I call it a dream.

0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Some time ago, I was saying to myself, Some people see physical things at a distance, but I have never seen anything of the sort. I have seen things in the subtle physical (very close to the physical, with a very small difference), but that wasnt a physical vision: it was a vision in the subtle physical. Some time ago I said to myself, Thats odd, physically I have no special capacities, I have never observed interesting phenomena! (Mother laughs) But that was in passing. And now this story! But, mon petit, it took me forty-eight hours to be convinced that it wasnt in the book! I havent yet got over it! Because my eyes have the eyes memory, a very precise memory; they were educated by painting and they see things very exactly as they are (well, as they pretend to be materially). You know, I could have sworn that it was in the book. And clearly it isnt. Four people, apart from me, have seen the book, and its not there!
   I found that interesting, its new.

0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   One thing is obvious, its that if everything had gone very well, with good results, the need for a higher Help would never have occurred to them; they would have become puffed up with statistics and with satisfaction with their capacities.
   To mark August 15, several groups connected to the Ashram have been meeting in Pondicherry.

0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Regarding an old Playground Talk of March 8, 1951, in which Mother spoke of the being that possessed and guided Hitler: Hitler was in contact with a being whom he considered to be the Supreme: that being would come and give him advice and tell him all that he had to do. Hitler would withdraw into solitude and wait long enough to come into contact with his guide and receive inspirations from him which he would afterwards carry out very faithfully. That being whom Hitler took for the Supreme was quite simply an Asura, the one called in occultism the Lord of Falsehood, and he proclaimed himself to be the Lord of Nations. He had a resplendent appearance and could pull the wool over anyones eyes, except one who truly had occult knowledge and could thus see what was there, behind the appearance. He could have deluded anyone, he was so splendid. He generally appeared to Hitler wearing a breast-plate and a silver helmet (with a sort of flame coming out of his head), and there was around him an atmosphere of dazzling light, so dazzling that Hitler could hardly look at him. He would tell him all that he had to dohe would play with him as with a monkey or a mouse. He had set his mind on making Hitler do all possible kinds of folly until the day when he would come a cropper, which is what happened. But there are many cases like that one, on a smaller scale, naturally. Hitler was a very good medium, he had great mediumistic capacities, but he lacked intelligence and discernment. That being could tell him anything and he would swallow it all. Thats what prodded him on little by little. And that being would do that as a pastime, he didnt take life seriously. For those beings, people are very small things with which they play as a cat plays with a mouse, until the day when they eat them up.)
   I knew that being very well (for other reasons the story would be too long to tell), and once, I knew he was going to visit Hitler I went before he did: I took his appearance, it was very easy. Then I said to Hitler, Go and attack Russia. I dont exactly remember the words or the details, but the fact was that I told him, Go In order to have the supreme victory, go and attack Russia. That was the end of Hitler. He believed it and did ittwo days later, we got the news of the attack.1 And then, the next day, that is, when I came back from Hitler, I met that being and told him, Ive done your job! Naturally enough, he was furious!

0 1965-04-17, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So the transition: a conscious and willed utilization by a supramentalized consciousness of a body prepared in that way. This body must be brought to the peak of its development and of the utilization of the cells in order to be yes, consciously impregnated with the supreme forces (which is being done here [in Mother] at the moment), and this to the utmost of its capacities. And if the consciousness that inhabits that body, that animates that body, has the required qualities in sufficient amount, it should normally be able to utilize that body to the utmost of its capacity of transformation, with the result that the waste caused by the death of decomposing cells should be reduced to a minimumto what extent? Thats precisely what still belongs to the unknown.
   That would correspond to what Sri Aurobindo called the prolongation of life at will, for an indefinite length of time.

0 1965-04-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What I meant by an improved physical body is that sort of mastery over the body thats being gained nowadays through physical training. I have seen lately magazines showing how it had started: the results in the beginning and todays results; and from the standpoint of the harmony of forms (I am not talking about excesses there are excesses everywhere I am talking about what can be done in the best possible conditions), from the standpoint of the harmony of forms, of strength and a certain sense of beauty, of the development of certain capacities of endurance and skill, of precision in the execution combined with strength, its quite remarkable if you think of how recent physical training is. And its spreading very quickly nowadays, which means that the proportion of the human population that is interested in it and practices it is snowballing. So when I saw all those photos (for me, its especially through pictures that I see), it occurred to me that through those qualities, the cells, the cellular aggregates acquire a plasticity, a receptivity, a force that make the substance more supple for the permeation of the supramental forces.
   Lets take the sense of form, for example (I am giving one example among many others). Evolution is openly moving towards diminishing the difference between the female and the male forms: the ideal thats being created makes female forms more masculine and gives male forms a certain grace and suppleness, with the result that they increasingly resemble what I had seen all the way up, beyond the worlds of the creation, on the threshold, if I can call it that, of the world of form. At the beginning of the century, I had seen, before even knowing of Sri Aurobindos existence and without having ever heard the word supramental or the idea of it or anything, I had seen there, all the way up, on the threshold of the Formless, at the extreme limit, an ideal form that resembled the human form, which was an idealized human form: neither man nor woman. A luminous form, a form of golden light. When I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote, I said, But what I saw was the supramental form! Without having the faintest idea that it might exist. Well, the ideal of form we are now moving towards resembles what I saw. Thats why I said: since there is an evolutionary concentration on this point, on the physical, bodily form, it must mean that Nature is preparing something for that Descent and that embodimentit seems logical to me. Thats what I meant by an improved physical form.
  --
   Basically, once there is a body formed, precisely, by an ideal and an increasing development, a body with sufficient stuff and capacities, sufficient potential, there may very well be a rapid Descent of a supramental form, just as there was one with the human form. Because I know that (I know it from having lived it), I know that when the transitiona very obscure transitionfrom the animal to man (of which they have found fairly convincing traces) was sufficient, when the result was plastic enough, there was a Descent there was a mental descent of the human creation. And they were beings (there was a double descent; it was in fact particular in that it was double, male and female: it wasnt the descent of a single being, it was the descent of two beings), they were beings who lived in Nature an animal life, but with a mental consciousness; but there was no conflict with the general harmony. All the memories are absolutely clear of a spontaneous, animal life, perfectly natural, in Nature. A marvelously beautiful Nature that strangely resembles the nature in Ceylon and tropical countries: water, trees, fruits, flowers. And a life in harmony with animals: there was no sense of fear or difference. It was a very luminous, very harmonious, and very NATURAL life, in Nature.
   And strangely, the story of Paradise would seem to be a mental distortion of what really happened. Of course, it all became ridiculous, and also with a tendency it gives you the feeling that a hostile will or an Asuric being tried to use that to make it the basis for a religion and to keep man under his thumb. But thats another matter.

0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   All this has been seen Ive been seeing it for a long time, but just this morning it came back as an illustration of the new knowledge. Extraordinarily concrete (the association) in its effects, changing the capacities and movements of the others consciousness. And consciouslyan absolutely conscious life. And its the same consciousness that was conscious during the phase when there was no body left at all and the presence was visible only in the nocturnal vision.
   There are other cases.

0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is the maximum use of all possibilities and all impossibilities, all capacities and all in capacities; a maximum use in a maximum power and a maximum Compassion, and then a smile! A smile, a sense of humour, oh! Such a benevolent irony, so full of compassion, so wonderful. And this presumptuous mind, which is an incredible phenomenon indeed: it spends its time judging what it doesnt know and deciding on what it doesnt see!
   (silence)

0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The contact with the great Asuras, the first Asuras, is like that: the full consciousness of their formidable power, their marvellous capacities they forget one thing, its that they deserve no credit for it, its not their exclusive property! So they cut the connection and become instruments of disorder and confusion.
   This one, the Lord of Falsehood.

0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   according to their capacities and means, not a mechanical so much per unit. Thats the point. It must be something living and TRUE, not mechanical. And according to their capacities, that is, one who has material means such as those a factory gives will have to provide in proportion to his productionnot so much per individual or per head.
   This participation may be passive or active.
  --
   The true part is that every human being has the right (but its not a right ). The organization must be such, must be arranged in such a way, that everyones material needs should be guaranteed, not according to notions of right and equality, but on the basis of the most elementary necessities; then, once that is established, everyone must be free to organize his life, not according to his monetary means, but according to his inner capacities.
   No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.

0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   All the work should be done under the Mothers sole authority. All must be arranged according to her free decision. She must be free to use the capacities of each separately or together according to what is best for the work and best for the worker.
   None should regard or treat another member of the Ashram as his subordinate. If he is in charge, he should regard the others as his associates and helpers in the work, and he should not try to dominate or impose on them his own ideas and personal fancies, but only see to the execution of the will of the Mother. None should regard himself as a subordinate, even if he has to carry out instructions given through another or to execute under supervision the work he has to do.

0 1969-06-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It tells us that we were born so many million years agoa molecule, a gene, a quivering bit of plasma and we have produced a dinosaur, a crab, an ape. Had our eyes stopped halfway along the road, we could have said with good reason (!) that the Baboon was the summit of the creation and nothing better could be done, except perhaps to improve our simian capacities and create a United Kingdom of Apes. And we may be committing the same error today in our jungle of concrete. We have invented enormous means at the service of microscopic consciousnesses, splendid devices at the service of mediocrity, and still more devices to be cured of the Device. But is man truly the goal of all these millions of years of striving?The secondary school for all and the washing machine?
   The Great Sense, the True Sense, tells us that man is not the end. It is not the triumph of man that we want, not an improved version of the intelligent dwarfit is another man on the earth, another race in our midst.

0 1969-07-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But this body knows very well that it isnt endowed with exceptional capacities. It doesnt delude itself. All it has is a faith ardent, constant, intense, oh! A faith nothing can shake. But thats all.
   It has never had a desire or ambition to work miraclesits not interested in that. It has seen many miraculous things, but it has always felt it was the Supreme Lord who was doing all that (which it finds quite natural, by the way). But imaginings when they come it drives them back, it says, No, that doesnt interest me. Things people find marvelous, all of that doesnt interest it. it wouldnt be surprised to see Sri Aurobindo walk in one daynot in the least; but it doesnt have it feels no urge to do it, you understand! It feels no need to astound peoplenone at all.

0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   If the time has come for that, its very good thats why I dont want to intervene. But I dont know, I dont know if the time has come for that. There are moments when the body is thoroughly convincedmoments when it seems impossible that the time might not have come but at other moments, it gets completely veiled. And that comes from the fact that despite everything, the awareness of the mixture is becoming very clear. Which means that the realization is partial; its partial, fragmentary. And for a very simple reason (theres no arguing): its because somehow or other, the appearance will have to change. This body has capacities thats visibleit has capacities which many other bodies dont have, but its still uncertain, not established, not complete. So in this transitional period, there will certainly be one who will get through to the other side, that is, who will reach realization there has to be a realization at some point, you see. Well, it must be In any case, with A.R., the attitude is good, so theres nothing to say. But as he isnt developed mentally, thats where a mixture of influences remains3thats where. Its not in the body, its in the mind. And I dont want to replace that mixture with a (Mother gestures to show an authority imposing itself). All that I can do is to give the necessary atmosphere, and thats that.
   I got a letter from N.S.4 in which she said she was almost desperate to have missed the appointment I had given her with A.R. But I am not sure [that it wasnt just as well]. She says that instead of the time she had been told, she arrived an hour later because she had been somewhere (I forget where), had got completely drenched, and had to change her clothes; she sent word to A.R. requesting him to wait, but when she arrived, he had left. So she doesnt know whether L. didnt get her message, or didnt convey it. And she writes me that at the first opportunity she would like to come and see him. I had her told that for the moment he had withdrawn, but that as soon as he resumed his activity, I would let her know. But I didnt tell A.R., because

0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   All that was automatic has almost disappearedwhich has caused a great reduction from the standpoint of capacities; its replaced by a consciousness with a certain power, which didnt exist previously: thats an improvement. But all things considered, well, if I take the ordinary stand, I can no longer do what I used to do when I was twenty, quite obviously. Perhaps I know a hundred thousand times more than I knew, but This body, the body itself knows: it feels, its capable of knowing all that it didnt know then. But from a purely material standpoint (Mother shakes her head, pointing to her bodys incapacity). Could it come back? I dont know. Theres a question mark there. I dont know. And it could last only if the capacities came back; as Sri Aurobindo very wisely put it, who would want to go on in a body that keeps losing all its capacities?3 You know, sight isnt clear anymore, you dont hear clearly anymore, cant speak clearly anymorev anyway you cant walk freely, you can no longer carry a weightall kinds of things.
   Would this, as it is, THIS (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), would it be capable of being transformed by the Force? Can it be done?Well know when its done and not before!

0 1971-01-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As for the transformation, I dont know. What I had explained about the replacement of the consciousness (the transfer) went on methodically, methodically, absolutely methodically and continuously, but with some apparent impairment, or at least the capacities of my body were greatly diminished for a certain time. But there is a curious phenomenon concerning sight and hearing: from time to time theyre clear, as clear as can be, and at other times theyre completely blurred. And it has very, very clearly another originano ther origin of influence. But I think it will take months before I can understand it. In any case, the general consciousness (gesture above her head), what could be called the universal consciousness (or at least terrestrial), hasnt budged for one minutenot one single minute. It has stayed there all the time. Only, youre a complete imbecile; you know how it is when you cant do anything: youre helpless, you cant even go from your chair to the bed, you cant do anythingone leg isnt there. Even now I cant walk unaided, I need someone to hold me up.
   But it will come back, Mother.

0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   His yoga is integral because, instead of confining the quest to the spiritual heights, he has told us repeatedly that our body too must participate and we must bring the Spiritual Truth down into our body and our life. The path of ascent and all the other paths, the other planes of consciousness, are part of an integral development for those who have the time and the special capacities that are required. But it is no longer the time for those excursions, since everything can be found heresince, in fact, Sri Aurobindo and Mother opened the way HERE. Please recall Mothers statement: Sri Aurobindo came to tell us: one need not leave the earth to find the Truth, one need not leave life to find ones soul, one need not abandon the world or have limited beliefs to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if he is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to find him. (Questions and Answers, 8.13.1958) And again this: For many, spiritual life is meditation. As long as that nonsense is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force will always find it very difficult not to be swallowed up in the obscurity of an uncomprehending human mind. (Questions and Answers, 4.17.1957) And if you know how to read Sri Aurobindo and Mother, you will see that they have completely described this road of here and the sunlit pathOn the Way to Supermanhood only puts an intentionally exclusive accent on the here, because there is no time to lose, because everyone does not have the special capacities for making large-scale explorations, and finally because we are at the Hour of Godwe are right there! It has come. Because there really is something different in the world since 1969.
   It is not a change in Sri Aurobindos yoga, it is the flowering of Sri Aurobindos yoga, I dare say. I do not think that the flower of the flame tree contradicts in any way the flame tree.

0 1971-06-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are only two possible foundations for the material life here. One is that one is a member of an Ashram founded on the principle of self-giving and surrender. One belongs to the Divine and all one has belongs to the Divine; in giving one gives not what is ones own but what already belongs to the Divine. There is no question of payment or return, no bargain, no room for demand and desire. The Mother is in sole charge and arranges things as best they can be arranged within the means at her disposal and the capacities of her instruments. She is under no obligation to act according to the mental standards or vital desires and claims of the Sadhaks; she is not obliged to use a democratic equality in her dealings with them. She is free to deal with each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks fit, but no one can demand that she shall do so. Personal demands and desires cannot be imposed on her. If anyone has what he finds to be a real need or a suggestion to make which is within the province assigned to him, he can do so; but if she gives no sanction, he must remain satisfied and drop the matter. This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga.
   April 11, 1930

0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But naturally, it would be quite disastrous if human intellectual capacities, mental capacities, were to gain control of that powerit would be terrifying! It would cause terrible havoc. Hence the need to consent in all humility to become imbecile before being able to acquire it.
   (silence)

0 1972-05-27, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But the bodys capacities will change BEFORE its appearance changes the appearance changes LAST; and I dont know, that never enters the picture. What really matters is how the Consciousness can use this. Its not that I will become young again, its not young, its another type of capacity that will emerge and use this body. Will it transform it? Or will it use it for another purpose? That I dont know. I dont know. Strangely enough, only when you are here do I speak or think about these things, as if it were necessary for someone to knowotherwise, I never think about these things (gesture of hands open).
   Sometimes I spend hours in contemplation doing a very, very active work. Sometimes there are a few minutes a few minutes of silence and contemplation that last hours. And they seem like a few minutes. Thats how it is.

0 1973-01-20, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But beyond the mind, there is a higher and deeper consciousness they would find a Consciousness in which one can make use of all the capacities. It is a question of the consciousness being broad enough, so that each capacity can be put in its place in order to make a general harmony.
   (Dalai Lama:) There is good will, there is sincerity among people all over the world, but the number of such people is not large. Will they be able to have an effect to change the conditions of the world?

02.02 - The Message of the Atomic Bomb, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In one sense certainly there has been a progress. This march of machinery, this evolution of tools means man's increasing mastery over Nature, even though physical nature. The primitive man like the animal is a slave, a puppet driven helplessly by Nature's forces. Both lead more or less a life of reflex action: there is here no free, original initiation of action or movement. The slow discovery of Nature's secrets, the gradual application and utilisation of these secrets in actual life meant, first, a liberation of man's conscious being originally imbedded in Nature's inertial movements, and then, a growing power to react upon Nature and mould and change it according to the will of the conscious being. The result at the outset was a release and organisation on the mental level, in the domain of reason and intelligence. Of course, man found at once that this increasing self-consciousness and self-power meant immense possibilities for good, but, unfortunately, for evil also. And so to guard against the latter contingency, rules and regulations were framed to control and canalise the new-found capacities. The Dharma of the Kshatriya, the honour of the Samurai, the code of Chivalry, all meant that. The power to kill was sought to be checked and restrained by such injunctions as, for example, not to hit below the belt, not to fight a disarmed or less armed opponent and so on. The same principle of morals and manners was maintained and continued through the centuries with necessary changes and modifications in application and finds enshrined today in International Covenants and Conventions.
   But a new situation has arisen for some time past. The last Great War (World War No. I) was crucial in many ways in the life of humanity. It opened a new direction of man's growth, opened and then closed also apparently. I am referring to the tragedy of the League of Nations. That was an attempt on the part of man (and Nature) to lift the inner life and consciousness to the level of the outer achievements. The attempt failed. Man could not rise to the height demanded of him. Now the second World War became logically more devastating and shattering; it has given the go-by to all ethical standards and codes of honour. The poison gas was not used not because of any moral restraint or disinclination, but because of practical and utilitarian considerations. The Atom Bomb, however, has spoken the word.

02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We have said individual or personal worth should be the chief concern of the social governance, to bring it to birth, to maintain and foster it is its principal function. This means naturally freedom, but not the freedom that is demanded by the individualist as against the socialist or the collectivist. For there freedom means freedom for competition and rivalry, freedom for the egos, for selfish interests to fight and battle and survive who can. That is the motto of the competitive society in which we have been living for some time past. That system has become intolerable and hence all the seismic troubles in society today. What is needed is real freedom. For it is easy to see that under the competitive system the apparent freedom is only apparent, a make-believe. It is not freedom, that is to say, free choice and initiation that can work here, it is the pressure from rivals, the impact of adverse circumstances that determine one's will and choice. In the second place, it is not the deeper urges or capacities that are touched and awakened in this way, it is the superficial impulses and preoccupations that find a vent. Man is here only a link in a chain of reactions over which he has hardly any real control: one's decision is limited by conditions beyond one's reach, one's hands are forced, as the common phrase goes.
   The problem then is this: how to arrive at the inner freedom, how to contact the inner man, the true person and personality? For we are aiming at nothing less than the Soul, the Self, the Divine in man, God's purpose in the Individual, the Individual as God's instrument. That is the beau idal, so to say, in the human personality which all schemes of social reconstruction must have constantly in view.
  --
   What is the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization of producers and consumers, their relation and functions were, in many respects, what is called primitive. An American of today would laugh at their uncouth simplicity. And yet America has to bow down to those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly exaggerated holding the entire social fabric in its stifling grip, the culture spirit has been pushed into the background and made subservient to economic and other cruder forces. That was what Julien Benda, the famous French critic and moralist, once stigmatised as "La Trahison des Clercs"; only, the "clercs" did not voluntarily betray, but circumstanced as they were they could do no better. The process reached its climaxperhaps one should say the very nadirin the Nazi experiment and something of it still continues in the Russian dispensation. There the intellectuals or the intelligentsia are totally harnessed to the political machine, their capacities are prostituted in the service of a socio-economic plan. Poets and artists and thinkers are made to be protagonists and propagandists of the new order. It is a significant sign of the times how almost the whole body of scientists the entire Brain Trust of mankind today, one might sayhave been mobilised for the fabrication of the Atom Bomb. Otherwise they cannot subsist, they lose all economic status.
   In the older order, however, a kindlier treatment was meted out to this class, this class of the creators of values. They had patrons who looked after their physical well-being. They had the necessary freedom and leisure to follow their own bent and urge of creativity. Kings and princes, the court and the nobility, in spite of all the evils ascribed to them, and often very justly, have nevertheless been the nursery of art and culture, of all the art and culture of the ancient times. One remembers Shakespeare reading or enacting his drama before the Great Queen, or the poignant scene of Leonardo dying in the arms of Francis the First. Those were the truly great classical ages, and art or man's creative genius hardly ever rose to that height ever since. The downward curve started with the advent and growth of the bourgeoisie when the artist or the creative genius lost their supporters and had to earn their own living by the sweat of their brow. Indeed the greatest tragedies of frustration because of want and privation, occur, not as much among the "lowest" classes who are usually considered as the poorest and the most miserable in society, but in that section from where come the intellectuals, "men of light and leading," to use the epithet they are honoured with. For very few of this group are free to follow their inner trend and urge, but have either to coerce and suppress them or stultify them in the service of lesser alien duties, which mean "forced labour." The punishment for refusing to be drawn away and to falsify oneself is not unoften the withdrawal of the bare necessities of life, in certain cases sheer destitution. A Keats wasting his energies in a work that has no relation to his inner life and light, or a Madhusudan dying in a hospital as a pauper, are examples significant of the nature of the social structure man lives in.

03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Needless to say that these tests and ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane,keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm, self-possessed, one may even be a consummate master of the senses and be endowed with other great virtues. Yet all this is no assurance of one's success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumuksu, that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life.
   What then is the indispensable and unfailing requisite? What is it that gives you the right of entrance into the divine life? What is the element, the factor in you that acts as the open sesame, as a magic solvent?

03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In these latter the human consciousness has reached its high water-mark of normal development. They are the finest expression of mans capacities and powers in the ordinary nature. Here we have the play of the higher, even perhaps the highest ranges of the Mind the mind, that is to say, of the poet and the philosopher. But here also stands revealed the counterfoil, the obverse of that high achievement the feet of clay on which is reared the head of gold, the flesh that is tied irrevocably to the spirit.
   The human soul, as represented in Hamlet, has evolved so far as to stand on a summit from where it can contemplate the entire creation. It has attained a kind of universal consciousness and has the vision of a global movement of natureeven as Arjuna had of the Lord's universal body, and like him is awed and overwhelmeda harsh world, in which one draws one's breath in pain. But this is a mental summit, and the contradiction that is revealed here can be resolved only by passing beyond into a higher domain of consciousness.

04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Thus consciousness is not merely a status of being, but also a force of becoming. All that is to take form and be active, whether in the grossest, the material mode or in the most subtle, the ideative mode is originally a seed, a stress, a point of concentration of this consciousness. The Yogi becomes potentially all-powerful, because he is one with the All-Power, the Mother Consciousness. The perfect spiritual man not merely dwells with or is close to the Divine (slokya), he is not merely made in the image of the Divine (srpya), and again he is not merely unified and one with the Divine (syujya) but what is most marvellous, he has the same nature, that is to say, he has the same powers and capacities as the Divine (sdharmya).
   The dynamic becoming, becoming a power and personality of the omnipotent Divine, is a secret well known to the Yogis and mystics. Only it has not been worked out in all its implications, not given the full value and importance rightfully due to it. The reason is that although the principle was discovered and admitted, the proper key had not been found that could release and manipulate the Energy at its highest potential and largest amplitude. Because the major tendency in the spiritual man till now has been rather to follow the path of nivtti than the path of pravtti, this latter path being more or less identified with the path of Ignorance. But there is a higher line of pravtti which means the manifestation of the Divine, not merely the expression of the inferior Nature.

05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We have spoken of the stability, the fixity, the rigidity even, of the god type and we contrasted it with the variability, the many-sidedness, the multiple character of the human consciousness. In another view, however, the tables are turned and the opposite appears as the truth. Man, for example., has a physical body and nothing is more definite and fixed and rigid than this material sheath. The gods have no body, but they have a form which is supple and changeful, not hard and crystallised like the human figure. Gods, we said, are cosmic forceslines (or vectors, if we wish to be scientifically precise) of universal forces; this does not mean that they have no shape or form. They too have a form and can be recognised by it even as a human being is recognisable by his body. In spite of variability the form retains its identity. The form changes, for a god has the capacity to act in different contexts at the same time; within his own universe a god is multi-dimensional. The Indian seer and artist often seeks to convey this character of the immortals by giving them a plurality of arms and heads. In modern times the inspiration behind the surrealist movement lies precisely in this attempt to express simultaneity of diverse gestures and activities, a synthetic close-up of succeeding moments and disparate objects or events. But in spite of all changes Proteus remains Proteus and can be recognised as such by the vigilant and careful eye. The human frame, we have said, is more fixed and rigid, being made of the material substance. It has not evidently the variability of the body of a god. And yet there is a deeper mystery: the human body is not or need not be so inflexible as it appears to be or as it usually is. It has considerable plastic capacities. We would say that the human body holds a marvellous juste milieu. By its solid concreteness it acts as a fortress for the inner consciousness to dwell in safe from easy attacks of the hostiles: it acts also as a firm weapon for the same inner consciousness to cut into the material world and indent and impress its pattern of truth upon an otherwise hard and refractory material made of ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. Furthermore, it is supple enough to receive and record into its grain the pattern and substance of the higher reality. The image of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ is symbolic of the alchemy of which the human body is capable when one knows how to treat it in occult knowledge and power. The human body can suffer a sea-change which is not within the reach of the radiant body of an immortal.
   IV

05.22 - Success and its Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   That, however, is the case with the normal man with the normal nature. But precisely because of the growth of self-consciousness, man has developed the power to increase his powers: he can extend the boundaries of his capacities and possibilities. He need not confine himself within the dimensions that he naturally possesses or acquires in the normal course of his growth. He can follow an abnormal or extraordinary course of growth, break through his limits and establish contact with the vast and the illimitable and the incalculable, even the very fount and origin- of all power. That is the gift of Yoga, spiritual discipline.
   Yoga brings in a different line and scheme of life. For it is built upon soul-consciousness, upon Divine Nature which means another history of individual destiny. Even then tranquillity and self-confidence are at the basis of a Yogic life also and a new degree of modesty and humility.

05.33 - Caesar versus the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now there are several things to be distinguished here. First of all, even if it is accepted as true that in the past it is worldly men alone who were dynamically active in the world and that spiritual men were men of inaction whose role was to withdraw from the world, at least to be passive and indifferent with regard to mundane activities, that does not prove that it is an eternal truth and it is bound to be so ever and always. We must remember, if we admit the evolutionary character of Nature, of man and his growth and fulfilment, that spirituality in one of its forms at an early stage is and should be a movement of withdrawal, of diminishing dynamism in the sense of an "introversion". For when man still lives mostly in the vital domain and is full of the crude life urge, when the animal is still dominant in him (as the Tantrik discipline also points out), then a rigorous asceticism and self-denial is needed for the purification and sublimation of the nature. At that stage powers and dynamic capacities that often develop in the course of such discipline should also be carefully avoided and discarded; for they are more likely to bring down the consciousness to the ordinary level. But if that were the procedure and principle in the past, one need not eternise it into the present and the future. We Believe mankinda good part of mankind in its inner consciousness has advanced sufficiently on the vital level as to be able to give a new turn to his life and follow a different course of development. If he has not totally outgrown the animal, at least some higher element has been superimposed on it or infused into it and he can very well find the fulcrum of his nature in this superior station and order a new pattern of values and way of becoming. In other words, he need no longer altogether shun or avoid the so-called inferior forces the physico-vitalin him, but try to control and utilise them for higher diviner purposes in the world, upon the earth. For the earth embodies after all the crucial complex. Whatever is to be done in the end has to be done here, effected and established here. The withdrawal was needed for a purification and husbanding of the forces so that they may be brought forth and applied at the proper time and place, it is reculer pour mieux sauter, to fall back in order to leap forward all the better.
   In reality, however, to a vision that sees behind and beyond the appearances, spirituality the force of the Spiritis ever dynamic: the spiritual soul, even when it appears passive and inert, is most active not merely in the subtle psychological domain, but also in the material field. To the gross pragmatic eye Ramakrishna, for example, appears as a less dynamic personality, a less strong and heroic, if not positively weaker character than Vivekananda. Well, that is only face-value reading. Vivekananda himself knew and felt and said that he was only one of hundreds of Vivekanandas that his simple and, modest-looking Guru could create if he chose. Even so a Ramdas. Ramdas was not merely a spiritual adviser to Shivaji, concerned chiefly with the inner salvation and development of his disciple, and only secondarily with the gross material activities, the things of Caesar. The two domains are not separate at least in this case: the spiritual here directly and dynamically affects the physical. The spiritual guide is the dynamo the matrixof the power, the power spiritual; he wields and marshals the hidden, the secret forces that are behind the outward forms and movements. And the disciple by his attitude of obeisance and receptivity becomes all the better a channel and instrument for the actual play and fulfilment of that force. A Govind Singh is another instance of spiritual power made dynamic in mundane things. And we always have the classical instance of Rajarshi Janaka.

06.01 - The End of a Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And yet if the civilisation really goes, it will not be a small thing, even when measured on the cosmic scale. A civilisation is to be judged and valued not at its nadir, but at its zenith, in its total effect and not by a temporary phase in its course. Civilisation really means preparation of the instrument: the human instrument that is to express the Divine. The purpose of creation, we have often said, is the establishment of the highest spiritual consciousness in the embodied life on earth. The embodied life means man's body and life and mind; individually and socially these constitute the instrument through which the higher light is to manifest itself. The instrument has to be prepared, made ready for the purpose; Actually it is obscure, ignorant, narrow, weak; at the outset and for a long time it expresses only or mainly the inferior animal nature. Civilisation is an attempt to raise this inferior nature, to refine, enlarge and heighten it, to cultivate and increase its potentialities and capacities. The present civilisation, we have said, is a growth of thousands of years-at least five thousand years according to the most modest archaeological computation. In this period man has developed his brain, his rational intelligence, has unravelled some of the great mysteries of nature; he has controlled and organised life to an extent that has opened new possibilities of growth and achievement; even with respect to the body he has learnt to treat it with greater skill and endowed it with finer and more potent efficiencies. There have been aberrations and misuses, no doubt; but the essence of things achieved still remains and is always an invaluable asset: that must not be allowed to go.
   If the civilisation goes, it means the instrument is gone, the basis on which the edifice for the Divine Consciousness is to be raised is removed, nothing remains to stand firmly on. So the labour has to start again: one must begin from the beginning. The work has to be done and will be done, it cannot be allowed to terminate into a labour of Sisyphus.

06.11 - The Steps of the Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Each man has then a mission to fulfil, a role to play in the universe; a part he has been given to learn and take up in the cosmic Purpose which he alone is capable of executing and none other. This he has to learn and acquire through life-experiences, that is to say, not in one life, but in life after life. In fact, that is the meaning of the chain of lives that the individual has to pass through, namely, to acquire experiences and to gather out of them the thread the skein of qualities and attributes, powers and capacities for the pattern of life he has to weave. Now, the inmost being, the true personality, the central consciousness of the evolving individual is his psychic being. It is, as it were, a very tiny speck of light lying far behind the experiences in normal people. In grown up souls this psychic consciousness has an increased lightincreased in intensity, volume and richness. Thus there are souls, old and new. Old and ancient are those that have reached or are about to reach the fullness of perfection; they have passed through a long past of innumerable lives and developed the most complex and yet the most integrated personality. New souls are those that are just emerged or emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; these are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents, referring mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in corning in contact with the psychic consciousness, that is to say, is able to come under its influence, is taken up and lodged there: it remains in the psychic 'being as its living memory and permanent possession. It is such elements that form the basis, the groundwork upon which the structure of the integral and true personality is raised.
   The first thing then to do is to find out what it is that you are meant to realise, what is the role you have to play, your particular mission and the capacity or quality you have to express. You have to discover that and also the thing or things that oppose and do not allow it to flower or come to full manifestation. In other words, you have to know yourself, recognize your soul or psychic being.

06.12 - The Expanding Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The field of our physical activity is very limited. If you look at it closely you will find it indeed extremely narrow and our capacities confined within a small circle. We are bound by the outline of our material body. I cannot, for instance, be sitting in my room and at the same time doing gymnastics in the playground. If you wish to do one thing you cannot do another; if you are at one place you cannot be at another simultaneously. How convenient it would be if while I was writing at the table, I could get there immediately a book from a far-off shelf for consultation without moving or taking anybody's help! And yet is the thing so very impossible? We know, for example, of extraordinaryat least, queerthings happening at what are called spirit sances, things that cannot be explained by the normal functioning of the physical senses; they are explained as interventions from the spirit world. In reality, however, spirits or ghosts have, in general, very little to do in this matter. It is action not of disembodied beings but of the normal human energiesespecially the vital or life energyfreed from the body's control and exerting itself independently. An example, a true fact that happened, will best illustrate what I mean to say.
   A young man, in Paris, a clerk at a railway station, used to receive there his fiance and her mother from time to time. One day he was expecting them and waiting for the train time; they had to come by train. As he was busy with his work at the table, at about the appointed hour, people around saw him all on a sudden bending down his head with a loud scream and then resting it on the table; he lay unconscious. In the meantime, what happened on the other side was a terrible railway disaster: the two women were involved in it.

07.37 - The Psychic Being, Some Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I did not say it quite like that. The psychic being is not stupid. What happens may be described in this way: for example, suppose the psychic being has had the experience of the life of a writer. The function of the writer is to express himself, his perceptions and observations and judgements in words; he has a certain field, a certain range of associations and circumstances in which to live and move. But there are other fields and ranges beyond and outside of which he has no experience. So he may say to himself: I have lived with my head, I know something of the intellectual reactions to life: now let me live with my heart and experience the reactions of feeling and passion. Indeed, sometimes an overactivity of the intellect impoverishes the capacities of the heart. So the psychic being, in order to have this new kind of experience, abandons his intellectual heights, so to say, and comes down to the vital plane. He is no longer a creative genius, but an ordinary man, but with a heart enriched or enriching itself with its intense or generous movements. (One can remember in this connection the story of Shankaracharya who being a Sannyasi from boyhood has had no experience of love: he entered the body of a king in order to gather this experience.) It is not rare to see psychic beings that have reached the maximum of their growth in certain directions, take up a very modest and ordinary life in some other new direction or for some other purpose. One who was a king, for example, as I already narrated once, who has had the experiences of power and authority and domination, the imperial heights, may choose to descend to ordinary life, to work as an obscure person without being troubled by the pomps of high position; he may choose very bourgeois surroundings, very humdrum conditions among humdrum men and things, to procure, so to say, a kind of incognito so that he may work in peace and quite. Can you say it is a decline and a fall? It is only facing life, meeting its problems from another angle, another point of view. You must know that for consciousness, the true consciousness the consciousness of the psychicglory and obscurity are the same, success and failure are the same. What is important is the growth of consciousness. Certain conditions which to your human eye appear favourable, may in reality be quiet unfavourable for the growth of consciousness. With your ordinary thoughts and your ordinary reactions you judge everything according to success and failure. But that is the very last way of judging, for it is the most artificial, most superficial and absolutely contrary to truth. In human life, as it is organised at present, it is perhaps only once in a million cases, or even less than that, that truth is given the first place; always there is an element of show mixed up. When a man has success, much success, you may be sure there is mixed up with it as much show.
   ***

07.45 - Specialisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But it is a very natural and spontaneous movement in man to change from one work to another in order to maintain a kind of balance. Change also means rest. We have often heard of great artists or scholars seeking for rest and having great need for it. They find it by changing their activity. For example, Ingres was a painter; painting was his normal and major occupation. But whenever he found time he took up his violin. Curiously, it was his violin which interested him more than his painting. He was not very good at music, but he took great pleasure in it. He was sufficiently good at painting, but it interested him less. But the real thing is that he needed a stable poise or balance. Concentration upon a single thing is very necessary, I have said, if one aims at a definite and special result; but one can follow a different line that is more subtle, more comprehensive and complete. Naturally, there is a physical limit somewhere to your comprehensiveness; for on the physical plane you are confined in respect of time and space; and also it is true that great things are difficult to achieve unless there is a special concentration. But if you want to lead a higher and deeper life, you can comm and capacities which are much greater than those available to the methods of restriction and limitation belonging to the normal consciousness. There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's limits, if not from the point of view of actual accomplishment, at least from the point of view of spiritual realisation.
   ***

08.01 - Choosing To Do Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Always there is a Consciousness here and it acts constantly to rectify your position: all the while it puts you in the face of obstacles that prevent you from progressing; it makes you dash your nose against your own errors and blindnesses. But this happens only in the case of those who have decided to do Yoga. For others the Consciousness acts as a light, a knowledge, a force for progress, so that you may reach the maximum of your capacities, develop yourself as far as possible in an atmosphere as favourable as it may be, leaving you, however, completely free to choose.
   The decision must come from within. All who come consciously for Yoga, knowing what Yoga is, have to accept conditions of life very different from those that others enjoyexternally perhaps there may not be any difference, but internally there is a wide gulf. There is a kind of absoluteness in the Consciousness that does not allow any deviation from the Path: errors committed become immediately visible with such consequences that one cannot deceive oneself any longer and things take a very serious aspect.

08.16 - Perfection and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Still we must note that even for an animal, say an elephant or a dog, human capacities appear as marvellous; they feel, the dogs do, that man possesses almost divine powers. So men too from the stage where they are have a hint of things beyond; that is why we are not wholly satisfied, we have the feeling in spite of all things achieved that there is something else which eludes, indeed the true thing eludes, we turn around it, but never touch it. It means that man is ready for a further progress. If it were not so, if he were satisfied only with what he can do, he would try to do that alone, better and better perhaps, but in the same groove. However, it is not that: he seeks something else, something quite different, which is truly true, on which one can count, which does not crash down when one props oneself upon it, something durable, permanent, the Rock of Ages. This need of eternity, of an absolute good and absolute beauty awakens exactly at the moment when one is ready to receive a new consciousness.
   For a very long time, perhaps from the very beginning I do not mean from the beginning of human evolution, for there have been earlier periods when, before the true man appeared, intermediate beings at first were tried who were much nearer to the animal; I mean the beginning of a sufficiently developed human form when it became ready to receive something from abovethere have been always and there are still individuals who carry in them this need of the eternal and the absolute. It is only little by little, very gradually, through cycles of enlightenment and obscurity that something like a collective consciousness in humanity awakes to the need of such a higher existence. And today this necessity seems evidently very general, cutting across all turmoils and stupidities of mankind: that shows that the time is near.

1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  We are limited individuals, with limited capacities of understanding, and we can have only limited aims in our life but we have unlimited desires. This is a contradiction. How can unlimited desires be fulfilled with limited aims? Life is a contradiction; it has begun as a contradiction, and it ends as a contradiction. This is the reason why not one has slept peacefully, or woken up peacefully, nor lives peacefully. There is a subtle contradiction in sleep and a pressing contradiction when we wake up, and an annoying contradiction throughout our daily activities, so that there is only contradiction. There is nothing else in life; and all effort is meant to remove this contradiction. But if the very effort at removing contradiction is itself involved in a contradiction, then we are in a mess, and this is exactly what has happened to Tom, Dick, Harry, X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D whoever it is.
  The whole difficulty is that the structure of life is arranged in such a pattern that the depth of human understanding is incapable of touching its borders. We are not simply living life we are identical with life itself. One of the most difficult things to define is life itself. We cannot say what life is. It is only a word that we utter without any clear meaning before our eyes. It is an enigma, a mystery a mystery which has caught hold of us, which extracts the blood out of us every day, which keeps us restless and tantalises us, promising us satisfaction but never giving it. Life is made in such a way that there are promises which are never fulfilled. Every object in the world promises satisfaction, but it never gives satisfaction it only promises. Until death it will go on promising, but it will give nothing, and so we will die in the same way as we were born. Because we have been dying without having the promise fulfilled, we will take rebirth so that we will see if the promise can be fulfilled, and the same process is continued, so that endlessly the chain goes on in a hopeless manner. This vicious circle of human understanding, or rather human incapacity to understand, has arisen on account of the isolation of the human individual from the pattern of life.

1.00d - Introduction, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  And we assert that there exists a future far more marvelous than all the electronic paradises of the mind: man is not the end, any more than the archaeopteryx was, at the height of the reptiles how could anything possibly be the culmination of the great evolutionary wave? We see it clearly in ourselves: We seem to invent ever more marvelous machines, ceaselessly expand the limits of the human, even progress towards Jupiter and Venus. But that is only a seeming, increasingly deceptive and oppressive, and we do not expand anything: we merely send to the other end of the cosmos a pitiful little being who does not even know how to take care of his own kind, or whether his caves harbor a dragon or a mewling baby. We do not progress; we inordinately inflate an enormous mental balloon, which may well explode in our face. We have not improved man; we have merely colosalized him. And it could not have been otherwise. The fault does not lie in some deficiency of our virtues or intellectual capacities, for pushed to their extreme these could only generate supersaints or supermachines monsters. A saintly reptile in its hole would no more make an evolutionary summit than a saintly monk would. Or else, let us forget everything. The truth is, the summit of man or the summit of anything at all does not lie in perfecting to a higher degree the type under consideration; it lies in a something else that is not of the same type and that he aspires to become. Such is the evolutionary law. Man is not the end; man is a transitional being, said Sri Aurobindo long ago. He is heading toward supermanhood as inevitably as the minutest twig of the highest branch of the mango tree is contained in its seed. Hence, our sole true occupation, our sole problem, the sole question ever to be solved from age to age, the one that is now tearing our great earthly ship apart limb from painful limb is how to make this transition.
  Nietzsche said it also. But his superman was only a colossalization of man; we saw what he did as he tramped over Europe. That was not an evolutionary progress, only a return to the old barbarism of the blond or brunet brute of human egoism. We do not need a super-man, but something else, which is already murmuring in the heart of man and is as different from man as Bach's cantatas are from the first grunts of the hominid. And, truly, Bach's cantatas sound poor when our inner ear begins to open up to the harmonies of the future.

1.010 - Self-Control - The Alpha and Omega of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  It has been discovered now, therefore, that perceptions are due to a segmentation of consciousness. This is the secret behind our life in this world. And inasmuch as our perceptional experiences are involved in a condition of consciousness which is inseparable from our own being, we cannot know the reason why we see things. Consequently, we cannot know why we like things or dislike things. Our knowledge becomes half-baked, inadequate, and erroneous when the conditions of all knowledge lie behind our capacities. Thus it is that often it looks as if we are completely under the control of pressures that are exerted from above and behind, from the right and the left, from every direction a fact of which we cannot have any awareness. It is, therefore, useless to apply scientific methods of knowing or investigation in regard to matters which are the very conditions of knowing.
  This is something which goes deeper than even psychology, because all knowledge even of the mind, which is what we know as psychology is gained by an observational technique employed by the mind in an objective manner, as if it is observing somebody else, and the only thing that the mind cannot do is to know itself or to know the conditions of its own functioning. The relationships of the mind and the conditions of knowledge determine the very existence and the character of the mind, and therefore it is that we find ourselves in a helpless condition. The practice of yoga becomes all the more difficult when it deals with conditions prior to our present state of existence, when it deals with causes rather than effects, and especially causes that lie 'behind' us which are precedent to our present physical and social condition.

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prtors have decided how often you may go into your neighbors land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor. Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But mans capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?
  We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each others eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry,

1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  It is, however, certain that many activities undertaken by some minds at the present time were not, in the remote past, undertaken by any minds at all. For this there are several obvious reasons. Certain thoughts are practically unthinkable except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification. Where these necessary instruments do not exist, the thoughts in question are not expressed and not even conceived. Nor is this all: the incentive to develop the instruments of certain kinds of thinking is not always present. For long periods of history and prehistory it would seem that men and women, though perfectly capable of doing so, did not wish to pay attention to problems, which their descendants found absorbingly interesting. For example, there is no reason to suppose that, between the thirteenth century and the twentieth, the human mind underwent any kind of evolutionary change, comparable to the change, let us say, in the physical structure of the horses foot during an incomparably longer span of geological time. What happened was that men turned their attention from certain aspects of reality to certain other aspects. The result, among other things, was the development of the natural sciences. Our perceptions and our understanding are directed, in large measure, by our will. We are aware of, and we think about, the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand. Where theres a will there is always an intellectual way. The capacities of the human mind are almost indefinitely great. Whatever we will to do, whether it be to come to the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, or to manufacture self-propelled flame-throwers that we are able to do, provided always that the willing be sufficiently intense and sustained. It is clear that many of the things to which modern men have chosen to pay attention were ignored by their predecessors. Consequently the very means for thinking clearly and fruitfully about those things remained uninvented, not merely during prehistoric times, but even to the opening of the modern era.
  The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these necessary instruments of though there are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized. Another and, on its own level, equally cogent reason is this: much of the worlds most original and fruitful thinking is done by people of poor physique and of a thoroughly unpractical turn of mind. Because this is so, and because the value of pure thought, whether analytical or integral, has everywhere been more or less clearly recognized, provision was and still is made by every civilized society for giving thinkers a measure of protection from the ordinary strains and stresses of social life. The hermitage, the monastery, the college, the academy and the research laboratory; the begging bowl, the endowment, patronage and the grant of taxpayers moneysuch are the principal devices that have been used by actives to conserve that rare bird, the religious, philosophical, artistic or scientific contemplative. In many primitive societies conditions are hard and there is no surplus wealth. The born contemplative has to face the struggle for existence and social predominance without protection. The result, in most cases, is that he either dies young or is too desperately busy merely keeping alive to be able to devote his attention to anything else. When this happens the prevailing philosophy will be that of the hardy, extraverted man of action.

1.01 - The Mental Fortress, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Our difficulties always stem from the belief that we alone remedy them. As long as our intellectual power (or inadequacy) does not play a role and our greater or lesser capacities are not actively involved, we feel that our endeavor is doomed to failure. Such is the deep-seated belief of mental man. We know its results all too well. But even if they were flawless within their own scope, they would still conceal a supreme flaw, which is to bring in only what is contained in our own intelligence or muscles except when life or happenstance frustrates our plans. In other words, our mental existence is a closed system. Nothing gets into it but what we ourselves put in. This is the cornerstone of the Great Fortress. Its second inevitable trait is the mechanical rigor of its process: everything runs in a closed circuit according to the thought, plan, or muscle we set in motion, since nothing can come into the process except what we have concocted. And everything is measurable down to the least dyne, centidyne and millidyne we have expended: we get exactly what we bargained for but that was already anticipated in the intelligence quotient put into play. That is, the system is perfectly and hermetically sealed down to the last cranny. There is not a single crack, except, once again, when life happens to upset more or less opportunely our faultless measures. The third inevitable trait stemming from the other two is its impeccable thoroughness: nothing escapes its attention, and what does will soon be worked out, put into equation and programmed to be fed back into the machine and further inflate the great expanding balloon. Everything is, of course, perfectly objective, since we all wear the same glasses; even our instruments scrupulously behave according to the results we want them to show. In short, the system operates rigorously and flawlessly according to specification. Like the sorcerer of old, we have traced a mental circle on the ground, stepping into it, and here we are.
  But that just may prove to be a stupendous illusion.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  difficult). The rather limited capacities of EEG technology have been greatly extended by the analytic
   capacities of the computer. The cortical event-related potential is a measure of brain activity derived by
  --
  It appears that the pattern-recognition and spatial capacities of the right hemisphere appear to allow it to
  derive from repeated observations of behavior images of action patterns that the verbal left can arrange,
  --
  to do; finally, we know how to represent what we have not yet encountered. These adaptive capacities
  impossible, at first glance immensely further our capacity to behave, successfully, in the face of our
  --
  the capacity to smother and oppress (and may manifest those capacities, unpredictably, in any given
  situation). No static political utopia is therefore possible, in consequence and the kingdom of god remains

1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  17:The higher mind in man is something other, loftier, purer, vaster, more powerful than the reason or logical intelligence. The animal is a vital and sensational being; man, it is said, is distinguished from the animal by the possession of reason. But that is a very summary, a very imperfect and misleading account of the matter. For reason is only a particular and limited utilitarian and instrumental activity that proceeds from something much greater than itself, from a power that dwells in an ether more luminous, wider, illimitable. The true and ultimate, as distinguished from the immediate or intermediate, importance of our observing, reasoning, inquiring, judging intelligence is that it prepares the human being for the right reception and right action of a Light from above which must progressively replace in him the obscure light from below that guides the animal. The latter also has a rudimentary reason, a kind of thought, a soul, a will and keen emotions; even though less developed, its psychology is yet the same in kind as man's. But all these capacities in the animal are automatically moved and strictly limited, almost even constituted by the lower nervous being. All animal perceptions, sensibilities, activities are ruled by nervous and vital instincts, cravings, needs, satisfactions, of which the nexus is the life-impulse and vital desire. Man too is bound, but less bound, to this automatism of the vital nature. Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is mall and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards tile superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine.
  18:It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -- in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together, -- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.

1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
  O riputra! I too am now like this. Having understood the various desires and deep-rooted inclinations of sentient beings, I teach the Dharma according to their capacities through the power of skillful means, using various explanations and illustrations.
  O riputra! I do this in order to cause them to attain the omniscience of the single buddha vehicle.
  --
  Their wishes and capacities,
  And the good and bad karma
  --
  According to the capacities of sentient beings.
  I teach these sutras
  --
  In accordance with the capacities of sentient beings.
  Now I too reveal the path of the buddhas
  --
  According to the capacities of sentient beings;
  The inexperienced cannot understand this.
  --
  With peoples capacities.
  All of you, have no further doubts!

1.02 - The Great Process, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  This superman, whom we have said is the next goal of evolution, will therefore in no way be a paroxysm of man, a gilded hypertrophy of the mental capacity, nor will he be a spiritual paroxysm, a sort of demigod appearing in a halo of light and outfitted with an oversized consciousness (cosmic, of course) streaked with bolts of lightning, marvelous phenomena and Experiences that would make the poor laggards of evolution pale with envy. It is true that both things are possible, both exist. There are marvelous Experiences; there are superhuman capacities that would make the man in the street turn pale. It is not a myth; it is a fact. But Truth, as always, is simple. The difficulty does not lie in discovering the new path; it lies in clearing away what blocks the view. The path is new, completely new; it has never been seen before by human eyes, never been trodden before by the athletes of the Spirit, yet it is walked every day by millions of ordinary men unaware of the treasure at hand.
  We will not theorize about what this superman is. We do not wish to think him; we wish to become him, if possible, keeping away from the old walls and old lights, remaining as completely open as possible, as alert to the great process of Nature as possible just walking, for that is the only way to do it, solvitur ambulando. Even if we don't get very far, who knows, we may still emerge in a first clearing that will fill our hearts, souls and bodies with sunlight, for everything is one and everything is saved together or nothing is.

1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  Every body, to the extent that it is conceived spatially, is nothing but solidified, crystallized, substantivated, and materialized time that requires the formation and solidification of space in order to unfold. Space represents a field of tension; and because of its latent energy, it is an agent of the critical or acute energy of time. Thus both energetic principles, the latency of space as well as the acuteness of time, are mutually dependent. When we formulate this thought in advance of our discussion, it is to emphasize the basic import that we accord to the present, for both space and time exist for the perceptual capacities of our body only in the present via presentiation. The presentiation or making present evident in Picassos drawing was possible only after he was able to actualize, that is, bring to consciousness, all of the temporal structures of the past latent in himself (and in each of us) during the course of his preceding thirty years of painting in a variety of earlier styles.
  This process was unique and original with Picasso. By drawing on his primitive, magic inheritance (his Negroid period), his mythical heritage (his Hellenistic-archaistic period), and his classicistic, rationally-accentuated formalist phase (his Ingres period), Picasso was able to achieve the concretion of time (or as we would like to designate this new style which he and his contemporaries introduced in painting, "temporic concretion"). Such temporic concretion is not just a basic characteristic of this particular drawing, but is in fact generally valid: Only where time emerges as pure present and is no longer divided into its three phases of past, present and future, is it concrete. To the extent that Picasso from the outset reached out beyond the present, incorporating the future into the present of his work, he was able to "presentiate" or make present the past. Picasso brought to the awareness of the present everything once relegated to the dormancy of forgetfulness, as well as everything still latent as something yet to come; and this temporal wholeness realized in spatiality and rendered visible and transparent in a depiction of a human form, is the unique achievement of this temporic artist.

1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  15:The Unknown is not the Unknowable;4 it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, "Forth now and push forward also in other fields."5
  16:If modern Materialism were simply an unintelligent acquiescence in the material life, the advance might be indefinitely delayed. But since its very soul is the search for Knowledge, it will be unable to cry a halt; as it reaches the barriers of senseknowledge and of the reasoning from sense-knowledge, its very rush will carry it beyond and the rapidity and sureness with which it has embraced the visible universe is only an earnest of the energy and success which we may hope to see repeated in the conquest of what lies beyond, once the stride is taken that crosses the barrier. We see already that advance in its obscure beginnings.

10.37 - The Golden Bridge, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The recoil from the normal, the rich and lush physico-mental expression of human consciousness and experience has been so radical and complete that it has catapulted us into an opposite extreme of bareness and nudity, at the most into a world of pure signs and symbols of notches and blotches, the disjointed mimics and inarticulate groans of a deaf and dumb man. The process of abstraction has gone so far that it has now been reduced to an absurdity. It has its parallel in the movement that led man away from the world of Maya to the Transcendent featureless Brahman. In either case the reason is that the link that joins the two ends could not be founda living truth that is of the Transcendent, yet denying not, but affirming in a new manner the mayic existence. That is because man till now sought to create from a level of consciousness, by a force of consciousness that is not adequate to the task; for it belongs still to the mental region, to this inferior hemisphere although at present it seems to be the acme and topmost hemisphere in the scale. It is not an extension or intensification of the mind and its capacities that will solve the problem: a radical change in the very nature of the mind, a reversal of the mental consciousnessa turning of it inside out as it were, an opening out and up is needed to discover the true source of the Light. Therefore it has been said that man must transcend himself, find a new status in the other hemisphere. In fact there is a domain, a status of being and consciousness, a master-force which when revealed and made active will remould inevitably and spontaneously human creation and expression as a reality embodying the Highest. It is the world of Idea-Force which Sri Aurobindo has named Supermind: it is beyond the mind, even the highest mind: it is the typal concentration of the Supreme Consciousness. It is the fulcrum for the Supreme Consciousness to create and express a new formulation of the Truth in the world of matter. The mind, the highest mind, in its attempt to grasp the Supreme Reality is prone to reject, annul and efface the Cosmic Reality. The Supermind has no need to do that. It links the two ends in a supreme and miraculous synthesis negating neither, giving the full value to each, for the two are united, concentrated in its substance. Thus is found the golden bridge uniting earth and heaven.
   The physical mind, with its satellite, the human speech, must indeed be rescued from the thraldom of the animal life, the life of the ordinary senses. They should be put under the regimen of the new consciousness, the status of the Idea-Force. The action of that consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying suprasensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creationa passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous, the higher not totally rejecting the lower or primitive formula, the lower not altogether englobing and swallowing the higher.

1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But if this total conversion is to be done, there must be a consecration of our actions and outer movements as much as of our mind and heart to the Divine. There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature.
  This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.

1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Behind it all the hope of the race lies in those infant and as yet subordinate tendencies which carry in them the seed of a new subjective and psychic dealing of man with his own being, with his fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social life. The characteristic note of these tendencies may be seen in the new ideas about the education and upbringing of the child that became strongly current in the pre-war era. Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the childs nature into arbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual subjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family upbringing was a constant repression and compulsory shaping of his habits, his thoughts, his character into the mould fixed for them by the conventional ideas or individual interests and ideals of the teachers and parents. The discovery that education must be a bringing out of the childs own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at least there was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as the leader of the march set in our front, will itself take up most of the business of education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of this real man within is the right object of education and indeed of all human life if it would find and live according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of its own being. That was the knowledge which the ancients sought to express through religious and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening mans inner experience, restoring perhaps on an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race, it must end by revolutionising his social and collective self-expression.
  Meanwhile, the nascent subjectivism preparative of the new age has shown itself not so much in the relations of individuals or in the dominant ideas and tendencies of social development, which are still largely rationalistic and materialistic and only vaguely touched by the deeper subjective tendency, but in the new collective self-consciousness of man in that organic mass of his life which he has most firmly developed in the past, the nation. It is here that it has already begun to produce powerful results whether as a vitalistic or as a psychical subjectivism, and it is here that we shall see most clearly what is its actual drift, its deficiencies, its dangers as well as the true purpose and conditions of a subjective age of humanity and the goal towards which the social cycle, entering this phase, is intended to arrive in its wide revolution.

1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  Know, farther, that inanimate objects are the lowest in rank in the quantity and degree of happiness they obtain, and it is a happiness which knows no change. The place of beasts is in the lowest abyss and there is no path by which they can ascend out of it. The mansion of the angels is in the highest heavens where they ever continue in the same condition, there is neither abasement or ascent from their place. And God also says in his eternal word, "And what have we except for each one a certain and appointed habitation."2 The position of man is between the rank of angels, and that of animals, because he partakes of the qualities of both. No other rank except man accepted the deposit of the true faith, and indeed no [99] other had the qualities and capacities necessary for the acceptance of it. In accepting the deposit man became bound at the same time to accept the dangers and penalties connected with it.
  The doctors of the law have not commented upon these topics to the people in general. But this is not to be wondered at, when we consider that the mass of the people regard themselves as fixed in their character and position, and not as pilgrims and travellers to a higher state. There is no possibility of unveiling the things of truth, to those who settle down without desiring to make any progress, and who are contented with the first stages and degrees of the sensible world and of the world of fancy. They can neither attain to a spiritual state, nor understand spiritual laws and precepts. We have ventured, however, to unveil a little of the mysteries, as a type of the knowledge belonging to the future state, so that men might be prepared to understand the questions and affairs relating to that state. But if we had entered into any farther developments, they would not have been able to understand us, for none but those who are endowed with penetration and experience can by any possibility understand the topics to which we have alluded.

1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The primal law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously or half consciously or with an obscure unconscious groping it strives always and rightly strives at self-formulation,to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it. This aim in it is fundamental, right, inevitable because, even after all qualifications have been made and caveats entered, the individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. In the same way the primal law and purpose of a society, community or nation is to seek its own self-fulfilment; it strives rightly to find itself, to become aware within itself of the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it as perfectly as possible, to realise all its potentialities, to live its own self-revealing life. The reason is the same; for this too is a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifestation of the cosmic Spirit, and it is there to express and fulfil in its own way and to the degree of its capacities the special truth and power and meaning of the cosmic Spirit that is within it. The nation or society, like the individual, has a body, an organic life, a moral and aesthetic temperament, a developing mind and a soul behind all these signs and powers for the sake of which they exist. One may say even that, like the individual, it essentially is a soul rather than has one; it is a group-soul that, once having attained to a separate distinctness, must become more and more self-conscious and find itself more and more fully as it develops its corporate action and mentality and its organic self-expressive life.
  The parallel is just at every turn because it is more than a parallel; it is a real identity of nature. There is only this difference that the group-soul is much more complex because it has a great number of partly self-conscious mental individuals for the constituents of its physical being instead of an association of merely vital subconscious cells. At first, for this very reason, it seems more crude, primitive and artificial in the forms it takes; for it has a more difficult task before it, it needs a longer time to find itself, it is more fluid and less easily organic. When it does succeed in getting out of the stage of vaguely conscious self-formation, its first definite self-consciousness is objective much more than subjective. And so far as it is subjective, it is apt to be superficial or loose and vague. This objectiveness comes out very strongly in the ordinary emotional conception of the nation which centres round its geographical, its most outward and material aspect, the passion for the land in which we dwell, the land of our fathers, the land of our birth, country, patria, vaterland, janma-bhmi. When we realise that the land is only the shell of the body, though a very living shell indeed and potent in its influences on the nation, when we begin to feel that its more real body is the men and women who compose the nation-unit, a body ever changing, yet always the same like that of the individual man, we are on the way to a truly subjective communal consciousness. For then we have some chance of realising that even the physical being of the society is a subjective power, not a mere objective existence. Much more is it in its inner self a great corporate soul with all the possibilities and dangers of the soul-life.
  --
  This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.
  It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,a path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man,when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament, and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, I am my life and body, and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But greater capacities, mightier functions are demanded of Saraswati.Mind and discerning intelligence, however active and well-stored, may give false interpretation and mistaken counsel. But Saraswati at the sacrifice is chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam. It is she who gives the impulsion to the truths that appear in the mind, it is she who, herself conscious of right thoughts and just processes of thinking, awakens to them the mental faculties. Therefore, because she is the impelling force behind intellectual Truth, and our awakener to right thinking, she is present at the sacrifice; she has established and upholds it, yajnam dadhe. This sacrifice, whatever else it may be, is controlled by mental enlightenment and rich understanding and confirmed in & by truth and right-thinking. Therefore is Saraswati its directing power & presiding goddess.
  But by what power of Saraswatis are falsehood & error excluded and the mind and discerning reason held to truth & right-thinking? This, if I mistake not, is what the Rishi Madhuchchhanda, the drashta of Veda has seen for us in his last and culminating verse. I have said that arnas is a flowing water whether river or sea; for the word expresses either a flowing continuity or a flowing expanse. We may translate it then as the river of Mah or Mahas, and place arnas in apposition with Saraswati. This goddess will then be in our subjective being some principle to which the Vedic thinkers gave the names of Mah and Mahas for it is clear, if the rest of our interpretation is at all correct, that there can be no question of a material stream & arnas must refer to some stream or storehouse of subjective faculty. But there are strong objections to such a collocation. We shall find later that the goddess Mahi and not Saraswati is the objectivising feminine power and divine representative of this Vedic principle Mahas; prachetayati besides demands an object and maho arnas is the only object which the structure of the sentence and the rhythm of the verse will allow. I translate therefore Saraswati awakens by the perceptive intelligence the ocean (or, flowing expanse) of Mahas and governs diversely all the movements (or, all the faculties) of the understanding.

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  means of knowledge, based on capacities and realms which
  scientific materialism refuses to recognize in principle, then

1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    (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.

1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
   clairvoyance begins. For these flowers are the sense-organs of the soul, and their revolutions express the fact that the clairvoyant perceives supersensibly. What was said previously concerning spiritual seeing applies equally to these revolutions and even to the lotus flowers themselves. No one can perceive the supersensible until he has developed his astral senses in this way. Thanks to the spiritual organ situated in the vicinity of the larynx, it becomes possible to survey clairvoyantly the thoughts and mentality of other beings, and to obtain a deeper insight into the true laws of natural phenomena. The organ situated near the heart permits of clairvoyant knowledge of the sentiments and disposition of other souls. When developed, this organ also makes it possible to observe certain deeper forces in animals and plants. By means of the organ in the so-called pit of the stomach, knowledge is acquired of the talents and capacities of souls; by its means, too, the part played by animals, plants, stones, metals, atmospheric phenomena and so on in the household of nature becomes apparent.
  The organ in the vicinity of the larynx has
  --
  The sixth is concerned with human endeavor. The student tests his capacities and proficiency, and conducts himself in the light of such self- knowledge. He attempts nothing beyond his powers, yet seems to omit nothing within their scope.
   p. 140
  --
  It is at this stage of development especially that the value of sound judgment and a training in clear and logical thought come to the fore. The higher self, which hitherto slumbered unconsciously in an embryonic state, is now born into conscious existence. This is not a figurative but a positive birth in the spiritual world, and the being now born, the higher self, must enter that world with all the necessary organs and aptitudes if it is to be capable of life. Just as nature must provide for a child being born into the world with suitable eyes and ears, to too, the laws of self-development must provide for the necessary capacities with which the higher self can enter existence. These laws governing the development of the higher spiritual organs are none other than the laws of sound reason and morality of the physical world. The spiritual self matures in the
   p. 184

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     How precisely or by what stages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form, need and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence is always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the integral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there may be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness and an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its relegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of it may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic and spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements, but that compulsion of the temperament or the nature which, in human beings, necessitates one kind of activity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of the existence, will diminish and eventually no attachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere. Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted desire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater Consciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of the whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the inner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a restriction of the' activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of mental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the Yoga-shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or many fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of metaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken where none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches out from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour down its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the creation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may be the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the Yoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him above as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all the activities of knowledge.
     There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker's mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more au thentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge.

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  associated with devils or fallen angels because it seems far beyond normal human capacities in its
  powers. We read of ascending and descending angels on Jacobs and Platos ladders, and similarly there
  --
  who still uses the morality of the child despite his adult capacities he is lying, and he knows it.
  The lie is willful adherence to a previously functional schema of action and interpretation a moral
  --
  which promote development of the innate capacities of the individual, protect from danger, offer hope, and
  inhibit existential fear.
  --
  such is well within the normal mans range of capacities (and does not likely exhaust them). The
  individual is a terrible force for evil. Recognition of that force real recognition, the kind that comes as a

1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For this is the sense of the characteristic turn which modern civilisation is taking. Everywhere we are beginning, though still sparsely and in a groping tentative fashion, to approach things from the subjective standpoint. In education our object is to know the psychology of the child as he grows into man and to found our systems of teaching and training upon that basis. The new aim is to help the child to develop his intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities,a very different object from that of the old education which was simply to pack so much stereotyped knowledge into his resisting brain and impose a stereotyped rule of conduct on his struggling and dominated impulses.1 In dealing with the criminal the most advanced societies are no longer altogether satisfied with regarding him as a law-breaker to be punished, imprisoned, terrified, hanged or else tortured physically and morally, whether as a revenge for his revolt or as an example to others; there is a growing attempt to understand him, to make allowance for his heredity, environment and inner deficiencies and to change him from within rather than crush him from without. In the general view of society itself, we begin to regard the community, the nation or any other fixed grouping of men as a living organism with a subjective being of its own and a corresponding growth and natural development which it is its business to bring to perfection and fruition. So far, good; the greater knowledge, the truer depth, the wiser humanity of this new view of things are obvious. But so also are the limitations of our knowledge and experience on this new path and the possibility of serious errors and stumblings.
  If we look at the new attempt of nations, whether subject or imperial, to fulfil themselves consciously and especially at the momentous experiment of the subjective German nationality, we shall see the starting-point of these possible errors. The first danger arises from the historical fact of the evolution of the subjective age out of the individualistic; and the first enormous stumble has accordingly been to transform the error of individualistic egoism into the more momentous error of a great communal egoism. The individual seeking for the law of his being can only find it safely if he regards clearly two great psychological truths and lives in that clear vision. First, the ego is not the self; there is one self of all and the soul is a portion of that universal Divinity. The fulfilment of the individual is not the utmost development of his egoistic intellect, vital force, physical well-being and the utmost satisfaction of his mental, emotional, physical cravings, but the flowering of the divine in him to its utmost capacity of wisdom, power, love and universality and through this flowering his utmost realisation of all the possible beauty and delight of existence.

1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  When the mind is entirely passive, then the force of Nature which works in the whole of animate and inanimate creation, has free play; for it is in reality this force which works in man as well as in the sun and star. There is no doubt of this truth whether in Hinduism or in Science. This is the thing called Nature, the sum of cosmic force and energy, which alone Science recognises as the source of all work and activity. This also is the Prakriti of the Hindus to which under different names Sankhya and Vedanta agree in assigning a similar position and function in the Universe. But the immediate question is whether this force can act in man independently of mans individual will and initiative. Must it always act through his volition or has it a power of independent operation? The first real proof which Science has had of the power of action independent of volition is in the phenomena of hypnotism. Unfortunately the nature of hypnotism has not been properly understood. It is supposed that by putting the subject to sleep the hypnotist is able in some mysterious and unexplained way to substitute his will for the subjects. In a certain sense all the subjects activities in the hypnotic state are the results of his own volition, but that volition is not spontaneous, it is used as a slave by the operator working through the medium of suggestion. Whatever the hypnotist suggests that the subject shall think, act or feel, he thinks, acts or feels, and whatever the hypnotist suggests that the subject shall become, he becomes. What is it that gives the operator this stupendous power? Why should the mere fact of a man passing into this sleep-condition suspend the ordinary reactions of mind and body and substitute others at the mere word of the man who has said to him, Sleep? It is sometimes supposed that it is the superior will of the hypnotist which overcomes the will of the other and makes it a slave. There are two strong objections to this view It does not appear to be true that it is the weak and distracted will that is most easily hypnotised; on the contrary the strong concentrated mind forms a good subject. Secondly, if it were the operators will using the will of the subject, then the results produced must be such as the latter could himself bring about, since the capacities of the instrument cannot be exceeded by the power working through the instrument. Even if we suppose that the invading will brings with it its own force still the results produced must not exceed the sum of its capacity plus the capacity of the instrument. If they commonly do so, we must suppose that it is neither the will of the operator nor the will of the subject nor the sum of these two wills that is active, but some other and more potent force. This is precisely what we see in hypnotic performance.
  What is this force that enables or compels a weak man to become so rigid that strong arms cannot bend him? that reverses the operations of the senses and abrogates pain? that changes the fixed character of a man in the shortest of periods? that is able to develop power where there was no power, moral strength where there was weakness, health where there was disease? that in its higher manifestations can exceed the barriers of space and time and produce that far-sight, far-hearing and far-thinking which shows mind to be an untrammelled agent or medium pervading the world and not limited to the body which it informs or seems to inform? The European scientist experimenting with hypnotism is handling forces which he cannot understand, stumbling on truths of which he cannot give a true account. His feet are faltering on the threshold of Yoga. It is held by some thinkers, and not unreasonably if we consider these phenomena, that mind is all and contains all. It is not the body which determines the operations of the mind, it is the mind which determines the laws of the body. It is the ordinary law of the body that if it is struck, pierced or roughly pressed it feels pain. This law is created by the mind which associates pain with these contacts, and if the mind changes its dharma and is able to associate with these contacts not pain but insensibility or pleasure, then they will bring about those results of insensibility or pleasure and no other. The pain and pleasure are not the result of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my character is the result of accumulated past experiences with their resultant associations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind and heart summed up in the word, character. These things like all the rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable, anity sarvasaskr. If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association and not binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of an association in the mind. I can change the association so far that blame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirely stop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that created them. They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompany it are called fear, and they can be dismissed by the action of the mind which created them. All these are propositions which European Science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is being proved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that these effects can be temporarily at least produced by one man upon another; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanently cured or character permanently changed by the action of one mind upon another. The rest will be established in time by the development of hypnotism.

1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  spontaneous concentration, like the sea beneath the movement of the waves. This underlying stillness is not a dulling of the nerves, any more than mental silence is a numbing of the brain; it is a basis for action. It is a concentrated power capable of initiating any action, of withstanding any shock, even the most violent and prolonged, without losing its poise. Depending on the degree of our development, all kinds of new capacities can emerge from this vital immobility, but first of all we feel an inexhaustible energy; any fatigue is a sign that we have fallen back into the superficial turmoil. The capacity for work or even physical effort increases tenfold. Food and sleep are no longer the single and all-absorbing source of energy renewal. (The nature of sleep changes, as we will see, and food can be reduced to an hygienic minimum.) Other powers, often considered "miraculous," may also manifest, but they are miracles with a method; we will not attempt to discuss them here, as it is better to experience them directly. Let us simply say that one who has become capable of controlling a certain vital vibration in himself is automatically capable of controlling the same vibration anywhere he meets it in the world. Further, in this stillness, another sign will appear permanently: the absence of suffering and a kind of inalterable joy. When an ordinary person receives a blow, whether physical or moral, his immediate reaction is to double up in pain; he contracts and begins to see the inside,
  increasing the pain tenfold. On the contrary, the seeker who has established some immobility within himself will find that this immobility dissolves all shocks, because it is wide; because the seeker is no longer a small constricted person, but a consciousness overflowing the limits of its body. Like the silent mind, the quieted vital universalizes itself spontaneously: In yoga experience the consciousness widens in every direction, around, below, above, in each direction stretching to infinity. When the consciousness of the yogi becomes liberated, it is not in the body but in this infinite height,

1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Similarly, the subjective search for the self may, like the objective, lean preponderantly to identification with the conscious physical life, because the body is or seems to be the frame and determinant here of the mental and vital movements and capacities. Or it may identify itself with the vital being, the life-soul in us and its emotions, desires, impulses, seekings for power and growth and egoistic fulfilment. Or it may rise to a conception of man as a mental and moral being, exalt to the first place his inner growth, power and perfection, individual and collective, and set it before us as the true aim of our existence. A sort of subjective materialism, pragmatic and outward-going, is a possible standpoint; but in this the subjective tendency cannot long linger. For its natural impulse is to go always inward and it only begins to feel itself and have satisfaction of itself when it gets to the full conscious life within and feels all its power, joy and forceful potentiality pressing for fulfilment. Man at this stage regards himself as a profound, vital Will-to-be which uses body as its instrument and to which the powers of mind are servants and ministers. This is the cast of that vitalism which in various striking forms has played recently so great a part and still exercises a considerable influence on human thought. Beyond it we get to a subjective idealism now beginning to emerge and become prominent, which seeks the fulfilment of man in the satisfaction of his inmost religious, aesthetic, intuitive, his highest intellectual and ethical, his deepest sympathetic and emotional nature and, regarding this as the fullness of our being and the whole object of our being, tries to subject to it the physical and vital existence. These come to be considered rather as a possible symbol and instrument of the subjective life flowing out into forms than as having any value in themselves. A certain tendency to mysticism, occultism and the search for a self independent of the life and the body accompanies this new movementnew to modern life after the reign of individualism and objective intellectualism and emphasises its real trend and character.
  But here also it is possible for subjectivism to go beyond and to discover the true Self as something greater even than mind. Mind, life and body then become merely an instrumentation for the increasing expression of this Self in the world,instruments not equal in their hierarchy, but equal in their necessity to the whole, so that their complete perfection and harmony and unity as elements of our self-expression become essential to the true aim of our living. And yet that aim would not be to perfect life, body and mind in themselves, but to develop them so as to make a fit basis and fit instruments for the revelation in our inner and outer life of the luminous Self, the secret Godhead who is one and yet various in all of us, in every being and existence, thing and creature. The ideal of human existence personal and social would be its progressive transformation into a conscious outflowering of the joy, power, love, light, beauty of the transcendent and universal Spirit.

1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Due to the destruction of impurity, asuddhi ksayat, there will be the realisation of ones powers. We are unconscious of what we are, what we are endowed with and what our capacities are, due to a certain dross that is covering the mind and, consequently, covering everything that we are. The powers that we seek, the joys that we expect, do not come from anywhere other than our own selves. All the powers are inside us, just as tremendous energy is hidden in an atom. It does not come from outside, from somewhere else. It is there inside and has only to be released by adopting certain procedures. If it is not released, it will seem like nothing; it is a meaningless particle of matter about which nobody will bother, in spite of the fact that it is charged with such power and impregnated with incredible energy.
  Likewise is the human being and anything in this world everything is inside it. All powers and all perfections are potentials and, therefore, what is required is not an externalised effort in the direction of contact with the objects of sense, but an inward research which will find out ways and means of releasing this energy that is latent inside. It is a great foolishness on the part of anyone not to know this fact and to pursue ideals which are different from, or even contrary to, what is really good for oneself. The whole practice of yoga is an inwardisation of effort for the purpose of the release of the potentialities that are inside, and the realisation of their presence and capacities, which will put an end to all cravings of the senses, the mind and the ego. This removal of the dross, or the impurity of the mind, is what is known as asuddhi ksayat. When this takes place, when the impurities of the mind are removed, there is perfection of the body, the senses and the mind all of which is the effect of tapas: kya indriya siddhi auddhikayt tapasa (II.43).
  Svdhyyt iadevat saprayoga (II.44): By daily holy study, we set ourselves in tune with the masters who have been responsible for the writing of the scriptures and whose great ideals and ideas are sung in the scriptures. The study of great scriptures like the Bhagavadgita, the Mahabharata or the Ramayana puts us in tune with the great thoughts, brains and minds of Vyasa, Valmiki and such other great men. Then, there is a stimulation of a corresponding idea and ideal in our own selves so that we become fit to receive their grace. Not merely receive their grace, we can even contact them, says the sutra. The idea, or the content of the scripture which is the object of our daily study, or svadhyaya, is the medium of contact between ourselves and the ideal of the scripture the deity. It may be the rishi, or it may be a divinity that is the ishta devata. The desired object is the ishta devata, and we will come in contact with it because of the daily contemplation on it through svadhyaya.

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  But everything is not sweetness and light with the centaur. As always, new and higher capacities bring with them the potential for new and higher pathologies. As vision-logic adds up all the possibilities given to the mind's eye, it eventually reaches a dismal conclusion: personal life is a brief spark in the cosmic void. No matter how wonderful it all might be now, we are still going to die: dread, as Heidegger said, is the au thentic response of the existential (centauric) being, a dread that calls us back from self-forgetting to self-presence, a dread that seizes not this or that part of me (body or persona or ego or mind), but rather the totality of my being-in-the-world. When I au thentically see my life, I see its ending, I see its death; and I see that my "other selves," my ego, my personas, were all sustained by inau thenticity, by an avoidance of the awareness of lonely death.
  A profound existential malaise can set in-the characteristic pathology of this stage (fulcrum six). No longer protected by anthropocentric gods and goddesses, reason gone flat in its happy capacity to explain away the Mystery, not yet delivered into the hands of the superconscious-we stare out blankly into that dark and gloomy night, which will very shortly swallow us up as surely as it once spat us forth. Tolstoy:

1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  These terms have been listed from top to bottom, so to say, but their order should not be taken to indicate anything superior or inferior, or more or less difficult, or the order in which these disciplines can and ought to be practised. The order, importance and difficulty vary with each individual and no absolute rule can be formulated. Each one must find and work out his own system according to his personal needs and capacities.
  Accordingly, only an overall view will be given here, presenting an ideal procedure that is as complete as possible. Each one will then have to apply as much of it as he can in the best possible way.

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswatis etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayanas distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, prve ntan uta, are guides worthy of trustwhe ther they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen intuition of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.
  Madhuchchhanda turns to Saraswati at the close of his hymn after successively calling to the Aswins, Indra & the Visvadevas. To each of these deities he has addressed three riks of praise & invocation; the last three of the twelve reiterate in each verse the name, epithets & functions of Saraswati. The Sukta falls therefore into four equal parts of which the last alone immediately concerns us.

1.08 - The Synthesis of Movement, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  This acceleration of the internal movement which makes the living being an always more rapid epitome of all the past phases of the world and all the accumulated progress of the race, enables it to embrace more and more vast spaces of Time and enlarge itself to the infinity of its intuitive capacities.
  It is this progress in the internal rapidity which renders some capable of living, in the course of their brief minutes, not the petty and very limited number of experiences to which existence is ordinarily reduced, but the equivalent of several successive lives. Far from being confined in the narrow circle of a given environment they seem to belong to all places and all times and participate in all the modes of human existence. In them successive traditions and contrary tendencies rejoin and become unified. And it is by the increasing acceleration of its course that the mind embracing an always vaster circle of the universal mounts from synthesis to synthesis towards the unity of the universal.

1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The celestials in the heavens are supposed to have perfections by birth itself, and every other being in the higher realms has a power peculiar to that particular birth. We have statements in the scriptures that above the level of the earth plane there are planes of the Gandharvas, the Pitris, the celestials, and so on. These are all beings who are superior to this human level, and they have certain capacities which humankind does not have. This has come to them by birth janma. It does not mean that a person gets powers at the time of birth by freak or by chance; it is a result of hard practice in earlier lives. It is only a manner of speaking when it is said that perfection comes to some by birth. It does not mean that God is favourably disposed to any person. These capacities are only an indication of hard and strenuous effort in a previous existence.
  Even here, in this world, we find people of various calibres. Some children are born with special endowments, with precocious capacities genius seen at a very early age. It does not mean that all this happens by a fantastic freak of nature. They are the result of a very systematic development of causes and effects. The causes are unseen; only the effects are seen. But it does not follow thereby that the causes do not exist. In a similar manner, Patanjali tells us that in some cases it will appear as if the perfections manifest from the very time of birth itself. Also, there are cases where certain powers are acquired by the use of medicinal herbs which are spoken about in the yoga scriptures. We have, in India especially, some Himalayan herbs known as Sanjivini, etc., which are supposed to enliven even a corpse. Other herbs create certain vibrations in the system and stimulate the nerves, and allow the concentration of the mind. This is a very peculiar way of stimulating energy in ones system, and is the most artificial of all methods, because these vibrations are artificial results that follow from artificial causes. They are outside oneself and, therefore, they have a beginning and an end. Therefore, they are useless. Anyhow, Patanjali tells us that these herbs are also one of the ways of stirring up certain energies in the system. The effects will be there as long as the causes are there. When the causes subside, the effects also subside.
  But, greater means than this is the power of mantras. The continuous recitation of certain mantras, or spiritual formulae, may create internal vibrations which enable a person to exercise supernormal powers. And the effects that follow from this practice are more lasting than the use of medicinal herbs. If a mantra is recited continuously, for a very long period, with deep concentration of mind, it sets up certain vibrations which release energy from the body and the entire system. Then, what works in ones system is the mantra itself. The deity of the mantra begins to operate. Thus, the aphorism tells us that this also is one of the ways of acquiring powers by yoga.

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  specialisatio of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.
  The actor, the mime, the dancer, the musician, and the lyricist, are

1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  In fact, the self has always been great. We might as well ask, What is this greater moon? Because we see a first quarter and then a second, we say, with our geocentric vision, that the moon grows bigger. Our eyes see one thing after another, and for them things grow bigger or appear unless we are still childish enough to claim they fall from the sky or are eaten by dragons. Things and beings die, we think, carried away, like the moon, by the dragon of death, but they are still there, just hidden from our vision, and nothing ever dies or disappears, any more than anything ever gets born or appears, like the full moon and the new moon. There is merely something eclipsing our vision. And when we say that this lesser or greater self is the result of our lesser or greater capacities, we may be as vain as the savage looking through a telescope for the first time and saying that those unknown stars and lights blinking at the edge of the universe are the result of our instruments. The world does not arrive and nothing arrives; it is we who gradually arrive at total vision. And the fuller that vision, the more the world attains the perfection it has always been.
  But what eclipses our vision? We might as well ask, What eclipses the linear vision of the centipede? Or what eclipses the lotus in the seed? For our eyes, the universe is gradually becoming, but our eyes are really the supreme Look hiding from itself to look through the eternity of the ages and through our millions of eyes, and with millions of colors and faces, at the one perfection it saw in an eternal white second. The world is one; it is a single global unity, even the scientists tell us so. And they are trying to find that equation. But to restore this oneness, they have divided and subdivided matter to infinity, or almost. They have come upon an infinitesimal existence and a smaller infinitesimal existence, a vastness and an even greater vastness. But this oneness is neither an addition nor a reduction to the microscopic level, any more than eternity is an infinite number of years or immensity so many miles plus one. This oneness is there, totally, in each point of space and at each second of time, as much as in all the infinitudes put together and all the vastness added up. Each point contains the whole; each second is eternity looking at itself. And we who stand in this point at this second are eternal and complete, and all the earths and all the galaxies meet in our essential point; an eternal lotus shines in our heart only we do not know it. We know it little by little. And it is not enough to know it in our heads and hearts we have to know it in our body. Then the marvel will be truly complete and the eternal lotus on the summits of the spirit will shine forever in our matter and in each second of time.

1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument. It has no special relation to occult siddhis.
  Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the

1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The conflict arises from that sort of triangular disposition of the higher or more subtle mentality which we have already had occasion to indicate. There is in our mentality a side of will, conduct, character which creates the ethical man; there is another side of sensibility to the beautiful,understanding beauty in no narrow or hyper-artistic sense,which creates the artistic and aesthetic man. Therefore there can be such a thing as a predominantly or even exclusively ethical culture; there can be too, evidently, a predominantly or even exclusively aesthetic culture. There are at once created two conflicting ideals which must naturally stand opposed and look askance at each other with a mutual distrust or even reprobation. The aesthetic man tends to be impatient of the ethical rule; he feels it to be a barrier to his aesthetic freedom and an oppression on the play of his artistic sense and his artistic faculty; he is naturally hedonistic,for beauty and delight are inseparable powers, and the ethical rule tramples on pleasure, even very often on quite innocent pleasures, and tries to put a strait waistcoat on the human impulse to delight. He may accept the ethical rule when it makes itself beautiful or even seize on it as one of his instruments for creating beauty, but only when he can subordinate it to the aesthetic principle of his nature,just as he is often drawn to religion by its side of beauty, pomp, magnificent ritual, emotional satisfaction, repose or poetic ideality and aspiration,we might almost say, by the hedonistic aspects of religion. Even when fully accepted, it is not for their own sake that he accepts them. The ethical man repays this natural repulsion with interest. He tends to distrust art and the aesthetic sense as something lax and emollient, something in its nature undisciplined and by its attractive appeals to the passions and emotions destructive of a high and strict self-control. He sees that it is hedonistic and he finds that the hedonistic impulse is non-moral and often immoral. It is difficult for him to see how the indulgence of the aesthetic impulse beyond a very narrow and carefully guarded limit can be combined with a strict ethical life. He evolves the puritan who objects to pleasure on principle; not only in his extremesand a predominant impulse tends to become absorbing and leads towards extremes but in the core of his temperament he remains fundamentally the puritan. The misunderstanding between these two sides of our nature is an inevitable circumstance of our human growth which must try them to their fullest separate possibilities and experiment in extremes in order that it may understand the whole range of its capacities.
  Society is only an enlargement of the individual; therefore this contrast and opposition between individual types reproduces itself in a like contrast and opposition between social and national types. We must not go for the best examples to social formulas which do not really illustrate these tendencies but are depravations, deformations or deceptive conformities. We must not take as an instance of the ethical turn the middle-class puritanism touched with a narrow, tepid and conventional religiosity which was so marked an element in nineteenth-century England; that was not an ethical culture, but simply a local variation of the general type of bourgeois respectability you will find everywhere at a certain stage of civilisation,it was Philistinism pure and simple. Nor should we take as an instance of the aesthetic any merely Bohemian society or such examples as London of the Restoration or Paris in certain brief periods of its history; that, whatever some of its pretensions, had for its principle, always, the indulgence of the average sensational and sensuous man freed from the conventions of morality by a superficial intellectualism and aestheticism. Nor even can we take Puritan England as the ethical type; for although there was there a strenuous, an exaggerated culture of character and the ethical being, the determining tendency was religious, and the religious impulse is a phenomenon quite apart from our other subjective tendencies, though it influences them all; it is sui generis and must be treated separately. To get at real, if not always quite pure examples of the type we must go back a little farther in time and contrast early republican Rome or, in Greece itself, Sparta with Periclean Athens. For as we come down the stream of Time in its present curve of evolution, humanity in the mass, carrying in it its past collective experience, becomes more and more complex and the old distinct types do not recur or recur precariously and with difficulty.

1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  20:But what right have we to assume consciousness as the just description for this Force? For consciousness implies some kind of intelligence, purposefulness, self-knowledge, even though they may not take the forms habitual to our mentality. Even from this point of view everything supports rather than contradicts the idea of a universal conscious Force. We see, for instance, in the animal, operations of a perfect purposefulness and an exact, indeed a scientifically minute knowledge which are quite beyond the capacities of the animal mentality and which man himself can only acquire by long culture and education and even then uses with a much less sure rapidity. We are entitled to see in this general fact the proof of a conscious Force at work in the animal and the insect which is more intelligent, more purposeful, more aware of its intention, its ends, its means, its conditions than the highest mentality yet manifested in any individual form on earth. And in the operations of inanimate Nature we find the same pervading characteristic of a supreme hidden intelligence, "hidden in the modes of its own workings".
  21:The only argument against a conscious and intelligent source for this purposeful work, this work of intelligence, of selection, adaptation and seeking is that large element in Nature's operations to which we give the name of waste. But obviously this is an objection based on the limitations of our human intellect which seeks to impose its own particular rationality, good enough for limited human ends, on the general operations of the World-Force. We see only part of Nature's purpose and all that does not subserve that part we call waste. Yet even our own human action is full of an apparent waste, so appearing from the individual point of view, which yet, we may be sure, subserves well enough the large and universal purpose of things. That part of her intention which we can detect, Nature gets done surely enough in spite of, perhaps really by virtue of her apparent waste. We may well trust to her in the rest which we do not yet detect.

1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   influences, often a conflict, a wrestling of forces, a struggle to dominate each other. All have in great or in small extent or degree, even if sometimes in a hardly appreciable minimum, their sattwic states and clear tracts or inchoate tendencies of light, clarity and happiness, fine adaptation and sympathy with the environment, intelligence, poise, right mind, right will and feeling, right impulse, virtue, order. All have their rajasic moods and impulses and turbid parts of desire and passion and struggle, perversion and falsehood and error, unbalanced joy and sorrow, aggressive push to work and eager creation and strong or bold or fiery or fierce reactions to the pressure of the environment and to life's assaults and offers. All have their tamasic states and constant obscure parts, their moments or points of unconsciousness, their long habit or their temporary velleities of weak resignation or dull acceptance, their constitutional feeblenesses or movements of fatigue, negligence and indolence and their lapses into ignorance and incapacity, depression and fear and cowardly recoil or submission to the environment and to the pressure of men and events and forces. Each one of us is sattwic in some directions of his energy of Nature or in some parts of his mind or character, in others rajasic, tamasic in others. According as one or other of the modes usually dominates his general temperament and type of mind and turn of action, it is said of him that he is the sattwic, the rajasic or the tamasic man; but few are always of one kind and none is entire in his kind. The wise are not always or wholly wise, the intelligent are intelligent only in patches; the saint suppresses in himself many unsaintly movements and the evil are not entirely evil: the dullest has his unexpressed or unused and undeveloped capacities, the most timorous his moments or his way of courage, the helpless and the weakling a latent part of strength in his nature. The dominant gunas are not the essential soul-type of the embodied being but only the index of the formation he has made for this life or during his present existence and at a given moment of his evolution in Time.
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11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Man has been striving through his lesser powers, through the grace of the lower gods since his advent upon earth to arrive at a reconstruction of his life and surroundings. That is why he has never attained the full measure of success. Indeed a period of success or progress was always followed by a period of decline and retrogression, a so-called golden age by an age of iron. As a matter of fact today humanity finds itself terribly enclosed in a cage of iron as it were. The earth has become too small for his soaring capacities and multitudinous necessitieshe is already thinking of a place in the moon! That is only the sign and symbol of an inner impasse to which he has arrived. The anguish of the human soul has reached its acme: the problems, social, political, educational, moral it is facing have proved themselves to be totally insoluble. Yes, he has run into a cul-de-sac, where he is caught as in a death-trap. No ordinary rational methods, half-way nostrums can deliver him any more. All the outer doors and issues are now closed for him; the only way is to turn inward, there lies the open road to freedom and fulfilment. That is the way to transcendence and surpassing. To attempt any other way is not only to try the impossible but to head straight towards doomsday.
   The time then is now, for the time is ripe. It will not do to say that the way proposed is beyond the reach of the common man. He has neither the capacity nor the knowledge nor even the inclination or impulse to surpass himself, to do anything non-human. First of all, as I said, if man is to survive in any form, this is the only way and there is no second. Next, what do we know of the capacity and impulsion even of the common man? Even in a smaller scale and on the material level, have we not seen to what tremendous acts of heroism he can rise automatically, through what travailstapasyaof concentrated effort he agreed to pass, simply because the occasion demanded it? Man's secret soul is greater than all the limitation of his outward frame.

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. If we stumble, it is to learn in the end the secret of a more perfect walking. Let us not be in too furious a haste to acquire even peace, purity and perfection. Peace must be ours, but not the peace of an empty or devastated nature or of slam or mutilated capacities incapable of unrest because we have made them incapable of intensity and fire and force. Purity must be our aim, but not the purity of a void or of a bleak and rigid coldness. Perfection is demanded of us, but not the perfection that can exist only by confining its scope within narrow limits or putting an arbitrary full stop to the ever self-extending scroll of the Infinite. Our object is to change into the divine nature, but the divine nature is not a mental or moral but a spiritual condition, difficult to achieve, difficult even to conceive by our intelligence. The Master of our work and our Yoga knows the thing to be done, and we must allow him to do it in us by his own means and in his own manner.
     The movement of the Ignorance is egoistic at its core and nothing is more difficult for us than to get rid of egoism while yet we admit personality and adhere to action in the half-light and half-force of our unfinished nature. It is easier to starve the ego by renouncing the impulse to act or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality. It is easier to exalt it into self-forgetfulness immersed in a trance of peace or an ecstasy of divine Love. But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and assent to its workings with a constant courage and patience.

1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Reason using the intelligent will for the ordering of the inner and the outer life is undoubtedly the highest developed faculty of man at his present point of evolution; it is the sovereign, because the governing and self-governing faculty in the complexities of our human existence. Man is distinguished from other terrestrial creatures by his capacity for seeking after a rule of life, a rule of his being and his works, a principle of order and self-development, which is not the first instinctive, original, mechanically self-operative rule of his natural existence. The principle he looks to is neither the unchanging, unprogressive order of the fixed natural type, nor in its process of change the mechanical evolution we see in the lower life, an evolution which operates in the mass rather than in the individual, imperceptibly to the knowledge of that which is being evolved and without its conscious cooperation. He seeks for an intelligent rule of which he himself shall be the governor and master or at least a partially free administrator. He can conceive a progressive order by which he shall be able to evolve and develop his capacities far beyond their original limits and workings; he can initiate an intelligent evolution which he himself shall determine or at least be in it a conscious instrument, more, a cooperating and constantly consulted party. The rest of terrestrial existence is helplessly enslaved and tyrannised over by its nature, but the instinct of man when he finds his manhood is to be master of his nature and free.
  No doubt all is work of Nature and this too is Nature; it proceeds from the principle of being which constitutes his humanity and by the processes which that principle permits and which are natural to it. But still it is a second kind of Nature, a stage of being in which Nature becomes self-conscious in the individual, tries to know, modify, alter and develop, utilise, consciously experiment with herself and her potentialities. In this change a momentous self-discovery intervenes; there appears something that is hidden in matter and in the first disposition of life and has not clearly emerged in the animal in spite of its possession of a mind; there appears the presence of the Soul in things which at first was concealed in its own natural and outward workings, absorbed and on the surface at least self-oblivious. Afterwards it becomes, as in the animal, conscious to a certain degree on the surface, but is still helplessly given up to the course of its natural workings and, not understanding, cannot govern itself and its movements. But finally, in man, it turns its consciousness upon itself, seeks to know, endeavours to govern in the individual the workings of his nature and through the individual and the combined reason and energy of many individuals to govern too as far as possible the workings of Nature in mankind and in things. This turning of the consciousness upon itself and on things, which man represents, has been the great crisis, a prolonged and developing crisis, in the terrestrial evolution of the soul in Nature. There have been others before it in the past of the earth, such as that which brought about the appearance of the conscious life of the animal; there must surely be another in its future in which a higher spiritual and supramental consciousness shall emerge and be turned upon the works of the mind. But at present it is this which is at work; a self-conscious soul in mind, mental being, manomaya purua, struggles to arrive at some intelligent ordering of its self and life and some indefinite, perhaps infinite development of the powers and potentialities of the human instrument.
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  Reason, on the other hand, exists for the sake of knowledge, can prevent itself from being carried away by the action, can stand back from it, intelligently study, accept, refuse, modify, alter, improve, combine and recombine the workings and capacities of the forces in operation, can repress here, indulge there, strive towards an intelligent, intelligible, willed and organised perfection. Reason is science, it is conscious art, it is invention. It is observation and can seize and arrange truth of facts; it is speculation and can extricate and forecast truth of potentiality. It is the idea and its fulfilment, the ideal and its bringing to fruition. It can look through the immediate appearance and unveil the hidden truths behind it. It is the servant and yet the master of all utilities; and it can, putting away all utilities, seek disinterestedly Truth for its own sake and by finding it reveal a whole world of new possible utilities. Therefore it is the sovereign power by which man has become possessed of himself, student and master of his own forces, the godhead on which the other godheads in him have leaned for help in their ascent; it has been the Prometheus of the mythical parable, the helper, instructor, elevating friend, civiliser of mankind.
  Recently, however, there has been a very noticeable revolt of the human mind against this sovereignty of the intellect, a dissatisfaction, as we might say, of the reason with itself and its own limitations and an inclination to give greater freedom and a larger importance to other powers of our nature. The sovereignty of the reason in man has been always indeed imperfect, in fact, a troubled, struggling, resisted and often defeated rule; but still it has been recognised by the best intelligence of the race as the authority and law-giver. Its only widely acknowledged rival has been faith. Religion alone has been strongly successful in its claim that reason must be silent before it or at least that there are fields to which it cannot extend itself and where faith alone ought to be heard; but for a time even Religion has had to forego or abate its absolute pretension and to submit to the sovereignty of the intellect. Life, imagination, emotion, the ethical and the aesthetic need have often claimed to exist for their own sake and to follow their own bent, practically they have often enforced their claim, but they have still been obliged in general to work under the inquisition and partial control of reason and to refer to it as arbiter and judge. Now, however, the thinking mind of the race has become more disposed to question itself and to ask whether existence is not too large, profound, complex and mysterious a thing to be entirely seized and governed by the powers of the intellect. Vaguely it is felt that there is some greater godhead than the reason.

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing etc., on
  the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they
  are inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance
  of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  This luminous flood will translate differently in different people (one is always too quick to give it a form instead of letting it quietly permeate the being and do its work of clarification). For some, there will be a sudden poetic blossoming, others will see new architectural forms, others will pursue new scientific discoveries, while still others will worship their God. Generally, the access to this new consciousness is accompanied by a spontaneous flowering of creative energies, particularly in the poetic field. It is interesting to note the number of poets of all languages Chinese, Indian, English, etc. among Sri Aurobindo's disciples, as if poetry and art were the first practical result of his yoga: I have seen both in myself and others a sudden flowering of capacities in every kind of activity come by the opening of consciousness, so that one who laboured long without the least success to express himself in rhythm becomes a master of poetic language and cadences in a day. It is a question of the right silence in the mind and the right openness to the Word that is trying to express itself for the Word is there ready formed in those inner planes where all artistic forms take birth, but it is the transmitting mind that must change and become a perfect channel and not an obstacle.192
  Poetry is the most convenient means of conveying what these higher planes of consciousness are. In a poem's rhythm one can easily perceive vibrations. We will therefore use poetry to convey a sense of what these higher planes are, even though the Superconscient is not the sole privilege of poets. In his vast correspondence on poetry and in his Future Poetry, Sri Aurobindo has given numerous instances of poetry issuing from the illumined mind. It is naturally Shakespeare who would give us the most abundant examples, provided we let go of the external meaning and listen to what vibrates behind the words; for poetry and all the arts are ultimately a means of capturing a tiny ineffable note, a mere nothing, a "nothing" that still constitutes life's very essence: . . . that his virtues
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  This point of coincidence brings knowledge, which may translate itself in one form or another depending upon our current preoccupation, but it is always, essentially, a movement of identity, a meeting: we know because we recognize. Sri Aurobindo used to say that intuition is a memory of the Truth.195 As the intuitive flash occurs, one clearly sees that knowledge is not discovering something unknown one only discovers oneself! there is nothing else to discover but a gradual recognition, in time, of that second of Light which we have all seen. Who has not seen, if only once? Who does not have that Memory in his life? Whatever our beliefs or unbeliefs, our capacities or in capacities, our lower or higher altitudes, there is always a moment in life that is our moment. Some lives last but a second, and all the rest is oblivion.
  The language of intuition is concentrated into a concise phrasing, without superfluous words, in contrast to the opulent language of the illumined mind (which, through its very richness, nevertheless conveys a luminous rhythm and a truth, perhaps less precisely connoted, but warmer). When Plotinus packed the entire cycle of human effort into one phrase "A flight of the Alone to the Alone" he used a highly intuitive language, as do the Upanishads. But this quality also signals the limits of intuition: no matter how replete with meaning our flashes and phrases, they cannot embrace the whole truth; a fuller, more encompassing warmth would be needed, like that of the illumined mind but with a higher transparency. For the Intuition . . . sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. The area unveiled by the flash is striking and irrefutable, but it is only one space of truth.196 Moreover, the mind hastens to seize upon the intuition and, as Sri Aurobindo remarked, it makes at once too little and too much of it.197 Too much, because it unduly generalizes the intuitive message and would extend its discovery to all space; too little, because instead of letting the flash quietly perform its work of illumination and clarification of our substance, it immediately seizes it, coats it with a thinking layer (or a pictorial, poetic, mathematical, or religious one), and no longer understands its flash except through the intellectual, artistic, or religious form it has put over it. It is terribly difficult for the mind to comprehend that a revelation can be allpowerful, even overwhelming, without our understanding anything about it, and that it is especially powerful as long as it is not brought down several degrees, diluted, and fragmented in order, supposedly, to be "understood." If we could remain quiet while the intuitive flash occurs, as if suspended in its own light, without pouncing on it to cut it into intellectual pieces, we would notice, after a while, that our entire being has shifted to a different altitude, and that we possess a new kind of vision instead of a lifeless little phrase. The very act of explaining causes most of the transformative power to evaporate.

1.13 - A Dream, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There should be somewhere on earth a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weaknesses and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and in capacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasure and material enjoyment. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not for passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts but to enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organise; the bodily needs of each one would be equally provided for, and intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed in the general organisation not by an increase in the pleasures and powers of life but by increased duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all; the ability to share in the joy it brings would be limited only by the capacities of each one and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social standing. There, work would not be a way to earn ones living but a way to express oneself and to develop ones capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole, which, for its own part, would provide for each individuals subsistence and sphere of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood.
  The earth is certainly not ready to realise such an ideal, for mankind does not yet possess sufficient knowledge to understand and adopt it nor the conscious force that is indispensable in order to execute it; that is why I call it a dream.

1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Hellenic ideal was roughly expressed in the old Latin maxim, a sound mind in a sound body. And by a sound body the ancients meant a healthy and beautiful body well-fitted for the rational use and enjoyment of life. And by a sound mind they meant a clear and balanced reason and an enlightened and well-trained mentality,trained in the sense of ancient, not of modern education. It was not to be packed with all available information and ideas, cast in the mould of science and a rational utility and so prepared for the efficient performance of social and civic needs and duties, for a professional avocation or for an intellectual pursuit; rather it was to be cultured in all its human capacities intellectual, moral, aesthetic, trained to use them rightly and to range freely, intelligently and flexibly in all questions and in all practical matters of philosophy, science, art, politics and social living. The ancient Greek mind was philosophic, aesthetic and political; the modern mind has been scientific, economic and utilitarian. The ancient ideal laid stress on soundness and beauty and sought to build up a fine and rational human life; the modern lays very little or no stress on beauty, prefers rational and practical soundness, useful adaptation, just mechanism and seeks to build up a well-ordered, well-informed and efficient human life. Both take it that man is partly a mental, partly a physical being with the mentalised physical life for his field and reason for his highest attribute and his highest possibility. But if we follow to the end the new vistas opened by the most advanced tendencies of a subjective age, we shall be led back to a still more ancient truth and ideal that overtops both the Hellenic and the modern levels. For we shall then seize the truth that man is a developing spirit trying here to find and fulfil itself in the forms of mind, life and body; and we shall perceive luminously growing before us the greater ideal of a deeply conscious self-illumined, self-possessing, self-mastering soul in a pure and perfect mind and body. The wider field it seeks will be, not the mentalised physical life with which man has started, but a new spiritualised life inward and outward, by which the perfected internal figures itself in a perfected external living. Beyond mans long intelligent effort towards a perfected culture and a rational society there opens the old religious and spiritual ideal, the hope of the kingdom of heaven within us and the city of God upon earth.
  But if the soul is the true sovereign and if its spiritual self-finding, its progressive largest widest integral fulfilment by the power of the spirit are to be accepted as the ultimate secret of our evolution, then since certainly the instinctive being of man below reason is not the means of attaining that high end and since we find that reason also is an insufficient light and power, there must be a superior range of being with its own proper powers,liberated soul-faculties, a spiritual will and knowledge higher than the reason and intelligent will,by which alone an entire conscious self-fulfilment can become possible to the human being. We must remember that our aim of self-fulfilment is an integral unfolding of the Divine within us, a complete evolution of the hidden divinity in the individual soul and the collective life. Otherwise we may simply come back to an old idea of individual and social living which had its greatness, but did not provide all the conditions of our perfection. That was the idea of a spiritualised typal society. It proceeded upon the supposition that each man has his own peculiar nature which is born from and reflects one element of the divine nature. The character of each individual, his ethical type, his training, his social occupation, his spiritual possibility must be formed or developed within the conditions of that peculiar element; the perfection he seeks in this life must be according to its law. The theory of ancient Indian cultureits practice, as is the way of human practice, did not always correspond to the theoryworked upon this supposition. It divided man in society into the fourfold orderan at once spiritual, psychic, ethical and economic orderof the Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra,practically, the spiritual and intellectual man, the dynamic man of will, the vital, hedonistic and economic man, the material man; the whole society organised in these four constituent classes represented the complete image of the creative and active Godhead.
  A different division of the typal society is quite possible. But whatever the arrangement or division, the typal principle cannot be the foundation of an ideal human society. Even according to the Indian theory it does not belong either to the periods of mans highest attainment or to the eras of his lowest possibility; it is neither the principle of his ideal age, his age of the perfected Truth, Satyayuga, Kritayuga, in which he lives according to some high and profound realisation of his divine possibility, nor of his iron age, the Kaliyuga, in which he collapses towards the life of the instincts, impulses and desires with the reason degraded into a servant of this nether life of man. This too precise order is rather the appropriate principle of the intermediate ages of his cycle in which he attempts to maintain some imperfect form of his true law, his dharma, by will-power and force of character in the Treta, by law, arrangement and fixed convention in the Dwapara.1 The type is not the integral man, it is the fixing and emphasising of the generally prominent part of his active nature. But each man contains in himself the whole divine potentiality and therefore the Shudra cannot be rigidly confined within his Shudrahood, nor the Brahmin in his Brahminhood, but each contains within himself the potentialities and the need of perfection of his other elements of a divine manhood. In the Kali age these potentialities may act in a state of crude disorder, the anarchy of our being which covers our confused attempt at a new order. In the intermediate ages the principle of order may take refuge in a limited perfection, suppressing some elements to perfect others. But the law of the Satya age is the large development of the whole truth of our being in the realisation of a spontaneous and self-supported spiritual harmony. That can only be realised by the evolution, in the measure of which our human capacity in its enlarging cycles becomes capable of it, of the spiritual ranges of our being and the unmasking of their inherent light and power, their knowledge and their divine capacities.
  We shall better understand what may be this higher being and those higher faculties, if we look again at the dealings of the reason with the trend towards the absolute in our other faculties, in the divergent principles of our complex existence. Let us study especially its dealings with the suprarational in them and the infrarational, the two extremes between which our intelligence is some sort of mediator. The spiritual or suprarational is always turned at its heights towards the Absolute; in its extension, living in the luminous infinite, its special power is to realise the infinite in the finite, the eternal unity in all divisions and differences. Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual realisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our highest faculties then will be those which make this possible because they have in them the intimate light and power and joy by which these things can be grasped in direct knowledge and experience, realised and made normally and permanently effective in will, communicated to our whole nature. The infrarational, on the other hand, has its origin and basis in the obscure infinite of the Inconscient; it wells up in instincts and impulses, which are really the crude and more or less haphazard intuitions of a subconscient physical, vital, emotional and sensational mind and will in us. Its struggle is towards definition, towards self-creation, towards finding some finite order of its obscure knowledge and tendencies. But it has also the instinct and force of the infinite from which it proceeds; it contains obscure, limited and violent velleities that move it to grasp at the intensities of the absolute and pull them down or some touch of them into its finite action: but because it proceeds by ignorance and not by knowledge, it cannot truly succeed in this more vehement endeavour. The life of the reason and intelligent will stands between that upper and this nether power. On one side it takes up and enlightens the life of the instincts and impulses and helps it to find on a higher plane the finite order for which it gropes. On the other side it looks up towards the absolute, looks out towards the infinite, looks in towards the One, but without being able to grasp and hold their realities; for it is able only to consider them with a sort of derivative and remote understanding, because it moves in the relative and, itself limited and definite, it can act only by definition, division and limitation. These three powers of being, the suprarational, rational and infrarational are present, but with an infinitely varying prominence in all our activities.

1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  13:Mind is not sufficient to explain existence in the universe. Infinite Consciousness must first translate itself into infinite faculty of Knowledge or, as we call it from our point of view, omniscience. But Mind is not a faculty of knowledge nor an instrument of omniscience; it is a faculty for the seeking of knowledge, for expressing as much as it can gain of it in certain forms of a relative thought and for using it towards certain capacities of action. Even when it finds, it does not possess; it only keeps a certain fund of current coin of Truth - not Truth itself - in the bank of Memory to draw upon according to its needs. For Mind is that which does not know, which tries to know and which never knows except as in a glass darkly. It is the power which interprets truth of universal existence for the practical uses of a certain order of things; it is not the power which knows and guides that existence and therefore it cannot be the power which created or manifested it.
  14:But if we suppose an infinite Mind which would be free from our limitations, that at least might well be the creator of the universe? But such a Mind would be something quite different from the definition of mind as we know it: it would be something beyond mentality; it would be the supramental Truth. An infinite Mind constituted in the terms of mentality as we know it could only create an infinite chaos, a vast clash of chance, accident, vicissitude wandering towards an indeterminate end after which it would be always tentatively groping and aspiring. An infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Mind would not be mind at all, but supramental knowledge.

1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Another error that has to be guarded against is also one to which our mentality is easily prone; it is to take some higher intermediate consciousness or even any kind of supernormal consciousness for the supermind. To reach supermind it is not enough to go above the ordinary movements of the human mind; it is not enough to receive a greater light, a greater power, a greater joy or to develop capacities of knowledge, sight, effective will that surpass the normal range of the human being. All light is not the light of the spirit, still less is all light the light of the supermind; the mind, the vital, the physical itself have lights of their own, as yet hidden, which can be very inspiring, exalting, informative, powerfully executive. A breaking out into the cosmic consciousness may also bring in an immense enlargement of the consciousness and power. An opening into the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, any range of the subliminal consciousness, can liberate an activity of abnormal or supernormal powers of knowledge, action or experience which the uninstructed mind can easily mistake for spiritual revelations, inspirations, intuitions. An opening upward into the greater ranges of the higher mental being can bring down much light and force creating
  284

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The assumption of imperfection by the perfect is the whole mystic phenomenon of the universe; but the imperfection appears in the form and action of the mind or body assumed, subsists in the phenomenon, - in that which assumes it there is no imperfection, even as in the Sun which illumines all there is no defect of light or of vision, but only in the capacities of the individual organ of vision. Nor does God rule the world from some remote heaven, but by his intimate omnipresence; each finite working of force is an act of infinite Force and not of a limited separate selfexistent energy labouring in its own underived strength; in every finite working of will and knowledge we can discover, supporting it, an act of the infinite all-will and all-knowledge. God's rule is not an absentee, foreign and external government; he governs all because he exceeds all, but also because he dwells within all movements and is their absolute soul and spirit. Therefore none of the objections opposed by our reason to the possibility of
  Avatarhood can stand in their principle; for the principle is a vain division made by the intellectual reason which the whole phenomenon and the whole reality of the world are busy every moment contradicting and disproving.

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Again established in the dwelling of his preceptor, Prahlāda gave lessons himself to the sons of the demons, in the intervals of his leisure. "Sons of the offspring of Diti," he was accustomed to say to them, "hear from me the supreme truth; nothing else is fit to be regarded; nothing, else here is an object to be coveted. Birth, infancy, and youth are the portion of all creatures; and then succeeds gradual and inevitable decay, terminating with all beings, children of the Daityas, in death: this is manifestly visible to all; to you as it is to me. That the dead are born again, and that it cannot be otherwise, the sacred texts are warrant: but production cannot be without a material cause; and as long as conception and parturition are the material causes of repeated birth, so long, be sure, is pain inseparable from every period of existence. The simpleton, in his inexperience, fancies that the alleviation of hunger, thirst, cold, and the like is pleasure; but of a truth it is pain; for suffering gives delight to those whose vision is darkened by delusion, as fatigue would be enjoyment to limbs that are incapable of motion[3]. This vile body is a compound of phlegm and other humours. Where are its beauty, grace, fragrance, or other estimable qualities? The fool that is fond of a body composed of flesh, blood, matter, ordure, urine, membrane, marrow, and bones, will be enamoured of hell. The agreeableness of fire is caused by cold; of water, by thirst; of food, by hunger: by other circumstances their contraries are equally agreeable[4]. The child of the Daitya who takes to himself a wife introduces only so much misery into his bosom; for as many as are the cerished affections of a living creature, so many are the thorns of anxiety implanted in his heart; and he who has large possessions in his house is haunted, wherever he goes, with the apprehension that they may be lost or burnt or stolen. Thus there is great pain in being born: for the dying man there are the tortures of the judge of the deceased, and of passing again into 'the womb. If you conclude that there is little enjoyment in the embryo state, you must then admit that the world is made up of pain. Verily I say unto you, that in this ocean of the world, this sea of many sorrows, Viṣṇu is your only hope. If ye say, you know nothing of this; 'we are children; embodied spirit in bodies is eternal; birth, youth, decay, are the properties of the body, not of the soul[5].' But it is in this way that we deceive ourselves. I am yet a child; but it is my purpose to exert myself when I am a youth. I am yet a youth; but when I become old I will do what is needful for the good of my soul. I am now old, and all my duties are to be fulfilled. How shall I, now that my faculties fail me, do what was left undone when my strength was unimpaired?' In this manner do men, whilst their minds are distracted by sensual pleasures, ever propose, and never attain final beatitude: they die thirsting[6]. Devoted in childhood to play, and in youth to pleasure, ignorant and impotent they find that old age is come upon them. Therefore even in childhood let the embodied soul acquire discriminative wisdom, and, independent of the conditions of infancy, youth, or age, strive incessantly to be freed. This, then, is what I declare unto you; and since you know that it is not untrue, do you, out of regard to me, call to your minds Viṣṇu, the liberator from all bondage. What difficulty is there in thinking upon him, who, when remembered, bestows prosperity; and by recalling whom to memory, day and night, all sin is cleansed away? Let all your thoughts and affections be fixed on him, who is present in all beings, and you shall laugh at every care. The whole world is suffering under a triple affliction[7]. 'What wise man would feel hatred towards beings who are objects of compassion? If fortune be propitious to them, and I am unable to partake of the like enjoyments, yet wherefore should I cerish malignity towards those who are more prosperous than myself: I should rather sympathise with their happiness; for the suppression of malignant feelings is of itself a reward[8]. If beings are hostile, and indulge in hatred, they are objects of pity to the wise, as encompassed by profound delusion. These are the reasons for repressing hate, which are adapted to the capacities of those who see the deity distinct from his creatures. Hear, briefly, what influences those who have approached the truth. This whole world is but a manifestation of Viṣṇu, who is identical with all things; and it is therefore to be regarded by the wise as not differing from, but as the same with themselves. Let us therefore lay aside the angry passions of our race, and so strive that we obtain that perfect, pure, and eternal happiness, which shall be beyond the power of the elements or their deities, of fire, of the sun, of the moon, of wind, of Indra, of the regent of the sea; which shall be unmolested by spirits of air or earth; by Yakṣas, Daityas, or their chiefs; by the serpent-gods or monstrous demigods of Swerga; which shall be uninterrupted by men or beasts, or by the infirmities of human nature; by bodily sickness and disease[9], or hatred, envy, malice, passion, or desire; which nothing shall molest, and which every one who fixes his whole heart on Keśava shall enjoy. Verily I say unto you, that you shall have no satisfaction in various revolutions through this treacherous world, but that you will obtain placidity for ever by propitiating Viṣṇu, whose adoration is perfect calm. What here is difficult of attainment, when he is pleased? Wealth, pleasure, virtue, are things of little moment. Precious is the fruit that you shall gather, be assured, from the exhaustless store of the tree of true wisdom."
  Footnotes and references:

1.18 - FAITH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  THE word faith has a variety of meanings, which it is important to distinguish. In some contexts it is used as a synonym for trust, as when we say that we have faith in Dr. Xs diagnostic skill or in lawyer Ys integrity. Analogous to this is our faith in authority the belief that what certain persons say about certain subjects is likely, because of their special qualifications, to be true. On other occasions faith stands for belief in propositions which we have not had occasion to verify for ourselves, but which we know that we could verify if we had the inclination, the opportunity and the necessary capacities. In this sense of the word we have faith, even though we may never have been to Australia, that there is such a creature as a duck-billed platypus; we have faith in the atomic theory, even though we may never have performed the experiments on which that theory rests, and be incapable of understanding the mathematics by which it is supported. And finally there is the faith, which is a belief in propositions which we know we cannot verify, even if we should desire to do sopropositions such as those of the Athanasian Creed or those which constitute the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This kind of faith is defined by the Scholastics as an act of the intellect moved to assent by the will.
  Faith in the first three senses of the word plays a very important part, not only in the activities of everyday life, but even in those of pure and applied science. Credo ut intelligam and also, we should add, ut agaim and ut vivam. Faith is a pre-condition of all systematic knowing, all purposive doing and all decent living. Societies are held together, not primarily by the fear of the many for the coercive power of the few, but by a widespread faith in the other fellows decency. Such a faith tends to create its own object, while the widespread mutual mistrust, due, for example, to war or domestic dissension, creates the object of mistrust. Passing now from the moral to the intellectual sphere, we find faith lying at the root of all organized thinking. Science and technology could not exist unless we had faith in the reliability of the universeunless, in Clerk Maxwells words, we implicitly believed that the book of Nature is really a book and not a magazine, a coherent work of art and not a hodge-podge of mutually irrelevant snippets. To this general faith in the reasonableness and trustworthiness of the world the searcher after truth must add two kinds of special faithfaith in the authority of qualified experts, sufficient to permit him to take their word for statements which he personally has not verified; and faith in his own working hypotheses, sufficient to induce him to test his provisional beliefs by means of appropriate action. This action may confirm the belief which inspired it. Alternatively it may bring proof that the original working hypothesis was ill founded, in which case it will have to be modified until it becomes conformable to the facts and so passes from the realm of faith to that of knowledge.

1.19 - The Curve of the Rational Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The first natural result has been the transition of the rational mind from democratic individualism to democratic socialism. Socialism, labouring under the disadvantageous accident of its birth in a revolt against capitalism, an uprising against the rule of the successful bourgeois and the plutocrat, has been compelled to work itself out by a war of classes. And, worse still, it has started from an industrialised social system and itself taken on at the beginning a purely industrial and economic appearance. These are accidents that disfigure its true nature. Its true nature, its real justification is the attempt of the human reason to carry on the rational ordering of society to its fulfilment, its will to get rid of this great parasitical excrescence of unbridled competition, this giant obstacle to any decent ideal or practice of human living. Socialism sets out to replace a system of organised economic battle by an organised order and peace. This can no longer be done on the old lines, an artificial or inherited inequality brought about by the denial of equal opportunity and justified by the affirmation of that injustice and its result as an eternal law of society and of Nature. That is a falsehood which the reason of man will no longer permit. Neither can it be done, it seems, on the basis of individual liberty; for that has broken down in the practice. Socialism therefore must do away with the democratic basis of individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it or to be marching towards a more rational freedom. It shifts at first the fundamental emphasis to other ideas and fruits of the democratic ideal, and it leads by this transference of stress to a radical change in the basic principle of a rational society. Equality, not a political only, but a perfect social equality, is to be the basis. There is to be equality of opportunity for all, but also equality of status for all, for without the last the first cannot be secured; even if it were established, it could not endure. This equality again is impossible if personal, or at least inherited right in property is to exist, and therefore socialism abolishesexcept at best on a small scale the right of personal property as it is now understood and makes war on the hereditary principle. Who then is to possess the property? It can only be the community as a whole. And who is to administer it? Again, the community as a whole. In order to justify this idea, the socialistic principle has practically to deny the existence of the individual or his right to exist except as a member of the society and for its sake. He belongs entirely to the society, not only his property, but himself, his labour, his capacities, the education it gives him and its results, his mind, his knowledge, his individual life, his family life, the life of his children. Moreover, since his individual reason cannot be trusted to work out naturally a right and rational adjustment of his life with the life of others, it is for the reason of the whole community to arrange that too for him. Not the reasoning minds and wills of the individuals, but the collective reasoning mind and will of the community has to govern. It is this which will determine not only the principles and all the details of the economic and political order, but the whole life of the community and of the individual as a working, thinking, feeling cell of this life, the development of his capacities, his actions, the use of the knowledge he has acquired, the whole ordering of his vital, his ethical, his intelligent being. For so only can the collective reason and intelligent will of the race overcome the egoism of individualistic life and bring about a perfect principle and rational order of society in a harmonious world.
  It is true that this inevitable character of socialism is denied or minimised by the more democratic socialists; for the socialistic mind still bears the impress of the old democratic ideas and cherishes hopes that betray it often into strange illogicalities. It assures us that it will combine some kind of individual freedom, a limited but all the more true and rational freedom, with the rigours of the collectivist idea. But it is evidently these rigours to which things must tend if the collectivist idea is to prevail and not to stop short and falter in the middle of its course. If it proves itself thus wanting in logic and courage, it may very well be that it will speedily or in the end be destroyed by the foreign element it tolerates and perish without having sounded its own possibilities. It will pass perhaps, unless guided by a rational wisdom which the human mind in government has not yet shown, after exceeding even the competitive individualistic society in its cumbrous incompetence.1 But even at its best the collectivist idea contains several fallacies inconsistent with the real facts of human life and nature. And just as the idea of individualistic democracy found itself before long in difficulties on that account because of the disparity between lifes facts and the minds idea, difficulties that have led up to its discredit and approaching overthrow, the idea of collectivist democracy too may well find itself before long in difficulties that must lead to its discredit and eventual replacement by a third stage of the inevitable progression. Liberty protected by a State in which all are politically equal, was the idea that individualistic democracy attempted to elaborate. Equality, social and political equality enforced through a perfect and careful order by a State which is the organised will of the whole community, is the idea on which socialistic democracy stakes its future. If that too fails to make good, the rational and democratic Idea may fall back upon a third form of society founding an essential rather than formal liberty and equality upon fraternal comradeship in a free community, the ideal of intellectual as of spiritual Anarchism.2

1.2.05 - Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What you say is quite true. A simple, straight and sincere call and aspiration from the heart is the one important thing and more essential and effective than capacities. Also to get the consciousness to turn inwards, not remain outward-going is of great importance - to arrive at the inner call, the inner experience, the inner Presence.
  The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether.

1.2.09 - Consecration and Offering, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  When you can sing out of your inner consciousness in which you feel the Mother moving all your actions, there is no reason why you should not do it. The development of capacities is not only permissible but right, when it can be made part of the
  Yoga; one can give not only one's soul, but all one's powers to the Divine.

1.2.1 - Mental Development and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Dedication to the Divine [is the right attitude in reading]. To read what will help the Yoga or what will be useful for the work or what will develop the capacities for the divine purpose. Not to read worthless stuff or for mere entertainment or for a dilettante intellectual curiosity which is of the nature of a mental dramdrinking. When one is established in the highest consciousness, one can read nothing or everything: it makes no difference but that is still far off.
  ***

1.2.2 - The Place of Study in Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I see no objection to his going on with his studies,whether they will be of any use to him for a life of sadhana will depend on the spirit in which he does them. The really important thing is to develop a state of consciousness in which one can live in the Divine and act from it on the physical world. A mental training and discipline, knowledge of men and things, culture, capacities of a useful kind are a preparation that the sadhak would be all the better for having,even though they are not the one thing indispensable. Education in India gives very little of these things; but if one knows how to study without caring much for the form or for mere academic success, the life of the student can be used for the purpose.
  ***
  --
  It [the study of logic] is a theoretical training; you learn by it some rules of logical thinking. But the application depends on your own intelligence. In any sphere of knowledge or action a man may be a good theorist but a poor executant. A very good military theorist and critic if put in comm and of an army might very well lose all his battles, not being able to suit the theories rightly to the occasion. So a theoretical logician may bungle the problems of thought by want of insight, of quickness of mind or of plasticity in the use of his capacities. Besides, logic is not the whole of thinking; observation, intuition, sympathy, many-sidedness are more important.
  ***

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  M.: Because you identify yourself with this body, you speak of the disembodied souls as being spirits. From these limitations you talk of their limitations and seek to know their capacities. Even the disembodied souls have subtle bodies, otherwise, you would not say disembodied souls. Disembodiment means divested of this gross body. Inasmuch as you endow them with individuality they are centred in their subtle bodies. Their limitations will be according to their own state. Just as you feel the burden of your limitations they also feel the burden of their limitations. What I meant by spirit and spiritual world is the absolute spirit and not relative. If you realise yourself as the spirit you will see that this world is only spiritual and not physical.
  D.: Are their bodies temporary as our bodies are? Do they reincarnate?

1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit. Between gross substance and pure spirit substance this must be the fundamental antinomy. In Matter Chit or Conscious-Force masses itself more and more to resist and stand out against other masses of the same Conscious-Force; in substance of Spirit pure consciousness images itself freely in its sense of itself with an essential indivisibility and a constant unifying interchange as the basic formula even of the most diversifying play of its own Force. Between these two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation.
  3:These considerations become of great importance when we consider the possible relation between the divine life and the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed relation between sense and substance from which the material universe has started. But as this relation is not the only possible relation, so that formula is not the only possible formula. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to substance and work out different physical laws, other and larger habits, even a different substance of body with a freer action of the sense, a freer action of the life, a freer action of the mind. Death, division, mutual resistance and exclusion between embodied masses of the same conscious life-force are the formula of our physical existence; the narrow limitation of the play of the senses, the determination within a small circle of the field, duration and power of the life-workings, the obscuration, lame movement, broken and bounded functioning of the mind are the yoke which that formula expressed in the animal body has imposed upon the higher principles. But these things are not the sole possible rhythm of cosmic Nature. There are superior states, there are higher worlds, and if the law of these can by any progress of man and by any liberation of our substance from its present imperfections be imposed on this sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even here a physical working of divine mind and sense, a physical working of divine life in the human frame and even the evolution upon earth of something that we may call a divinely human body. The body of man also may some day come by its transfiguration; the Earth-Mother too may reveal in us her godhead.
  --
  7:In the next grade of substance the initial, dominating, determining fact is no longer substantial form and force, but life and conscious desire. Therefore the world beyond this material plane must be a world based upon a conscious cosmic vital Energy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire and their self-expression and not upon an inconscient or subconscient will taking the form of a material force and energy. All the forms, bodies, forces, life-movements, sense-movements, thought-movements, developments, culminations, self-fulfilments of that world must be dominated and determined by this initial fact of Conscious-Life to which Matter and Mind must subject themselves, must start from that, base themselves upon that, be limited or enlarged by its laws, powers, capacities, limitations; and if Mind there seeks to develop yet higher possibilities, still it must then too take account of the original vital formula of desire-force, its purpose and its demand upon the divine manifestation.
  8:So too with the higher gradations. The next in the series must be governed by the dominating and determining factor of Mind. Substance there must be subtle and flexible enough to assume the shapes directly imposed upon it by Mind, to obey its operations, to subordinate itself to its demand for self-expression and self-fulfilment. The relations of sense and substance too must have a corresponding subtlety and flexibility and must be determined, not by the relations of physical organ with physical object, but of Mind with the subtler substance upon which it works. The life of such a world would be the servant of Mind in a sense of which our weak mental operations and our limited, coarse and rebellious vital faculties can have no adequate conception. There Mind dominates as the original formula, its purpose prevails, its demand overrides all others in the law of the divine manifestation. At a yet higher reach Supermind - or, intermediately, principles touched by it - or, still higher, a pure Bliss, a pure Conscious Power or pure Being replace Mind as the dominant principle, and we enter into those ranges of cosmic existence which to the old Vedic seers were the worlds of illuminated divine existence and the foundation of what they termed Immortality and which later Indian religions imaged in figures like the Brahmaloka or Goloka, some supreme self-expression of the Being as Spirit in which the soul liberated into its highest perfection possesses the infinity and beatitude of the eternal Godhead.

1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In cases where the one-pointed contemplation is of God there is also a risk that the minds unemployed capacities may atrophy. The hermits of Tibet and the Thebad were certainly one-pointed, but with a one-pointedness of exclusion and mutilation. It may be, however, that if they had been more truly docile to the Holy Ghost, they would have come to understand that the one-pointedness of exclusion is at best a preparation for the one-pointedness of inclusion the realization of God in the fulness of cosmic being as well as in the interior height of the individual soul. Like the Taoist sage, they would at last have turned back into the world riding on their tamed and regenerate individuality; they would have come eating and drinking, would have associated with publicans and sinners or their Buddhist equivalents, wine-bibbers and butchers. For the fully enlightened, totally liberated person, samsara and nirvana, time and eternity, the phenomenal and the Real, are essentially one. His whole life is an unsleeping and one-pointed contemplation of the Godhead in and through the things, lives, minds and events of the world of becoming. There is here no mutilation of the soul, no atrophy of any of its powers and capacities. Rather, there is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness, and at the same time an extension and transfiguration. No saint has ever complained that absorption in God was a cursed evil.
  In the beginning was the Word; behold Him to whom Mary listened. And the Word was made flesh; behold Him whom Martha served.
  --
  Similar views are expressed by Al-Ghazzali, who regards the mystics not only as the ultimate source of our knowledge of the soul and its capacities and defects, but as the salt which preserves human societies from decay. In the time of the philosophers, he writes, as at every other period, there existed some of these fervent mystics. God does not deprive this world of them, for they are its sustainers. It is they who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit.
  next chapter: 2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  M.: Because you identify yourself with this body, you speak of the disembodied souls as being spirits. From these limitations you talk of their limitations and seek to know their capacities. Even the disembodied souls have subtle bodies, otherwise, you would not say "disembodied souls". Disembodiment means "divested of this gross body". Inasmuch as you endow them with individuality they are centred in their subtle bodies. Their limitations will be according to their own state. Just as you feel the burden of your limitations they also feel the burden of their limitations. What I meant by spirit and spiritual world is the absolute spirit and not relative. If you realise yourself as the spirit you will see that this world is only spiritual and not physical.
  D.: Are their bodies temporary as our bodies are? Do they reincarnate?

1.4.02 - The Divine Force, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  How is the mere physical mind to know that it is there and working? By its results? but how can it know that the results were that of the Yoga-force and not of something else? One of two things it must do. Either it must allow the consciousness to go inside, to become aware of inner things, to believe in and experience the invisible and the supraphysical, and then by experience, by the opening of new capacities it becomes conscious of these forces and can see, follow and use their workings just as the scientist uses the unseen forces of Nature. Or one must have faith and watch and open oneself and then it will begin to see how things happen; it will notice that when the Force was called in, there began after a time to be a result, - then repetitions, more repetitions, more clear and tangible results, increasing frequency, increasing consistency of results, a feeling and awareness of the Force at work - until the experience
  The Divine Force

1914 06 26p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Hail to Thee, O Lord, Master of the world. Give us the power to do the work without being attached to it and to develop the capacities of individual manifestation without living in the illusion of personality. Streng then our vision of reality; make firm our perception of unity; deliver us from all ignorance, all darkness.
   We do not ask for the perfection of the instrument, knowing that in the world of relativities all perfection is relative: this instrument, fashioned for action in this world, must, in order to be able to act, belong to this world; but the consciousness that animates it should be identified with Thine, it should be the universal and eternal consciousness animating the varied multitude of bodies.

1951-01-08 - True vision and understanding of the world. Progress, equilibrium. Inner reality - the psychic. Animals and the psychic., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Yes. Generally it is believed that things always end badly in Nature. Everyone knows the story of those who have met a lamentable end after having enjoyed great success in their life; of those who had extraordinary capacities and who finally lost them; of a nation which for a long period was the model of a marvellous civilisation the civilisation vanishes and the nation is changed into something so deplorable that one can no longer recollect what it was. It seems that the story of the earth is a story of victories followed by defeats and not of defeats followed by victories.
  But in fact, whenever it is a question of universal and divine things, what is needed is the universal vision and divine understanding of things in order to know how the truth expresses itself. There is a kind of general pessimism which says that even if things begin well they end badly, that it is weakness, hypocrisy, falsehood and wickedness which always seem to have the upper hand. That is why those who see the world in their own personal dimension have said that the world is bad and that we have only to finish with it and get out of it as soon as possible. Teachers have taught this but their teaching only proves that their vision is too narrow and in the dimension of their human individuality.

1951-01-15 - Sincerity - inner discernment - inner light. Evil and imbalance. Consciousness and instruments., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The man of genius may use anything at all and make something beautiful because he has genius; but give this genius a perfect instrument and he will make something wonderful. Take a great musician; well, even with a wretched piano and missing notes, he will produce something beautiful; but give him a good piano, well-tuned, and he will do something still more beautiful. The consciousness is the same in either case but for expression it needs a good instrumenta body with mental, vital, psychic and physical capacities.
  If physically you are badly built, badly set up, it will be difficult for you, even with good training, to do gymnastics as well as one with a beautiful well-built body. It is the same with the mindone who has a well-organised mind, complex, complete, refined, will express himself much better than one who has a rather mediocre or badly organised mind. First of all, you must educate your consciousness, become conscious of yourself, organise your consciousness according to your ideal, but at the same time do not neglect the instruments which are in your body.

1951-01-20 - Developing the mind. Misfortunes, suffering; developed reason. Knowledge and pure ideas., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is a question of a difference of consciousness. In some it is the external states of consciousness which are most developed; others, on the contrary, have taken care to develop the higher states of consciousness. So, to say each one bears his cross is true of the external consciousness (of material happenings, happenings which touch the vital being, the emotional being and the mental being); for such people there will always be a considerable number of catastrophes, all the more because catastrophes seem to be proportionate to the capacity of the individual, they seem to be dealt out according to his capacity to bear things. It may just be that those who have greater capacities have an over-plus of suffering and misfortune.
  But there are people who are above all misfortune and yet misfortunes exist for them. Why? Because the inner consciousness in them is stronger, more developed than the other consciousness (I do not speak here of transformed beings, for in them one can visualise a state of things in which even the physical being is above suffering; we are speaking of men as they are at present). If your consciousness is seated in a place where these external things do not exist, then it may be said that you do not bear your cross because you are above it. Yet there are exceptions, there are human beings who are above afflictions, yet carry their cross. How can we reconcile these two apparently contradictory things?

1951-01-25 - Needs and desires. Collaboration of the vital, mind an accomplice. Progress and sincerity - recognising faults. Organising the body - illness - new harmony - physical beauty., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  During the last war, it was proved that the body was capable of enduring such suffering as is normally impossible to endure. You have surely read or heard these stories of war in which the body was made to suffer and endure terrible things, and it withstood all that, it proved that it had almost inexhaustible capacities of endurance. Some people happened to be under conditions that should have killed them; if they survived, it was because they had in them a very strong will to survive and the body obeyed that will.
  In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it the perfect proportions and the ideal beauty of form.

1951-02-19 - Exteriorisation- clairvoyance, fainting, etc - Somnambulism - Tartini - childrens dreams - Nightmares - gurus protection - Mind and vital roam during sleep, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You are speaking of a somnambulist? But that is quite another thing. This means that the part which goes out (whether a part of the mind or a part of the vital) is so strongly attached to the body, or rather that the body is so attached to this part, that when this part decides to do something the body follows it automatically. In your inner being you decide to do a certain thing and your body is so closely tied to your inner being that without thinking of it, without wanting to do so, without making any effort, it follows and does the same thing. Note that in this matter, the physical body has capacities it would not have in the ordinary waking condition. For instance, it is well known that one can walk in dangerous places where one would find it rather difficult to walk in the waking state. The body follows the consciousness of the inner being and its own consciousness is asleep for the body has a consciousness. All the parts of the being, including the most material, have an independent consciousness. Hence when you go to sleep dead tired, when your physical body needs rest absolutely, your physical consciousness sleeps, while the consciousness of your subtle physical body or your vital or of your mind does not sleep, it continues its activity; but your physical consciousness is separated from the body, it is asleep in a state of unconsciousness, and then the part which does not sleep, which is active, uses the body without the physical consciousness as intermediary and makes it do things directly. That is how one becomes a somnambulist. According to my experience, the waking consciousness goes to sleep for some reason or other (usually due to fatigue), but the inner being is awake, and the body is so tied to it that it follows it automatically. That is why you do fantastic things, because you do not see them physically, you see them in a different way.
   It is said that somnambulism is due to serious preoccupations and cares. Is this true? Tartini composed a sonata in this state, and when he got up in the morning, he wrote down the whole thing.

1951-03-08 - Silencing the mind - changing the nature - Reincarnation- choice - Psychic, higher beings gods incarnating - Incarnation of vital beings - the Lord of Falsehood - Hitler - Possession and madness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Hitler was a very good medium, he had great mediumistic capacities, but he lacked intelligence and discrimination. This being could tell him anything whatever and he swallowed it all. It was he who pushed Hitler little by little. And he was doing this as a distraction, he did not take life seriously. For these beings men are very tiny things with whom they play, as a cat plays with a mouse, till finally they eat them up.
   Are mentally deranged people possessed?

1951-03-10 - Fairy Tales- serpent guarding treasure - Vital beings- their incarnations - The vital being after death - Nightmares- vital and mental - Mind and vital after death - The spirit of the form- Egyptian mummies, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are people who spend their life organising their mind. I have known some who had made of their mind a kind of fortress, a huge construction (I am speaking of people who had uncommon mental capacities). They had made of their mind quite a big edifice, very powerful and of such a fixity, with such solid walls that they had lost all contact with the outer mental world: they lived completely within their own construction and all the phenomena of their consciousness were of their own making they had no longer any contact with the outside mental world. They retained contact with their own vital and their body, in a way, but all the phenomena of their consciousness were lodged within their mental construction they could no longer get out of it. Well, this happens very strongly to people who seek for a spiritual life through the classical methods of a renunciation of the material consciousness, a concentration on their inner being and identification with it. If I gave you the names of some, you would be quite astonished. They construct for themselves a conception in which one finds all the gradations of the mind, a construction so solid and so fixed that they become imprisoned within it and when they believe they have reached the supreme Truth, they have only reached the centre of their own mental construction.
   And they have all the experiences they used to foresee: the experience of liberation, the experience of going out of the body, the experience of identification with the Supreme, all, all, but all of their own making; this has no contact with the universal reality. Then if someone touches it, if for some reason or other someone has the power to touch it or simply to make a breach in one of the walls, at first they are completely upset, then they come to regard the force that could do this as a force of terrible destruction, a manifestation of a hostile force of the worst kind!
  --
   But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being. Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the mental around the psychic being that they remain that happens once in ten million cases, it is very exceptional. Take the case of a philosopher or a writer who has worked considerably in his brain, tried to organise it; that then persists, but as a capacity to think, nothing else. There are these capacities of thinking which persist after death and they try naturally to find another physical brain in which to manifest. It is in this way that the mind of a great thinker may identify itself with another mind and be able to express itself.
   From the vital point of view, take the case of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well then, his hands, for instance, are so individualised in their ability to play, that they can persist subtly even after death, with their form, a form analogous to the old physical form. They float in the vital world and are attracted by people who have similar capacities; they try to become identified with them. A person who is sensitive enough, receptive enough, can become identified with these hands and execute wonderful things, profit by all the individualisation of the past life of these hands.
   Does the same phenomenon occur in the case of scientists when the results of their work are realised some time after their death?

1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There we are. When you are at school, you must become the concentration which tries to catch what the teacher is saying, or the thought which enters you or the knowledge you are given. That is what you must be. You must not think of yourself but only of what you want to learn. And you will see that your capacities will immediately be doubled.
   What gives most the feeling of inferiority, of limitation, smallness, impotence, is always this turning back upon oneself, this shutting oneself up in the bounds of a microscopic ego. One must widen oneself, open the doors. And the best way is to be able to concentrate upon what one is doing instead of concentrating upon oneself.

1951-05-11 - Mahakali and Kali - Avatar and Vibhuti - Sachchidananda behind all states of being - The power of will - receiving the Divine Will, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I believe I have already told you once that there are the original beings in their higher reality and these are of a particular kind; then, as they manifest in more and more material regions, nearer and nearer the earth, they assume different forms and also multiply in a strange way. If you like, the beings Sri Aurobindo speaks of here belong to regions quite close to the Supermind, they are still in quite a clear and conscious contact with the supramental origin. These beings manifest also in what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind and there the form becomes as it were more marked, a little more precise and at the same time reduced in power and capacity. Then, from the Overmind they come down into the human mind, the terrestrial mind and there Take for instance this poor Mahakali; you have a multitude of Kalis, one more horrible than another; some are absolutely terrifying and horrifying, and they sometimes become quite repulsive beings who are exclusively human formations, that is, the outer form is given by human imagination, by the human minds capacity of formation. There may be within that a vague reflection of the force of Mahakali, but it is so diminished, deformed, dwarfed, brought within the range of human consciousness, that truly she can very well deny that it is she! I have seen all possible horrors by way of images representing Mahakali. Of the images we wont speak. If great artists have made them perhaps some beauty is still left, but as they are generally daubers, nothing remains. As for the images (statues or pictures) which have to be installed in a temple, a religious ceremony is performed, and if the priest or the assistant is a man with occult powers, even limited ones, he can, with his aspiration and through the ritual, bring a supraterrestrial consciousness into these forms. That is the principle; you are told, This is not a piece of wood, this is not a stone, this is not a picture; there is within it a force which the religious ritual has brought down and to this you may speak. This is right, but the nature of the priest must be known, his occult knowledge and also the forces with which he has an affinity. So, there may be many things in there. There is something (unless it is a stupid ignoramus who has performed the ceremony, one who has no power at all, has brought down nothing, made only a show but this is rather rare; I cant say it happens frequently, it is quite rare), generally there is something, but then the nature, the quality of this something, you know this varies infinitely and it is sometimes a little disturbing. I gave the example of Mahakali, because the conception of Mahakali in the human consciousness is especially horrible. When one goes to other divinities like Mahasaraswati, for instance, to whom all kinds of artistic, literary and other capacities are ascribed, it is no longer so terrible. But Mahakali particularly Their conception of power, force, warlike energy is so terrible that what they bring down is indeed a little dangerous for those who worship it. I have heard innumerable stories since my coming to India. I have been put in touch with innumerable images and have known many people who had in their homes a Kali they worshipped and to whom, sometimes, quite dreadful things had happened. I always put them on their guard, I told them, Dont think at all that Mahakali is responsible for your misfortunes, for she is not responsible for them. But it is likely that the Kali you have in your home must be harbouring some vindictive being, probably one very jealous, extremely wilful and with a very strong spirit of vengeance, and as you have faith and as it is generally a vital power, there may be truly dangerous consequences. I have known people who, after having had all kinds of unfortunate experiences, have taken the statue of Mahakali and thrown it into the Ganges. If at the same time they could acquire a certain freedom of spirit, all the damage would disappear, but some of them are so frightened of what they have done that the bad effects continue.
   These things should never be touched unless one has at least the first elements of occult knowledge. Unfortunately, in religionsall religions, not only here but everywhereknowledge is never given to the faithful. Sometimes the priests have it (I dont say always), but when they have it they take good care not to give it to the faithful, for that would deprive them of their authority and power, and that really is the evil behind all religious institutions.

1953-09-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But the mind is a big preacher, that is its nature: it gives speeches, sermons, as it is done in the churches. So the vital usually gets impatient and answers the mind, not very politely: You are a nuisance! what you say is very good for you, but for me it wont do. Or, at the best, when the mind is gifted with especially remarkable capacities and the vital is of a little higher kind, it may say: Oh! how beautiful it is, what you tell me (sometimes this happens), but you see, I, I am unable to do it; it is very beautiful, but it is beyond my capacity.
   But this vital is a strange creature. It is a being of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but, for example, it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well, it may get enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with complete devotionwith a generosity that is not found, for example, in the mental domain nor in the physical. It has that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and when the vital becomes passionate about something, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior; it is wholly involved in its action and can perform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say One must take precautions, one must not do this, must not do that. It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magnificent things if it is guided in the right way.

1953-10-07, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A mental aspiration means that the thought-power aspires to have knowledge, for instance, or else to have the power to express itself well or have clear ideas, a logical reasoning. One may aspire for many things; that all the faculties and capacities of the mind may be developed and placed at the service of the Divine. This is a mental aspiration.
   Or you may have an aspiration in the vital; if you have desires or troubles, storms, inner difficulties, you may aspire for peace, to be quite impartial, without desire or preference, to be a good docile instrument without any personal whims, always at the Divines disposal. This is a vital aspiration.

1953-11-04, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Naturally, there is a state in which one may be perfectly pure, perfectly wise, and be in contact with the Divine! But then, that means that one has reached a certain degree of perfection and lost the sense of ones personal importance and personal worth. I believe thats most important. The greatest obstacle to the contact with the Divine is pride and the sense of ones personal worth, ones personal capacities, personal power theperson becomes very big, so big that there is no place for the Divine.
   No, the one truly important thing is the intensity of the aspiration. And this intensity of aspiration comes in all kinds of circumstances.

1953-11-25, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   One day God decided to exteriorise himself, objectivise himself, in order to have the joy of knowing himself in detail. So, first of all, he emanated his consciousness (that is to say, he manifested his consciousness) by ordering this consciousness to realise a universe. This consciousness began by emanating four beings, four individualities which were indeed altogether very high beings, of the highest Reality. They were the being of consciousness, the being of love (of Ananda rather), the being of life and the being of light and knowledge but consciousness and light are the same thing. There we are then: consciousness, love and Ananda, life and truthtruth, thats the exact word. And naturally, they were supremely powerful beings, you understand. They were what are called in that tradition the first emanations, that is, the first formations. And each one became very conscious of its qualities, its power, its capacities, its possibilities, and, suddenly forgot each in its own way that it was only an emanation and an incarnation of the Supreme. And so this is what happened: when light or Consciousness separated from the divine Consciousness, that is, when it began to think it was the divine Consciousness and that there was nothing other than itself, it suddenly became obscurity and inconscience. And when Life thought that all life was in itself and that there was nothing else but its life and that it did not depend at all upon the Supreme, then its life became death. And when Truth thought that it contained all truth, and that there was no other truth than itself, this Truth became falsehood. And when love or Ananda was convinced that it was the supreme Ananda and that there was no other than itself and its felicity, it became suffering. And that is how the world, which was to have been so beautiful, became so ugly. Now, that consciousness (if you like to call it the Divine Mother, the Supreme Consciousness), when she saw this she was very disturbed, you may be sure, she said to herself: This has really not succeeded. So she turned back to the Divine, to God, the Supreme, and she asked him to come to her aid. She said to him: This is what has happened. Now what is to be done? He said: Begin again, but try to manage in such a way that the beings do not become so independent! They must remain in contact with you, and through you with me. And it was thus that she created the gods, who were quite docile and not so proud, and who began the creation of the world. But as the others had come before them, at every step the gods met the others. And it was in this way that the world changed into a battlefield, a place of war, strife, suffering, darkness and all the rest, and for each new creation the gods had to fight with the others who had gone ahead: they had preceded them, they had plunged headlong into matter; and they had created all this disorder and the gods had to put straight all this confusion. That is where the gods came from. They are the second emanations.
   Mother, the first four who changed, was it by chance or was it deliberately?

1954-02-10 - Study a variety of subjects - Memory -Memory of past lives - Getting rid of unpleasant thoughts, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  What is the method of increasing the capacities of expansion and widening?
  I say there that a great variety of subjects should be studied. I believe that is it. For instance, if you are at school, to study all the subjects possible. If you are reading at home, not to read just one kind of thing, read all sorts of different things.
  --
  Yet spontaneously, people who wish to keep their balance rest from one activity and take up another. Examples are always cited of great performers or great artists or great scientists who have a kind of mania, a diversion. You have perhaps heard of Ingress violin. Ingres was a painter; he did not lack talent and when he had some free time he started playing the violin, and his violin interested him much more than his painting. It seems he did not play the violin very well but it interested him more. And his painting he did very well and it interested him less. But believe that was quite simply because he needed balance. Concentration on a single thing in order to attain ones aim is very necessary for the human mind in its normal functioning, but one can arrive at a different working thats more complete, more subtle. Naturally, physically one is bound to be limited, for in physical life one depends a great deal on time and space, and also it is difficult to realise great things without special concentration. But if one wants to lead a higher and deeper life, I believe one can acquire perhaps much greater capacities by other means than those of restriction and limitation. There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of ones limits, if not from the point of view of realisation in action, at least from that of spiritual realisation.
  Why do we forget things?

1954-03-03 - Occultism - A French scientists experiment, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  This is a domain about which I have so far refrained from speaking to you, for one must be already very conscious of oneself, have a good mastery over ones reflexes and be above all fear, preciselyabove all possibility of fear, in order to be able to enter upon it. It is a knowledge which in the modern world is hardly recognised as scientific, but it is scientific in the see that it has exact processes and that if the circumstances are correctly reproduced, the same results are obtained. It is a progressive science and one can devote oneself to it, can make quite a regular progress, as logical as in all the sciences that are acknowledged as such in modern times. But this one concerns a reality or certain realities, which do not belong to the most material domain. One needs special capacities and a special development to be conscious in that domain, for it escapes our ordinary senses.
  We have subtle senses; even as we have a physical body, we have other more subtle bodies which also have senses, and much more refined senses, much more precise and much more powerful than our physical senses. But naturally, as it is not customary in modern education to work in these domains, these things generally escape our ordinary knowledge. Yet children spontaneously live a great deal in this domain. They see things which are as real for them as physical things, they speak about them and they are usually told that they are stupid because they speak of things others dont see but which are as true for them, as tangible and real as what can be seen by everyone. Their dreams have an intensity and a capital importance in their life, and it is only with intensive mental growth that those capacities diminish. Now, there are people who have the good luck to be born with a spontaneous development, with inner sees, and nothing can prevent them from remaining awake. If these people meet in good time someone who can help them in a methodical development, they can become very interesting instruments for the study and discovery of this occult world. In all ages there have been initiatory schools, which took up these particularly talented people and educated them in this kind of science. These schools were always more or less secret or hidden, for ordinary men are quite intolerant of those capacities which are beyond them and disturb them. But there were fine periods in human history when these schools were recognised and much appreciated and respected, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, ancient India, and even partially in Greece and Rome. There were always schools of initiation, even in mediaeval Europe, but there they had to be very carefully hidden, for they were pursued and persecuted by the official Christian religion, and if perchance it was discovered that such and such men or women were practising these occult sciences, they were tied to the stake and burnt alive as sorcerers! In our times this knowledge is almost lost; there are only a very few people who have it; but with mental growth the intolerance also has gone. People dont like these things very muchthey are disturbed, annoyed by them but still they are obliged to admit that these things are not crimes and people practising occultism are no longer burnt at the stake or imprisoned. Only, there are many people who claim to know but there are very few who do know. In any case, before entering upon this study, one must have, as I told you at the beginning, a very great self-mastery, must have attained a kind of abnegation, a self-forgetfulness, an egolessness, a disinterestedness and see of sacrifice which enables one to practise this without any danger. For, if you keep all egoistic or passionate movements, full of desires, you are sure, in the practice of this science, to meet with accidents which may have fatal consequences. As I said at the beginning, the absolutely indispensable condition is to have an intrepidity which does not allow any fear to enter into you. For this has been very often said, and it is quite true, that when you enter the invisible realm, the first things you meet are literally terrifying. If you have no fear, there is no danger, but the least fear puts you into danger. So, before anybody at all was allowed to practise this science, for a very long time, sometimes for years, the novice was submitted to a discipline, which gave him the assurance that he could practise it without experiencing the least fear and without any danger. That is why, my children, I have never spoken to you about it. This article was not specially for you the Bulletin goes to the whole world and it can reach here and there people who are prepared. But still, because it is written, I am telling you about it this evening, and I tell you that if anyone among you feels a special inclination, possesses special faculties and is ready to overcome every weakness, all egoism and all fear, I am ready to help him on the way and reveal these secrets to him. Voil!
  Now, you will have to be a little more mature for me to undertake this task.

1954-07-07 - The inner warrior - Grace and the Falsehood - Opening from below - Surrender and inertia - Exclusive receptivity - Grace and receptivity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is the vital being when it is converted. The vital turned completely to the Divine is like a warrior. It has even the appearance of a warrior. The vital is the place of power and it is this power which impels it to fight, which can fight and conquer, and of all things this is the most difficult, for it is precisely these very qualities of fighting which create in the vital the see of revolt, independence, the will to carry out its own will. But if the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the divine Will, then these fighting capacities are turned against the anti-divine forces and against all the darkness which prevents their transformations. And they are all-powerful and can conquer the adversaries. The anti-divine forces are in the vital world; from there, naturally, they have spread out into the physical, but their true seat is in the vital world, and it is the converted vital force which has the true power to vanquish them. But of all things this conversion is the most difficult.
  What are subterfuges?

1954-12-22 - Possession by hostile forces - Purity and morality - Faith in the final success -Drawing back from the path, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There are beings of the vital, but of a higher kind, emanations of Asuras, for example, who have decided for one reason or another that they would try to be converted, not to be anti-divine, and manage to enter into relation with the Divine. They know that the best way is to identify themselves with a human body in order to be under the control of a psychic being. And they incarnate in human bodies, but not with the intention of driving out the psychic being, on the contrary, to try to submit to the influence of the psychic being and be converted by it. These cases also are not frequent, but still they have been known, and in these cases these human beings are gifted with very exceptional capacities, but usually they also have very exceptional difficulties, because the power which has incarnated in them is one which was, at least, if it is not still so, a hostile power; and, you see, it is difficult to get rid of all these movements of revolt immediately; sometimes it takes a whole lifetime to succeed in doing it.
  Some of these asuric beings have tried to convert themselves and not succeeded. They ought to have left the body they had chosen, because they could not convert themselves. It was too difficult a task for them, it demanded too great an effort.

1955-06-08 - Working for the Divine - ideal attitude - Divine manifesting - reversal of consciousness, knowing oneself - Integral progress, outer, inner, facing difficulties - People in Ashram - doing Yoga - Children given freedom, choosing yoga, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There is always a consciousness there acting constantly to rectify the situation, which puts you all the time in the presence of obstacles which prevent you from advancing, make you bump against your own errors and your own blindnesses. And this acts only for those who have decided to do the yoga. For others the Consciousness acts like a light, a knowledge, a protection, a force of progress, so that they may reach their maximum capacities and be able to develop as far as possible in an atmosphere as favourable as possible-but leaving them completely free in their choice.
  The decision must come from within. Those who come consciously for the yoga, knowing what yoga is, well, their conditions of living here are... outwardly there is no difference but inwardly there is a very great difference. There is a kind of absoluteness in the consciousness, which does not let them deviate from the path: the errors one commits become immediately visible with consequences strong enough for one not to be able to make any mistake about it, and things become very serious. But it is not often like that.

1955-10-12 - The problem of transformation - Evolution, man and superman - Awakening need of a higher good - Sri Aurobindo and earths history - Setting foot on the new path - The true reality of the universe - the new race - ..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Perfect! Perfect in comparison with us but not in comparison with what will come later. The world is in perpetual movement and perpetual progression, and it is very obvious that each time a new consciousness has manifested upon earth, one has felt that it would be perhaps not a definitive realisation but in any case a considerable progress. And it is also very obvious that for say, the consciousness of an elephant or a dog human capacities are something absolutely marvellous. To the extent they are able to understand it, imagine it, sense itdogs sense themhuman faculties are for them something divine. And it is because we, indeed, have come to a stage where we perceive something beyond (thats what I have said in there, havent I?), its because of this that we are not satisfied with all that we do; its because of this that there is the feeling that whatever we may do, there is something which escapes us that the real thing escapes us, that we are turning round it but dont touch it. Its because we are ready for this something. Otherwise, if we did not understand that, we would be absolutely satisfied with what we can do and there would simply remain the effort to do it better and better. It is the beginning of a new expression. This need, for instance, of something which would be more essentially true; something which would be on which one could count, which does not collapse when one leans upon it, something which gives us a lasting, permanent support; this need of eternity which we have in ourselves, this need of an absolute, of an absolute truth, an absolute good, an absolute beautythis indeed awakens at the moment one is ready to receive a new consciousness.
  It is certain that for a very long time, perhaps from the very beginning (not the beginning from the evolutionary standpoint, because there were periods of intermediate beings who were much nearer the animal than the true man), when this human form was developed enough and ready to receive something from above, when the first beings of the higher worlds incarnated in human forms, from that time there were always individuals who carried in themselves this need for eternity and the absolute. But it was something individual. And it is only gradually and very progressively, through consecutive periods of light and darkness, that in the whole of humanity something has awakened to the need of a higher good.
  --
  Well, there was a time when what we call the human form, that is, with human capacities, was ready enough for a being with mental consciousness, entirely conscious, to be able to incarnate in itand this indeed was truly the first man. Now, historically at what time this happened I cant tell you; but it was a very long time ago. Sometime ago I came across some numbers, which seemed to me to be absolutely reasonable and accurate but that was extremely long ago. And for a very long time it was like a kind of vast and quiet state, as when the sea has reached high-tide and spreads out and is calm. It remained calm like that for a very, very, very, very long time; and it was only after very long that what we call human activity and human civilisation began to take place, and for this, even from the beginning of this till today we have figures, havent we, approximately? (turning to Pavitra) Pavitra, do you know them?
  (Pavitra) I dont remember them now.

1955-12-07 - Emotional impulse of self-giving - A young dancer in France - The heart has wings, not the head - Only joy can conquer the Adversary, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And then, what is quite miraculous according to ordinary ideas is that as soon as they reach that degree of consecration which identifies them through their psychic being with the Divine Presence, suddenly they become endowed with capacities of expression absolutely unknown to their nature.
  I had a case like this in France, a long time ago, of a young, very young girl who had never had any education so to say, any instruction; she was an Opera dancer, a very good one, and had been put to study there at the age of eight, as they are always put, that is, as a child; and she had learnt to dance instead of learning history, geography, mathematics and the rest. She almost did not know how to express herself, and her intelligence, though evident, was untrained. Well, she was attracted like that and felt an imperious need to seek the Divine, to consecrate herself to Him. And she began to dance in His honour at first, like the juggler of Notre Dame; and she truly danced most remarkably. And then, suddenly, she wanted to express what she was feeling: she began writing letters which were wonderfully poetic; she said surprising things and in a still more surprising way; page followed page, and she wrote all with an extraordinary facility.

1956-01-11 - Desire and self-deception - Giving all one is and has - Sincerity, more powerful than will - Joy of progress Definition of youth, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Someone wrote to me saying that he was very unhappy, for he longed to have wonderful capacities to put at the disposal of the Divine, for the Realisation, for the Work; and that he also longed to have immense riches to be able to give them, to put them at the feet of the Divine for the Work. So I replied to him that he need not be unhappy, that each one is asked to give what he has, that is, all his possessions whatever they may be, and what he is, that is, all his potentialitieswhich corresponds to the consecration of ones life and the giving of all ones possessionsand that nothing more than this is asked. What you are, give that; what you have, give that, and your gift will be perfect; from the spiritual point of view it will be perfect. This does not depend upon the amount of wealth you have or the number of capacities in your nature; it depends upon the perfection of your gift, that is to say, on the totality of your gift. I remember having read, in a book of Indian legends, a story like this. There was a very poor, very old woman who had nothing, who was quite destitute, who lived in a miserable little hut, and who had been given a fruit. It was a mango. She had eaten half of it and kept the other half for the next day, because it was something so marvellous that she did not often happen to get ita mango. And then, when night fell, someone knocked at the rickety door and asked for hospitality. And this someone came in and told her he wanted shelter and was hungry. So she said to him, Well, I have no fire to warm you, I have no blanket to cover you, and I have half a mango left, that is all I have, if you want it; I have eaten half of it. And it turned out that this someone was Shiva, and that she was filled with an inner glory, for she had made a perfect gift of herself and all she had.
  I read that, I found it magnificent. Well, yes, this describes it vividly. Its exactly that.
  --
  I tell you, I have already answered, thats how it is. They come with the idea of taking from the Divine all they can: all the qualities, all the capacities, all the conveniences also, all the forts, everything, and sometimes even powers, and all the rest. They come to take, they dont come to give. And their show of devotion is simply a cloak they have thrown over their wish to take, to receive. That covers a wide field: from saving ones soul, having spiritual experiences, obtaining powers, to leading a petty quiet life, comfortablemore or less comfortable, at least with a minimum of comfortwithout cares, without botheration, far from the worries of life. Thats how it is. That covers a wide range. But when they give, it is a kind of bargaining; they know that to obtain these things, it would be well to give a little something, otherwise they wont get them, so they make a show of being very devoted. But it is only a pretence, for it is not sincere.
  Unfortunately for them, it deceives no one. It may be tolerated; but that doesnt mean that anybody is deceived.
  --
  The definition of youth: we can say that youth is constant growth and perpetual progressand the growth of capacities, possibilities, of the field of action and range of consciousness, and progress in the working out of details.
  Naturally, someone told me, So one is no longer young when one stops growing? I said, Of course, I dont imagine that one grows perpetually! But one can grow in another way than purely physically.

1956-05-09 - Beginning of the true spiritual life - Spirit gives value to all things - To be helped by the supramental Force, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The same holds true for the individual, whatever his material capacities and the material conditions in which he lives, his only worth is that of the divine Presence and the spiritual consciousness in him.
  And so from the point of view of the truth of things, a man who has no material possessions and no remarkable capacities or possibilities, but who is conscious of his psychic being and united with the Divine in him, is infinitely greater than a ruler upon earth or a millionaire who possesses considerable material power but is unconscious of his psychic being.
  From the point of view of the truth, it is like that. This is what Sri Aurobindo means: no apparent and outer things have any true value. The only thing which is valuable is the divine consciousness and union with the Spirit.

1956-06-13 - Effects of the Supramental action - Education and the Supermind - Right to remain ignorant - Concentration of mind - Reason, not supreme capacity - Physical education and studies - inner discipline - True usefulness of teachers, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There are those who are at the bottom and others who are at another level. There are people who may have very remarkable capacities and yet have no taste for intellectual growth. One may warn them that if they dont work, dont study, when they are grown up, they will perhaps feel embarrassed in front of others. But if that does not matter to them and they want to live a non-intellectual life, I believe one has no right to compel them. That is my constant quarrel with the teachers of the school! They come and tell me: If they dont work, when they are grown up they will be stupid and ignorant. I say: But if it pleases them to be stupid and ignorant, what right have you to interfere?
  One cant make knowledge and intelligence compulsory. Thats all.

1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  But if one confines oneself to what one can do at a given moment First of all it is impossible, for if one doesnt progress, one falls back. Therefore, one must always make a little effort to do a little more than before. Then one is on the upward path. If one is afraid of doing too much, one is sure to go down again and lose ones capacities.
  One must always try a little more, a little better than one did the day before or the previous moment. Only, the more one increases ones effort, the more should one increase ones capacity of receptivity and the opportunities to receive. For instance, from the purely physical point of view, if one wants to develop ones muscles, a progressive effort must be made by them, that is to say, a greater and greater effort, but at the same time one must do what is needed: massage, hydrotherapy, etc. to increase at the same time their capacity to receive.

1956-09-19 - Power, predominant quality of vital being - The Divine, the psychic being, the Supermind - How to come out of the physical consciousness - Look life in the face - Ordinary love and Divine love, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo says that the vital part, the vital being is the greatest obstacle because it is unregenerate, and that there would be a possibility of transforming it if it surrendered entirely to Love and Knowledge; but as its predominant quality is force, energy, power, it does not like to submit to other parts of the being, and this justifies its refusal to submit itself, for those virtues in their essence are as high as the others. That is why it has neither the same power nor the same capacities, for it is not developed, it has not surrendered, and this is what causes the dilemma: it does not submit because it has this power, and this power cannot be utilised because it is not surrendered. So, how to get out of that? The vital, if it were surrendered, would be a very powerful help, extremely useful, it would make the whole process go much more rapidly. But because it feels its own power, it refuses to submit to the others; and because it does not submit, its power cannot be utilised. So, what is to be done? Sri Aurobindo states the problemhe is going to solve it afterwards; if we continue reading, after a while he will tell us how to solve this problem but he states it first so that we may fully understand the situation.
  If the vital were a mediocre being without definite qualities, there would be no difficulty in its surrendering, but it would be altogether useless. But, on the contrary, the vital is a sort of stronghold of energy and powerof all powers. Yet generally this power is diverted; it is no longer at the service of the Divine, it is at the service of the vital itself for its own satisfaction. So, as long as it is like that, it cannot be used.

1957-04-17 - Transformation of the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  For the moment, our body is simply a doubtful improvement on the animal body, for if we have gained from a certain point of view, we have lost from another. It is certain that from the point of view of purely physical capacities many animals are superior to us. Unless by a special culture and transformation we succeed in really transforming our capacities, it could be said that from the point of view of strength and muscular power a tiger or a lion is far superior to us. From the point of view of agility a monkey is far superior to us; and, for instance, a bird can travel without needing any exterior mechanism or plane, which is not yet possible for us and so on. And we are bound by the animal necessities of the functioning of our organs; so long as we depend, for instance, on material food, on absorbing matter in such a crude form, we shall be quite inferior animals.
  Therefore, I dont want to anticipate what we are going to read, but all this purely animal functioning of our body, all this part which is exactly the same as in animal life that we depend for life on the circulation of the blood and to have blood we need to eat, and so on, and all that this implies these are terrible limitations and bondages! As long as material life depends on that, it is obvious that we wont be able to divinise our life.

1957-04-24 - Perfection, lower and higher, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its base, it joins the heights and the depths together. The Spirit descends into Matter and the material world with all its lights and glories and powers and with them fills and transforms life in the material world so that it becomes more and more divine. The transformation is not a change into something purely subtle and spiritual to which Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a form of the Spirit though now a form which conceals and turns it into a revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect.
    In the pursuit of perfection we can start at either end of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana. On the other hand, if we start in any field at the lower end we have to employ the means and processes which Life and Matter offer to us and respect the conditions and what we may call the technique imposed by the vital and the material energy. We may extend the activity, the achievement, the perfection attained beyond the initial, even beyond the normal possibilities but still we have to stand on the same base with which we started and within the boundaries it gives to us. It is not that the action from the two ends cannot meet and the higher take into itself and uplift the lower perfection; but this can usually be done only by a transition from the lower to a higher outlook, aspiration and motive: this we shall have to do if our aim is to transform the human into the divine life. But here there comes in the necessity of taking up the activities of human life and sublimating them by the power of the spirit. Here the lower perfection will not disappear; it will remain but will be enlarged and transformed by the higher perfection which only the power of the spirit can give.
  --
  And the lower perfection is to be able to make the human being in his present form and in his body, in his relation with all terrestrial things, do the utmost he can. This is the case of all great men of genius: artistic genius, literary genius, genius in organisation, the great rulers, those who have carried physical capacities to their maximum perfection, human development to the limit of its possibilities; and, for instance, all those who have complete control over their bodies and succeed in doing miraculous things, as we saw, for example, during the war, with the airmen: they made their bodies do things which at first sight seemed quite impossible, they obtained from them an endurance, a skill, a power which were almost unthinkable. And from every point of view: from the point of view of physical strength, of intellectual realisation, of the physical qualities of energy and courage, of disinterestedness, goodness, charity; all human qualities carried to their utmost limits. That is the lower perfection.
  The higher perfection is spiritual and super-human. The lower perfection is human perfection carried to its maximum limits, and this may be quite independent of all spiritual life, all spiritual aspiration. One can be a genius without having any spiritual aspiration. One can have all the most extraordinary moral qualities without having any spiritual life. And even, usually, those who have a very great power of human realisation are satisfiedmore or less satisfiedwith their condition. They feel they are self-sufficient, that they carry in themselves the source of their realisation and their joy, and it is usually very difficult to make them understand and feel that they are not the creators of their own creations, whatever they may be. Most of them, with very rare exceptions, if they were told, You are not the originator of this work you are doing, it is a force higher than you and you are only its instrument, they would dislike it very much and they will send you about your business! Therefore, these two perfections are really divergent in ordinary life. It was said in the old yoga that the first condition for doing yoga was to be disgusted with life. But those who have realised this human perfection are very rarely disgusted with life, unless they have met with personal difficulties such as the ingratitude of people around them, the lack of understanding of their genius which was not sufficiently appreciatedso all this disgusts them, but92@ otherwise, so long as they are in their period of success and creation, they are perfectly satisfied. So, as they are satisfiedabove all, self-satisfied they dont need to seek anything else.

1957-05-15 - Differentiation of the sexes - Transformation from above downwards, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Obviously, if you are a thorough-going materialist, you will say that it is the development of the form which brings out new capacities; but still, this is not quite correct, it is not exactly like this that things usually happen, and I challenge you to transform your body before your mind has been transformed. Just try, let us see!
  You cannot move a finger, say a word, walk one step without the minds intervention; so with what instrument are you going to transform your body if your mind is not already transformed?

1957-05-29 - Progressive transformation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  As soon as this opening occurs, one passes beyond the state in which life is purely physicalwhen I say physical I include the whole mental and intellectual life and all human achievements, even the most remarkable; I am speaking of a physical which is the summit of human capacities, of an earthly and material life in which man can express values of a higher order from the mental and intellectual point of viewone can go beyond that state, open oneself to the supramental force which is now acting on earth and enter a transitional zone where the two influences meet and interpenetrate, where the consciousness is still mental and intellectual in its functioning, but sufficiently imbued with the supramental strength and force to become the instrument of a higher truth.
  At present this state can be realised on earth by those who have prepared themselves to receive the supramental force which is manifesting. And in that state, in that state of consciousness, the body can benefit from a much better condition than the one it was in before. It can be put into direct contact with the essential truth of its being, to the extent that, spontaneously, at every moment it knows instinctively, or intuitively, what is to be done and that it can do it.

1957-07-31 - Awakening aspiration in the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When one is very young and as I say well-born, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is always, in the dreams of the child, a kind of aspiration, which for its childs consciousness is a sort of ambition, for something which would be beauty without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a conscious, constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles when one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily. This is what one should rely on. When the body feels its miseries, its limitations, one must establish this dream in itof a strength which would have no limit, a beauty which would have no ugliness, and of marvellous capacities: one dreams of being able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick; indeed, one has all sorts of dreams when one is very young. Usually parents or teachers pass their time throwing cold water on it, telling you, Oh! its a dream, it is not a reality. They should do the very opposite! Children should be taught, Yes, this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible but it is certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life, organise it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion.
  This is what it should be, instead of making children ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in the being the idea: Oh, that wont last!, when somebody is kind, the impression, Oh, he will change!, when one is capable of doing something, Oh, tomorrow I wont be able to do it so well. This is like an acid, a destructive acid in the being, which takes away hope, certitude, confidence in future possibilities.

1957-09-18 - Occultism and supramental life, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And the capacities will also increase, wont they?
   capacities? You take occultism in the sense of the power to act on life and things, as a process, but that is not occultism, that is magic.
  --
  Ah! Well, I am convinced that even in the most perfect supramental realisation there will always be a differentiation between the capacities and functions of each one; but instead of being or not being in ones right place, of doing or not doing what one ought to do, unconsciously, one will be in ones right place I hope always in ones place and will always do what one ought to do, consciously. That is, instead of always trying to know and groping in the dark, one will know what one ought to do and do it well. But that is the whole difference. Differentiations will be there, each one will have his own role, his own place, each one will have his own activity. Dont think that everybody will begin to look alike and do the same thing in the same way! That would be a terrible world.
  We could say that the difference between the supramental world and our present world will be this: what you dont know, you will know, what you cant do, you will be able to do, and what you dont understand, you will understand, and of what you are unconscious, you will become conscious. But fundamentally this is the basis of the new creation: to replace ignorance by knowledge and unconsciousness by consciousness, and weakness by strength. But this does not necessarily mean that everything is going to be so mixed up that it is scarcely recognisable!

1957-11-13 - Superiority of man over animal - Consciousness precedes form, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Certainly from the point of view of strength, of suppleness, of agility, man is not the most gifted of animals, but for expressing the Spirit no other animal can be compared with him. Everything is made with this in view. We may wish to add to this possibility other things which seem to have been sacrificed just for the sake of the mental life but also precisely because of this capacity of expressing a mental life man is able to develop in himself faculties which are only latent. Man has a power to educate: his body can be developed, educated. He can increase certain faculties. You cannot imagine any animal, even among those we most admire, which is capable, for instance, of physical education, purely physical I am not speaking of going to school or learning things, but purely physical education, a systematic development of the muscles. The animal is born and makes good use of what it has and it grows according to its own law, but it does not educate itself or does it in a very rudimentary way, in an extremely limited field; whereas by a normal and systematic development man can remedy his defects and shortcomings. Man is certainly, in an organised way, the first progressive animal who can augment his capacities, his possibilities, increase his faculties and acquire things that he did not have spontaneously. There is not one animal which can do that.
  Yes, under mans influence some animals have learnt movements they did not make spontaneously, but that is still under mans influence. Certainly without men dogs or horses would never have learnt to do what they have learnt through contact with man. So, it is obvious that the human physical form is the most appropriate one for expressing the Spirit. It may seem inadequate to us, but precisely we feel we are capable of drawing out from our bodies more than they would have given spontaneously without an educating will. And with this possibility of expressing intelligence, observation, comprehension, deductionall the mental qualitiesman has gradually learnt to understand the laws of Nature and tried not only to understand them but master them.

1958-03-19 - General tension in humanity - Peace and progress - Perversion and vision of transformation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Next, it may be conceded that each type or pattern of consciousness and being in the body, once established, has to be faithful to the law of being of that type, to its own design and rule of nature. But it may also very well be that part of the law of the human type is its impulse towards self-exceeding, that the means for a conscious transition has been provided for among the spiritual powers of man; the possession of such a capacity may be a part of the plan on which the creative Energy has built him. It may be conceded that what man has up till now principally done is to act within the circle of his nature, on a spiral of nature-movement, sometimes descending, sometimes ascending,there has been no straight line of progress, no indisputable, fundamental or radical exceeding of his past nature: what he has done is to sharpen, subtilise, make a more and more complex and plastic use of his capacities. It cannot truly be said that there has been no such thing as human progress since mans appearance or even in his recent ascertainable history; for however great the ancients, however supreme some of their achievements and creations, however impressive their powers of spirituality, of intellect or of character, there has been in later developments an increasing subtlety, complexity, manifold development of knowledge and possibility in mans achievements, in his politics, society, life, science, metaphysics, knowledge of all kinds, art, literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been falls from a high type of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into a barbaric natural materialism; but these are temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve of the spiral of progress. This progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and increasing complexity till it is ready for her bursting of the shell, the ripened decisive emergence, reversal, turning over of consciousness on itself that constitutes a new stage in the evolution. If it be supposed that her next step is the spiritual and supramental being, the stress of spirituality in the race may be taken as a sign that that is Natures intention, the sign too of the capacity of man to operate in himself or aid her to operate the transition. If the appearance in animal being of a type similar in some respects to the ape-kind but already from the beginning endowed with the elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being.
    The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 841-42

1958-07-23 - How to develop intuition - Concentration, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we dont notice them because we dont pay enough attention to what is going on in us.
  Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified.

1958-09-10 - Magic, occultism, physical science, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Listen, if you are not an artist, you may work for years with paint-brushes, colours, canvases, and spend much money and much effort, and yet produce horrible things. If you are not a musician, you may labour hard for hours at playing the piano and you will never do anything worthwhile. Special qualities are always needed. Why, even for an athleteif you are not born an athlete, you may try as hard as you like, you will only succeed in doing something quite mediocre and ordinary. It will be better than someone who does not try at all, but that does not mean that you are automatically going to succeed. Besides, if we go a step further, everyone has countless possibilities within him of which he is unaware and which develop only if he does what is to be done in the way it should be done. But there are two types of progress, not only one; there is the progress that consists in perfecting more and more the capacities, possibilities, faculties and qualities you havethis is what is normally obtained by education; but if you go in for a little more thorough development by approaching a deeper truth, you can add, to the qualities you already have, other new ones which seem to be asleep in your being.
  You can multiply your possibilities, enlarge and increase them; you can suddenly bring up something you did not think you had. I have already explained this to you several times. When one discovers ones psychic being within, at the same time there develop and manifest, quite unexpectedly, things one could not do at all before and which one didnt think were in ones nature. Of this too I have had numerous examples. I have given you this one, but I am repeating it to you once more to make myself understood.

1958-10-22 - Spiritual life - reversal of consciousness - Helping others, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  To live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness is needed. This cannot be compared in any way with the different faculties or possibilities one has in the mental field. It may be said of someone that he hasnt much mental, vital or physical capacity, that his possibilities are very limited; in that case it may be asked how these capacities may be developed, that is, how new ones may be acquired, which is something rather difficult. But to live the spiritual life is to open to another world within oneself. It is to reverse ones consciousness, as it were. The ordinary human consciousness, even in the most developed, even in men of great talent and great realisation, is a movement turned outwardsall the energies are directed outwards, the whole consciousness is spread outwards; and if anything is turned inwards, it is very little, very rare, very fragmentary, it happens only under the pressure of very special circumstances, violent shocks, the shocks life gives precisely with the intention of slightly reversing this movement of exteriorisation of the consciousness.
  But all who have lived a spiritual life have had the same experience: all of a sudden something in their being has been reversed, so to speak, has been turned suddenly and sometimes completely inwards, and also at the same time upwards, from within upwards but it is not an external above, it is within, deep, something other than the heights as they are physically conceived. Something has literally been turned over. There has been a decisive experience and the standpoint in life, the way of looking at life, the attitude one takes in relation to it, has suddenly changed, and in some cases quite definitively, irrevocably.
  And as soon as one is turned towards the spiritual life and reality, one touches the Infinite, the Eternal, and there can no longer be any question of a greater or smaller number of capacities or possibilities. It is the mental conception of spiritual life which may say that one has more or less capacity to live spiritually, but this is not at all an adequate statement. What may be said is that one is more or less ready for the decisive and total reversal. In reality, it is the mental capacity to withdraw from ordinary activities and to set out in search of the spiritual life which can be measured.
  But so long as one is in the mental field, in this state, as it were, on this plane of consciousness, one cant do much for others, either for life in general or for particular individuals, because one doesnt have the certitude oneself, one doesnt have the definitive experience, the consciousness has not been established in the spiritual world; and all that can be said is that they are mental activities which have their good and bad sides, but not much power and, in any case, not this power of spiritual contagion which is the only truly effective power.

1960 11 13? - 50, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Take, for example, a person who has friends, whose friends are very fond of her because they see special capacities in her, because it is pleasant to be in her company, one can always learn from her. Then all of a sudden, by a concurrence of circumstances, this person is shunned by society because she has been with another man or because she is living with someone else without being officially married, in short, because of all these social things which have no value in themselves. And all her friends I am not speaking of those who truly loved herall her acquaintances, all those who received her kindly, who welcomed her and greeted her with a warm smile when they met her in the street, now turn their heads the other way and walk right past her without a glancethis has happened even here in the Ashram! I do not want to give any details, but anyway, several times something happened which contravened accepted social laws, and people who had shown so much affection and sympathyoh, they would sometimes say, This person is lost!
   When such things happen in the world at large, I find it quite natural, but when it happens here, I always get a little shock, in the sense that I say to myself: Well, well, they havent gone beyond that!

1962 02 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The protection may come from many different sources. Very often it was someone who informed me: a little entity, or some kind of being; sometimes it was the aura that protected me. And it was for all kinds of things. That is to say, life was seldom limited to the physical bodythis is convenient, this is good. It is necessary, it increases your capacities. This is what the person who taught me occultism told me straightaway: You are depriving yourself of senses which are most useful even for the most ordinary life. And this is true, quite true. We can know infinitely more things than we usually do, simply by using our own senses. And not only from the mental point of view, but also from the vital and even the physical point of view.
   But what is the method?

1964 09 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   That is why some people have preached: the only moment that matters is the present moment. In practice it is not true, but from the psychological point of view it ought to be true. That is to say, to live to the utmost of ones capacities at every minute, without planning or wanting, waiting or preparing for the next. Because you are always hurrying, hurrying, hurrying. And nothing you do is good. You are in a state of inner tension which is completely falsecompletely false.
   All those who have tried to be wise have always said it the Chinese preached it, the Indians preached itto live in the awareness of Eternity. In Europe also they said that one should contemplate the sky and the stars and identify oneself with their infinitudeall things that widen you and give you peace.

1970 04 20 - 485, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   486He who condemns failure and imperfection, is condemning God; he limits his own soul and cheats his own vision. Condemn not, but observe Nature, help and heal thy brothers and streng then by sympathy their capacities and their courage.
   487Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour, love of thy country, love of animals, love of humanity are all the love of God reflected in these living images. So love and grow mighty to enjoy all, to help all and to love for ever.

1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   capacities for speed. Loads, however, were drawn by beasts of
   burdenshoggoths under the sea, and a curious variety of primitive

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  After referring, however, the centripetal force to the omniprevalent law of Gravity, it has been the fashion with astronomical treatises, to seek beyond the limits of mere Nature -that is to say, of Secondary Cause -a solution of the phaenomenon of tangential velocity. This latter they attribute directly to a First Cause -to God. The force which carries a stellar body around its primary they assert to have originated in an impulse given immediately by the finger -this is the childish phraseology employed -by the finger of Deity itself. In this view, the planets, fully formed, are conceived to have been hurled from the Divine hand, to a position in the vicinity of the suns, with an impetus mathematically adapted to the masses, or attractive capacities, of the suns themselves. An idea so grossly unphilosophical, although so supinely adopted, could have arisen only from the difficulty of otherwise accounting for the absolutely accurate adaptation, each to each, of two forces so seemingly independent, one of the other, as are the gravitating and tangential. But it should be remembered that, for a long time, the coincidence between the moon's rotation and her sidereal revolution two matters seemingly far more independent than those now considered -was looked upon as positively miraculous; and there was a strong disposition, even among astronomers, to attribute the marvel to the direct and continual agency of God -who, in this case, it was said, had found it necessary to interpose, specially, among his general laws, a set of subsidiary regulations, for the purpose of forever concealing from mortal eyes the glories, or perhaps the horrors, of the other side of the Moon -of that mysterious hemisphere which has always avoided, and must perpetually avoid, the telescopic scrutiny of mankind. The advance of Science, however, soon demonstrated -what to the philosophical instinct needed no demonstration -that the one movement is but a portion -something more, even, than a consequence -of the other.
  For my part, I have no patience with fantasies at once so timorous, so idle, and so awkward. They belong to the veriest Cowardice of thought. That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also, the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him there being neither Past nor Future -with Him all being Now -do we not insult him in supposing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible contingency? -or, rather, what idea can we have of any possible contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of his laws? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the end, at the condensation of LA0 into LA0 -cannot fail of reaching the conclusion that each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon all other laws, and that all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cosmogony which, with all necessary deference, I here venture to suggest and to maintain.
  --
  What are we to understand, then, of the force, which under similar circumstances, would be required to move the LA0 of our planets, Jupiter? This is 86,000 miles in diameter, and would include within its periphery more than a thousand orbs of the magnitude of our own. Yet this stupendous body is actually flying around the Sun at the rate of 29,000 miles an hour -that is to say, with a velocity 40 times greater than that of a cannon-ball! The thought of such a phaenomenon cannot well be said to startle the mind: -it palsies and appals it. Not unfrequently we task our imagination in picturing the capacities of an angel. Let us fancy such a being at a distance of some hundred miles from Jupiter -a close eye-witness of this planet as it speeds on its annual revolution. Now can we, I demand, fashion for ourselves any conception so distinct of this ideal being's spiritual exaltation, as that involved in the supposition that, even by this immeasurable mass of matter, whirled immediately before his eyes, with a velocity so unutterable, he -an angel -angelic though he be -is not at once struck into nothingness and overwhelmed?
  At this point, however, it seems proper to suggest that, in fact, we have been speaking of comparative trifles. Our Sun -the central and controlling orb of the system to which Jupiter belongs, is not only greater than Jupiter, but greater by far than all the planets of the system taken together. This fact is an essential condition, indeed, of the stability of the system itself. The diameter of Jupiter has been mentioned: -it is 86,000 miles: -that of the Sun is 882,000 miles. An inhabitant of the latter, traveling 90 miles a day, would be more than 80 years in going round a great circle of its circumference. It occupies a cubical space of 681 quadrillions, 472 trillions of miles. The Moon, as has been stated, revolves about the Earth at a distance of 237,000 miles -in an orbit, consequently, of nearly a million and a half. Now, were the Sun placed upon the Earth, centre over centre, the body of the former would extend, in every direction, not only to the line of the Moon's orbit, but beyond it, a distance of 200,000 miles.

1.poe - The Conversation Of Eiros And Charmion, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations.
  The learned now gave their intellecttheir

1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  And his innate capacities of soul,
  There imaged: or when, having gained the top

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Those kinds of phenomena are very common even today. In France at Notre Dame and at Lourdes, lame people are cured. Only, the power that is working there acts very irregularly, some get absolutely cured, while some are not affected. But all those who want to see and be convinced can see them. A friend of the Mother a lady was so cured. This working is due to the presence of some psychic power. There are no limits to its capacities. There are authentic cases of people effecting such cures without themselves being conscious of the psychic force working through them.
   Disciple: Ramakrishna felt the blows given to a bullock and there were marks of the stripes on his body. Is this action due to the kind of extended sense of which Dr. Jules speaks?

2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   capacities or in capacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mukam karoti vacalam pangum langhayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction.
  Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine

2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  The unique human capacities of self-awareness, imagination, and conscience enable us to examine first creations and make it possible for us to take charge of our own first creation, to write our own script. Put another way, Habit 1 says, "You are the creator." Habit 2 is the first creation.
  --- Leadership and Management -- The Two Creations
  --
  Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing -- too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance -- gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart is unfulfilled.
  Where is the security, the guidance, the wisdom, and the power? At the low end of the continuum, in the pleasure of a fleeting moment.
  --
  Admittedly this description is oversimplified and new studies will undoubtedly throw more light on brain functioning. But the point here is that we are capable of performing many different kinds of thought processes and we barely tap our potential. As we become aware of its different capacities, we can consciously use our minds to meet specific needs in more effective ways.
  --- Two Ways to Tap the Right Brain
  --
  We each have a number of different roles in our lives -- different areas or capacities in which we have responsibility. I may, for example, have a role as an individual, a husband, a father, a teacher, a church member, and a businessman. And each of these roles is important.
  One of the major problems that arises when people work to become more effective in life is that they don't think broadly enough. They lose the sense of proportion, the balance, the natural ecology necessary to effective living. They may get consumed by work and neglect personal health. In the name of professional success, they may neglect the most precious relationships in their lives.

2.02 - Indra, Giver of Light, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Next are described the results towards which the seer aspires. With this fuller light opening on to the finalities of mental knowledge the powers of Limitation will be satisfied and of themselves will withdraw, consenting to the farther advance and to the new luminous activities. They will say, in effect, "Yes, now you have the right which we were hitherto justified in denying. Not only in the fields won already, but in other and untrod provinces pursue then your conquering march. Repose this action wholly on the divine Intelligence, not upon your lower capacities. For it is the greater surrender which gives you the greater right."
  The word arata, move or strive, like its congeners ari, arya, arya, arata, aran.i, expresses the central idea of the Veda. The root ar indicates always a movement of effort or of struggle or a state of surpassing height or excellence; it is applied to rowing, ploughing, fighting, lifting, climbing. The Aryan then is the man who seeks to fulfil himself by the Vedic action, the internal and external karma or apas, which is of the nature of a sacrifice to the gods. But it is also imaged as a journey, a march, a battle,

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Time after time something comes down from Above, but again you find humanity the same as ever. Look at Christianity, all the millions in Europe who profess it. Do you think they believe in Christianity? Not even ten percent try to live out Christianity. That is the difficulty with humanity. Something comes down from Above. In order to make it available to the whole community you have to give it such a form as to make it suitable to all capacities and in that change the Truth gets mixed with their falsehood so much so that it no longer remains what it was. Buddha came and tried and did not succeed, and I think any such effort would not succeed.
   Disciple: Anatole France seems to hold that humanity is what it is and is going to be what it is. Perfection may come to man but humanity will remain what it is. True perfection is possible but it would be in something that is different from man.
  --
   When he began the Yoga he had certain capacities. Of course, he was not half as tall as he thought himself to be. But if he had not exaggerated his capacities he would have been, by this time, farther than he is today.
   The vital devotion demands and demands. It imposes its own conditions. It says to God: "You are so great, therefore I worship you; and now satisfy this desire and that condition of mine; make me great; make me a great sadhak, a great Yogin, etc." It does not use this language of course, but that is what is behind it. It assumes many justifying forms and comes to the sadhak in various ways.

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  shall desire the wife for her qualities & virtues, her capacities
  & mental gifts, for the gratification of the understanding. If
  --
  encompasses. In all these capacities He is selfborn; for He is
  Prajna who came forth by His own strength from the luminous

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  & social balance, but they would not limit the infinite capacities
  of the soul; they gave play therefore to personal individuality but
  --
  ideas, desires, passions, capacities and ambitions, which clamantly demand satisfaction. Individual originality being given
  free rein, there is an immense outburst of genius, talent, origination, invention or of splendid personal force and activity.

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing down the Higher Consciousness?
   Sri Aurobindo: It is the Pranic currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the Higher Consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined.

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is evident that if such is the truth of the Absolute, we cannot bind it either by our law of contradictions. That law is necessary to us in order that we may posit partial and practical truths, think out things clearly, decisively and usefully, classify, act, deal with them effectively for particular purposes in our divisions of Space, distinctions of form and property, moments of Time. It represents a formal and strongly dynamic truth of existence in its practical workings which is strongest in the most outward term of things, the material, but becomes less and less rigidly binding as we go upward in the scale, mount on the more subtle rungs of the ladder of being. It is especially necessary for us in dealing with material phenomena and forces; we have to suppose them to be one thing at a time, to have one power at a time and to be limited by their ostensible and practically effective capacities and properties; otherwise we cannot deal with them.
  But even there, as human thought is beginning to realise, the distinctions made by the intellect and the classifications and practical experiments of Science, while perfectly valid in their own field and for their own purpose, do not represent the whole or the real truth of things, whether of things in the whole or of the thing by itself which we have classified and set artificially apart, isolated for separate analysis. By that isolation we are indeed able to deal with it very practically, very effectively, and we think at first that the effectiveness of our action proves the entire and sufficient truth of our isolating and analysing knowledge.
  --
  The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge. The power of the individual to possess in his consciousness by self-knowledge his unity with the Transcendent and the universal, with the One Being and all beings and to live in that knowledge and transform his life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual - not in one but in all - at the divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement. The existence of the individual is not an error in some self of the Absolute which that self afterwards discovers; for it is impossible that the absolute self-awareness or anything that is one with it should be ignorant of its own truth and its own capacities and betrayed by that ignorance either into a false idea of itself which it has to correct or an impracticable venture which it has to renounce. Neither is the individual existence a subordinate circumstance in a divine play or Lila, a play which consists in a continual revolution through unending cycles of pleasure and suffering without any higher hope in the Lila itself or any issue from it except the occasional escape of a few from time to time out of their bondage to this ignorance. We might be compelled to hold that ruthless and disastrous view of God's workings if man had no power of self-transcendence or no power of transforming by self-knowledge the conditions of the play nearer and nearer to the truth of the divine Delight.
  In that power lies the justification of individual existence; the individual and the universal unfolding in themselves the divine light, power, joy of transcendent Sachchidananda always manifest above them, always secret behind their surface appearances, this is the hidden intention, the ultimate significance of the divine play, the Lila. But it is in themselves, in their transformation but also their persistence and perfect relations, not in their selfannihilation that that must be unfolded. Otherwise there would be no reason for their ever having existed; the possibility of the Divine's unfolding in the individual is the secret of the enigma; his presence there and this intention of self-unfolding are the key to the world of Knowledge-Ignorance.

2.04 - Agni, the Illumined Will, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Will is the first necessity, the chief actualising force. When therefore the race of mortals turn consciously towards the great aim and, offering their enriched capacities to the Sons of Heaven, seek to form the divine in themselves, it is to Agni, first and chief, that they lift the realising thought, frame the creative Word. For they are the Aryans who do the work and accept the effort, - the vastest of all works, the most grandiose of all efforts, - and he is the power that embraces Action and by Action fulfils the work. What is the Aryan without the divine Will that accepts the labour and the battle, works and wins, suffers and triumphs?
  Therefore it is this Will which annihilates all forces commissioned to destroy the effort, this strongest of all the divine

2.05 - The Line of Light and The Impression, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
  pletion however only relates to the capacities of created
  beings, and not to the absolute perfection of the Creator

2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Desire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our existence. If our sense-mind, emotional mind, thought-mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. The proper function of the sense-mind is to lie open passively, luminously to the contacts of Life and transmit their sensations and the rasa or right taste and principle of delight in them to the higher function; but interfered with by the attractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, the capacities and in capacities of the life-energy in the body it is, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in these limits to associate itself with all these discords of the life in Matter. It becomes an instrument for pleasure and pain instead of for delight of existence.
  Similarly the emotional mind compelled to take note of all these discords and subject itself to their emotional reactions becomes a hurtling field of joy and grief, love and hatred, wrath, fear, struggle, aspiration, disgust, likes, dislikes, indifferences, content, discontent, hopes, disappointments, gratitude, revenge and all the stupendous play of passion which is the drama of life in the world. This chaos we call our soul. But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the play of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is true that all Adhars have not got the capacity to hold the Divine Consciousness and they don't make any effort to increase the capacity of the natural instrument. Once you come down from the Divine Consciousness you are again like an ordinary man. One ought to go on increasing the capacities of his natural instruments in complexity and many-sidedness so as to hold the Divine when it comes down.
   Disciple: They speak of Samadhi in which one enters into Turiya the fourth state.

2.0 - Reincarnation and Karma, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
   and soul proceed? During life the spirit is bound up with the soul in the way shown above. The soul receives from it the power of living in the Good and the True, and of thereby bringing in its own life, in its tendencies, impulses, and passions, the spirit itself to expression. The spirit-self brings to the I, from the world of the spirit, the eternal laws of the True and the Good. These link themselves through the consciousness-soul with the experiences of the soul's own life. These experiences themselves pass away, but their fruits remain. The spirit-self receives an abiding impression by having been linked with them. When the human spirit approaches an experience similar to one with which it has already been linked, it sees in it something familiar, and is able to take up a different attitude toward it than if it were facing it for the first time. This is the basis of all learning. And the fruits of learning are acquired capacities. The fruits of the transitory life are in this way graven on the eternal spirit. And do we not see these fruits? Whence spring the innate predispositions and talents described above as characteristic of the
   p. 77
   spiritual man? Surely only from capacities of one kind or another which the human being brings with him when he begins his earthly life. These capacities, in certain respects, resemble exactly those which we can also acquire for ourselves during life. Take the case of a genius. It is known that Mozart, when a boy, could write out from memory a long musical composition after hearing it only once. He was able to do this only because he could survey the whole at one glance. Within certain limits a man is also able during life to increase his capacity of rapid survey, of grasping combinations to such an extent that he then possesses new faculties. Lessing, indeed, has said of himself that by means of a talent for critical observation he had acquired for himself something that came near to being genius. One has either to regard such abilities founded on innate capacities with wonder as miracles, or one must consider them as fruits of experiences which the spirit-self has had through a soul. They have been graven on the spirit-self. And since they have not been implanted in this life, they have been in a former one. The human spirit is
   p. 78
  --
  But the physical world on which the human spirit enters is no strange field of action to it. On it the traces of its actions are imprinted. Something in this field of action belongs to the spirit. It bears the impress of its being. It is related to it. As the soul formerly transmitted the impressions from the outer world to the spirit in order that they might become enduring in it, so now the soul, as the spirit's organ, converts the capacities bestowed by the spirit into deeds which are also enduring through their effects. Thus the soul has actually flowed into these actions. In the effects of his actions man's soul lives on in a second independent life. And it is inevitable that the human spirit should meet again the effect of these actions. For only the one part of my deed is in the outer world; the other is in myself. Let us make this clear by a simple example taken from natural science. Animals that once could see migrated to the caves of Kentucky, and have, through their life in them, lost their powers of sight. The existence in darkness has caused the eyes to
   p. 82
   be inactive. Consequently the physical and chemical activity that is present when seeing takes place is no longer carried on in these eyes. The stream of nourishment which was formerly expended on this activity now flows to other organs. These animals can now live only in these caves. They have by their act, by the immigration, created the conditions of their later lives. The immigration has become a part of their fate. A being that once acted has united itself with the results of the action. It is so also with the human spirit. It is only by having been active that the soul could have transmitted certain capacities to it. And these capacities correspond to the actions.
  By means of his actions, therefore, the human spirit has really carved his fate. In a new life he finds himself linked to what he did in a former one. One may ask, "How can that be, when the human spirit on reincarnating finds itself in an entirely different world from that which it left at some earlier time?" This question is based on a very superficial conception of the linkings of fate. If I change my scene of action from Europe to America I find myself in entirely new surroundings.

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  At present what we know best is man and mind and what mind and its several senses see or infer about the universe. But mind is not the highest possible instrument and mental man is not the last creation possible to the capacities of creative evolution in the material universe.
  There is indeed the real man as well as this that is apparent.

2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But more important is the power of the subliminal to enter into a direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a direct feeling of things, even by a close envelopment and intimate penetration and a return with the contents of what is enveloped or penetrated, by a direct intimation or impact on the substance of mind itself, not through outward signs or figures, - a revealing intimation or a self-communicating impact of thoughts, feelings, forces. It is by these means that the inner being achieves an immediate, intimate and accurate spontaneous knowledge of persons, of objects, of the occult and to us intangible energies of world-Nature that surround us and impinge upon our own personality, physicality, mindforce and life-force. In our surface mentality we are sometimes aware of a consciousness that can feel or know the thoughts and inner reactions of others or become aware of objects or happenings without any observable sense-intervention or otherwise exercise powers supernormal to our ordinary capacity; but these capacities are occasional, rudimentary, vague. Their possession is proper to our concealed subliminal self and, when they emerge, it is by a coming to the surface of its powers or operations. These emergent operations of the subliminal being or some of them are now fragmentarily studied under the name of psychic phenomena, - although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts
  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
  --
  Presence in it, the one Conscious in unconscious things, that determines the operation of its indwelling energies. If, as has been affirmed, a material object receives and retains the impression of the contacts of things around it and energies emanate from it, so that an occult knowledge can become aware of its past, can make us conscious of these emanating influences, the intrinsic unorganised Awareness pervading the form but not yet enlightening it must be the cause of this receptivity and these capacities. What we see from outside is that material objects like plants and minerals have their powers, properties and inherent influences, but as there is no faculty or means of communication, it is only by being brought into contact with person or object or by a conscious utilisation by living beings that their influences can become active, - such a utilisation is the practical side of more than one human science. But still these powers and influences are attributes of Being, not of mere indeterminate substance, they are forces of the Spirit emerging by Energy from its self-absorbed Inconscience. This first crude mechanical action of an inherent absorbed conscious energy opens in the primary forms of life into submental life-vibrations that imply an involved sensation; there is a seeking for growth, light, air, life-room, a blind feeling out, which is still internal and confined within the immobile being, unable to formulate its instincts, to communicate, to externalise itself. An immobility not organised to establish living relations, it endures and absorbs contacts, involuntarily inflicts but cannot voluntarily impose them; the inconscience is still dominant, still works out everything by the secret involved knowledge by identity, it has not yet developed the surface contactual means of a conscious knowledge. This further development begins with overtly conscious life; what we see in it is the imprisoned consciousness struggling out to the surface: it is under the compulsion of this struggle that the separated living being strives, however blindly at first and within narrow limits, to enter into conscious relations with the rest of the world-being outside it. It is by the growing amount of contacts that it can receive and respond to and by the growing amount of contacts that it can put out from itself or impose in
  572

2.11 - On Education, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   The main basis in India was spiritual in contrast to the Greek ideal of education. In Greece it was intellectual and aesthetic. The Greeks tried to give intellectual training but not through giving information and teaching different subjects. They rather allowed the intellect to grow freely and there was an atmosphere in which these capacities and activities could grow.
   In India also, the classical period was much different from the ancient one in its educational system. There is no reason to suppose that the method in India did not change. During this period many subjects were taught and the system was much more elaborate.

2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the subliminal self has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; but even though the same in kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign. And it has other capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a power of direct awareness of the being, whether acting in itself or turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge, more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at understanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it is aware of them and their works and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a secret intraconscient and circumconscient than a subconscient; for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature.
  This description is no doubt truest of the deeper parts of the subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a more ignorant action and those who, penetrating within, pause in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man's-land between the subliminal and the surface, may fall into much delusion and confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of the subconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has no kinship to the Inconscience.

2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Telepathic capacities of the high-class Hindus is due to their pineal gland being twice as developed as that of Europeans. Because of this development they receive telepathic communications more easily than other people.
   Sri Aurobindo: What is the function of the pineal gland?

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. That is the physical consciousness. They sometimes know through the smell. We find in man that as the mind has grown at the expense of the vital being, so also it has done at the expense of certain capacities of the physical being.
   Of course one can argue that if man had not stressed his mental being so much, he would not have tried to find out the truth about these things. The mind would have remained idle. But the mind need not have remained like that. The mind is a consciousness turning back upon itself and looking down from above at the vital and physical. The mind could have taken the evidence of the materials which the vital and the physical beings had to offer and then gone further on with them, trying to understand them, instead of losing those faculties.

2.1.4.1 - Teachers, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  5) The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. (Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle)
  Published in June 1954

2.1.4.2 - Teaching, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The criticisms made in the report apply to the teachers as much as to the students. For students of high capacity, one teacher well versed in his subject is enougheven a good text-book, together with encyclopedias and dictionaries would be enough. But as one goes down the scale and the capacity of the student becomes lower, the teacher must have higher and higher capacities: discipline, self-control, consecration, psychological understanding, infectious enthusiasm, to awaken in the student the part which is asleep the will to know, the need for progress, self-control.
  Just as we organise the school in such a way as to be able to discover and help outstanding students, in the same way, the responsibility for classes should be given to outstanding teachers.
  --
  5) The exact quantum of work to be covered by each student for his selected course cannot be determined, but in order to have completed his Course, he should have shown regularity of sustained effort, development of capacities, understanding of his subjects and the power of answering relevant questions orally and in writing with sufficient clarity and precision. The quality of the work will be more important than the quantity of the work, although the latter too should not be meagre, but commensurate with our high standards.
  The above proposal was met with a general approval with some exceptions and it was decided to refer it to the Mother to seek Her guidance with regard to it.
  --
  Isnt it possible to divide the class time into two parts (equal or unequal according to the need) and to try out both systems? This would give diversity to the teaching and provide a wider field for observation of the students and their capacities.
  ***

2.1.4 - The Lower Vital Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1) A certain vanity and arrogance and self-assertive rajasic vehemence which in this smaller vital being are, for those who have a pronounced strength in these parts, the deformation of the vital force and habit of leading and domination that certain qualities in the higher vital gave them. This is accompanied by an excessive amour-propre which creates the necessity of making a figure, maintaining by any means position and prestige, even of posturing before others, influencing, controlling or helping them, claiming the part of a superior sadhaka, one with greater knowledge and with occult powers. The larger vital being itself has to give up its powers and capacities to the Divine Shakti from whom they come and must use them only as the Mothers instrument and according to her directions; if it intervenes with the claim of its ego and puts itself between her and the work or between her and other sadhakas, then whatever its natural power, it deviates from the true way, spoils the work, brings in adverse forces and wrong movements and does harm to those whom it imagines it is helping. When these things are transferred to the smallness of the lower vital nature and the external personality and take lower and pettier forms, they become still more false to the Truth, incongruous, grotesque, and at the same time can be viciously harmful, though in a smaller groove. There is no better way of calling in hostile forces into the general work or of vitiating and exposing to their influence ones own sadhana. On a smaller scale these defects of vanity, arrogance and rajasic violence are present in most human natures. They take other forms, but are then also a great obstacle to any true spiritual change.
  2) Disobedience and indiscipline. This lower part of the being is always random, wayward, self-assertive and unwilling to accept the imposition on it of any order and discipline other than its own idea or impulse. Its defects even from the beginning stand in the way of the efforts of the higher vital to impose on the nature a truly regenerating tapasya. This habit of disobedience and disregard of discipline is so strong that it does not always need to be deliberate; the response to it seems to be immediate, irresistible and instinctive. Thus obedience to the Mother is repeatedly promised or professed, but the action done or the course followed is frequently the very opposite of the profession or promise. This constant indiscipline is a radical obstacle to the sadhana and the worst possible example to others.

2.1.5.1 - Study of Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It depends entirely on the capacities of the students.
    Mother underlined these words and commented "Yes" in the margin.

2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary that it should change. It would involve a change in the possibilities and capacities of functions of the physical being. It would not mean a change in the universal physical. It would take place only in the case of persons who are open to the Higher Power. Of course, it would be a miracle if the impenetrable were penetrated.
   Disciple: Discoveries of science are not less miraculous today.

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Anrobindo: That has been a puzzle to me also. But it is so. Our case is a little different. Our aim is to change the world not universally, of course. Hence every one here represents human nature with all its difficulties and capacities. (Looking at the disciple) That's how your difficulties are explained.
   26 DECEMBER 1938

2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Man the individual has to affirm, to distinguish his personality against Nature, to be powerfully himself, to evolve all his human capacities of force and knowledge and enjoyment so that he may turn them upon her and upon the world with more and more mastery and force; his self-discriminating egoism is given him as a means for this primary purpose. Until he has thus developed his individuality, his personality, his separate capacity, he cannot be fit for the greater work before him or successfully turn his faculties to higher, larger and more divine ends. He has to affirm himself in the Ignorance before he can perfect himself in the Knowledge.
  For the initiation of the evolutionary emergence from the Inconscient works out by two forces, a secret cosmic consciousness and an individual consciousness manifest on the surface.

2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The conquest of our constitutional ignorance cannot be complete, cannot become integrally dynamic, if we have not conquered our psychological ignorance; for the two are bound up together. Our psychological ignorance consists in a limitation of our self-knowledge to that little wave or superficial stream of our being which is the conscient waking self. This part of our being is an original flux of formless or only halfformulated movements carried on in an automatic continuity, supported and held together by an active surface memory and a passive underlying consciousness in its flow from moment to moment of time, organised and interpreted by our reason and our witnessing and participating intelligence. Behind it is an occult existence and energy of our secret being without which the superficial consciousness and activity could not have existed or acted. In Matter only an activity is manifest, - inconscient in the outside of things which is all we know; for the indwelling Consciousness in Matter is secret, subliminal, not manifested in the inconscient form and the involved energy: but in us consciousness has become partly manifest, partly awake. But this consciousness is hedged and imperfect; it is bound by its habitual self-limitation and moves in a restricted circle, - except when there are flashes, intimations or upsurgings from the secrecy within us which break the limits of the formation or flow beyond them or widen the circle. But these occasional visitations cannot enlarge us far beyond our present capacities, are not enough to revolutionise our status. That can only be done if we can bring into it the higher undeveloped lights and powers potential in our being and get them consciously and normally into play; for this we must be able to draw freely from those ranges of our being to which they are native but which are at present subconscient or rather secretly intraconscient and circumconscient or else superconscient to us. Or, - the yet more that is also possible, - we must enter into these inner and higher parts of ourselves by an inward plunge or disciplined penetration and bring back with us to the surface their secrets. Or, achieving a still more radical change of our consciousness, we must learn to live within and no longer on the surface and be and act from the inner depths and from a soul that has become sovereign over the nature.
  That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life; in our evolution we have overpassed the need of any large organised action of this element, but it remains submerged and obscurely at work below our conscious nature. This obscure activity extends to a hidden and hooded mental substratum into which past impressions and all that is rejected from the surface mind sink and remain there dormant and can surge up in sleep or in any absence of the mind, taking dream forms, forms of mechanical mind action or suggestion, forms of automatic vital reaction or impulse, forms of physical abnormality or nervous perturbance, forms of morbidity, disease, unbalance. Out of the subconscious we bring ordinarily so much to the surface as our waking sensemind and intelligence need for their purpose; in so bringing them up we are not aware of their nature, origin, operation and do not apprehend them in their own values but by a translation into the values of our waking human sense and intelligence. But the risings of the subconscious, its effects upon the mind and body, are mostly automatic, uncalled for and involuntary; for we have no knowledge and therefore no control of the subconscient. It is only by an experience abnormal to us, most commonly in illness or some disturbance of balance, that we can become directly aware of something in the dumb world, dumb but very active, of our bodily being and vitality or grow conscious of the secret movements of the mechanical subhuman physical and vital mind which underlies our surface, - a consciousness which is ours but seems not ours because it is not part of our known mentality.

2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6:But the limitations of a material universe seem to be hostile to the proper accomplishment of this object which is yet so inevitably the highest aim of a mental being born into a physical body. First existence has formed itself here, fundamentally, as Matter; it has been objectivised, made sensible and concrete to its own self-experiencing conscious-force in the form of self-dividing material substance, and by the aggregation of this Matter there has been built up for man a physical body separate, divided from others and subject to the fixed habits of process or, as we call them, the laws of inconscient material Nature. His force of being too is nature or Force working in Matter, which has waked slowly out of inconscience to life and is always limited by form, always dependent on the body, always separated by it from the rest of Life and from other living beings, always hampered in its development, persistence, self-perfectioning by the laws of the Inconscience and the limitations of bodily living. Equally, his consciousness is a mentality emerging in a body and in a sharply individualised life; it is therefore limited in its workings and capacities and dependent on bodily organs of no great competence and on a very restricted vital force; it is separated from the rest of cosmic mind and shut out from the thoughts of other mental beings whose inner workings are a sealed book to man's physical mind except in so far as he can read them by the analogy of his own mentality and by their insufficient bodily signs and self-expressions. His consciousness is always falling back towards the inconscience in which a large part of it is always involved, his life towards death, his physical being towards disaggregation. His delight of being depends on the relations of this imperfect consciousness with its environment based upon physical sensations and the sense-mind, in other words on a limited mind trying to lay hold on a world external and foreign to it by means of a limited body, limited vital force, limited organs. Therefore its power for possession is limited, its force for delight is limited, and every touch of the world which exceeds its force, which that force cannot bear, cannot seize on, cannot assimilate and possess must turn to something else than delight, to pain, discomfort or grief. Or else it must be met by non-reception, insensibility, or, if received, put away by indifference. Moreover, such delight of being as it possesses, is not possessed naturally and eternally like the self-delight of Sachchidananda, but by experience and acquisition in Time, and can therefore only be maintained and prolonged by repetition of experience and is in its nature precarious and transient. All this means that the natural relations of Purusha to prakriti in the material universe are the complete absorption of conscious being in the force of its workings, therefore the complete self-oblivion and self-ignorance of the Purusha, the complete domination of prakriti and subjection of the soul to Nature. The soul does not know itself, it only knows, if anything, the workings of prakriti. The emergence of the individual self-conscious soul in Man does not of itself abrogate these primary relations of ignorance and subjection. For this soul is living on a material plane of existence, a poise of prakriti in which matter is still the chief determinant of its relations to Nature, and its consciousness being limited by Matter cannot be an entirely self-possessing consciousness. Even the universal soul, if limited by the material formula, could not be in entire possession of itself; much less can the individual soul to which the rest of existence becomes by bodily, vital and mental limitation and separation something external to it, on which it is yet dependent for its life and its delight and its knowledge. These limitations of his power, knowledge, life, delight of existence are the whole cause of man's dissatisfaction with himself and the universe. And if the material universe were all and the material plane the only plane of his being, then man the individual Purusha could never arrive at perfection and self-fulfilment or indeed to any other life than that of the animals. There must be either worlds in which he is liberated from these incomplete and unsatisfactory relations of Purusha with prakriti, or planes of his own being by ascending to which he can transcend them, or at the very least planes, worlds and higher beings from which he can receive or be helped to knowledge, powers, joys, a growth of his being otherwise impossible. All these things, the ancient knowledge asserts, exist, -- other worlds, higher planes, the possibility of communication, of ascension, of growth by contact with and influence from that which is above him in the present scale of his realised being.
  7:As there is a poise of the relations of Purusha with prakriti in which Matter is the first determinant, a world of material existence, so there is another just above it in which Matter is not supreme, but rather Life-force takes its place as the first determinant. In this world forms do not determine the conditions of the life, but it is life which determines the form, and therefore forms are there much more free, fluid, largely and to our conceptions strangely variable than in the material world. This life-force is not inconscient material force, not even, except in its lowest movements, an elemental subconscient energy, but a conscious force of being which makes for formation, but much more essentially for enjoyment, possession, satisfaction of its own dynamic impulse. Desire and the satisfaction of impulse are therefore the first law of this world of sheer vital existence, this poise of relations between the soul and its nature in which the life-power plays with so much greater a freedom and capacity than in our physical living; it may be called the desire-world, for that is its principal characteristic. Moreover, it is not fixed in one hardly variable formula as physical life seems to be, but is capable of many variations of its poise, admits many sub-planes ranging from those which touch material existence and, as it were, melt into that, to those which touch at the height of the life-power the planes of pure mental and psychic existence and melt into them. For in Nature in the infinite scale of being there are no wide gulfs, no abrupt chasms to be overleaped, but a melting of one thing into another, a subtle continuity; out of that her power of distinctive experience creates the orderings, the definite ranges, the distinct gradations by which the soul variously knows and possesses its possibilities of world-existence. Again, enjoyment of one kind or another being the whole object of desire, that must be the trend of the desire-world; but since wherever the soul is not free, -- and it cannot be free when subject to desire, -- there must be the negative as well as the positive of all its experience, this world contains not only the possibility of large or intense or continuous enjoyments almost inconceivable to the limited physical mind, but also the possibility of equally enormous sufferings. It is here therefore that there are situated the lowest heavens and all the hells with the tradition and imagination of which the human mind has lured and terrified itself since the earliest ages. All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility, though they may in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation or couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the truth of supraphysical realities.
  --
  9:But why then are we not normally aware of so much that is behind us and always pressing upon us? For the same reason that we are not aware of the inner life of our neighbour, although it exists as much as our own and is constantly exercising an occult influence upon us, -- for a great part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from outside, from our fellow-men, both from individuals and from the collective mind of humanity; and for the same reason that we are not aware of the greater part of our own being which is subconscient or subliminal to our waking mind and is always influencing and in an occult manner determining our surface existence. It is because we use, normally, only our corporeal senses and live almost wholly in the body and the physical vitality and the physical mind, and it is not directly through these that the life-world enters into relations with us. That is done through other sheaths of our being, -- so they are termed in the Upanishads, -- other bodies, as they are called in a later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our true mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is more closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms with it the gross body of our complex existence. These possess powers, senses, capacities which are always secretly acting in us, are connected with and impinge upon our physical organs and the plexuses of our physical life and mentality. By self-development we can become aware of them, possess our life in them, get through them into conscious relation with the life-world and other worlds and use them also for a more subtle experience and more intimate knowledge of the truths, facts and happenings of even the material world itself. We can by this self-development live more or less fully on planes of our existence other than the material which is now all in all to us.
  10:What has been said of the life-world applies with the necessary differences to still higher planes of the cosmic existence. For beyond that is a mental plane, a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant. Mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction. There mind, that is to say, the psychical and the intellectual being, is free in a certain sense, free at least to satisfy and fulfil itself in a way hardly conceivable to our body-bound and life-bound mentality; for the Purusha there is the pure mental being and his relations with prakriti are determined by that purer mentality. Nature there is mental rather than vital and physical. Both the life-world and indirectly the material are a projection from that, the result of certain tendencies of the mental Being which have sought a field, conditions, an arrangement of harmonies proper to themselves; and the phenomena of mind in this world may be said to be a result of the pressure of that plane first on the life-world and then on life in the material existence. By its modification in the life-world it creates in us the desiremind, in its own right it awakes in us the purer powers of our psychical and intellectual existence. But our surface mentality is only a secondary result of a larger subliminal mentality whose proper seat is the mental plane. This world of mental existence also is constantly acting upon us and our world, has its powers and its beings, is related to us through our mental body. There we find the psychical and mental heavens to which the Purusha can ascend when it drops this physical body and can there sojourn till the impulse to terrestrial existence again draws it downward. Here too are many planes, the lowest converging upon and melting into the worlds below, the highest at the heights of the mind-power into the worlds of a more spiritual existence.
  11:These highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the principle of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligences436 or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle of Sachchidananda. From them the lower worlds derive by a sort of fall of the Purusha into certain specific or narrow conditions of the play of the soul with its nature. But these also are divided from us by no unbridgeable gulf; they affect us through what are called the knowledge-sheath and the bliss-sheath, through the causal or spiritual body, and less directly through the mental body, nor are their secret powers absent from the workings of the vital and material existence. Our conscious spiritual being and our intuitive mind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest worlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body is, as we say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for the human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but otherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the individual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive. Yet is that the condition of the perfect self-consciousness by which alone the Purusha can possess the full conscious control of prakriti; for there not even the mind determines, but the Spirit freely uses the lower differentiating principles as minor terms of its existence governed by the higher and reaching by them their own perfect capacity. That alone would be the perfect evolution of the involved and development of the undeveloped for which the Purusha has sought in the material universe, as if in a wager with itself, the conditions of the greatest difficulty.

2.2.01 - The Problem of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is to a mass of ill-connected and ill-understood phenomena that we give this name of consciousness; when these are at work we say that a man or animal is conscious, when they are suspended we say that he or it is unconscious; where they are absent, as in a tree, we suppose the object, even if it has life, to be inconscient by its very nature, incapable of sensation no less than empty of thought and will. Where life is not, inconscience seems to us a still more self-evident character of the thing or being. Man alone is fully conscious, for he alone is aware of himself, reflective on things, in full possession of mental capacities and their aware and observant use. Mind and consciousness are almost synonymous to our ordinary notions; where consciousness is not mentalised, we find it difficult to recognise its presence, hardly possible to follow its movements; even in the animal we are apt to regard it as reflex movement not aware of itself, undeveloped, primitive.
  All that exists or can exist in this or any other universe can be rendered into terms of consciousness; there is nothing that cannot be known. This knowing need not be always a mental knowledge. For the greater part of existence is either above or below mind, and mind can know only indirectly what is above or what is below it. But the one true and complete way of knowing is by direct knowledge.

2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which is the result of their nature and their Karma. When one takes up the Yoga and wishes to consecrate ones life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine. If the ordinary vital motives or vital force can no longer act freely and yet are not replaced by something else, then the push or force put into the work may decline or the power to comm and success may no longer be there. For the sincere sadhak the difficulty can only be temporary; but he has to see the defect in his consecration or his attitude and to remove it. Then the divine Power itself will act through him and use his capacity and vital force for its ends. In your case it is the psychic being and a part of the mind that have drawn you to the Yoga and were predisposed to it, but the vital nature or at least a large part of it has not yet put itself into line with the psychic movement. There is not as yet the full and undivided consecration of the active vital nature.
  The signs of the consecration of the vital in action are these among others:
  The feeling (not merely the idea or the aspiration) that all the life and the work are the Mothers and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a great joy in the work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose.
  The feeling that the Divine Force is working behind ones actions and leading at every moment.
  --
  Yes, the use to which you have turned your vital capacities in Bengal and Bombay,to turn them into instruments of service and the Divine Work, is certainly the best possible. Through such action and such use of the vital power, one can certainly progress in Yoga. Vital power is necessary for work and you have an exceptional amount of it. Of course, to make a full Yogic use of it and of its force for action, the ego must gradually fade out and vital attachments and impulses be replaced by the spiritual motive. Bhakti, devotion to the Divine, and the spirit of service to the Divine are among the most powerful means for this change.
  ***

2.2.04 - Practical Concerns in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for comparison with others, one ought not to do that. Each one has his own lesson to learn, his own work to do and he must concern himself with that, not with the superior or inferior progress of others in comparison with himself. If he is behind today, he can be in full capacity hereafter and it is for that future perfection of his powers that he must labour. You are young and have everything yet to learnyour capacities are yet only in bud, you must wait and work for them to be in full bloom and you must not mind if it takes months and years even to arrive at something satisfying and perfect. It will come in its proper time, and the work you do now is always a step towards it.
  But learn to welcome criticism and the pointing out of imperfections the more you do so, the more rapidly you will advance.

2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We may seek this knowledge on two sides separately, the side of Purusha, the side of prakriti; and we may combine the two for the perfect possession of the various relations of Purusha and prakriti in the light of the Divine. There is, says the Upanishad, a fivefold soul in man and the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The physical soul, self or being, -- Purusha, Atman, -- is that of which we are all at first conscious, a self which seems to have hardly any existence apart from the body and no action vital or even mental independent of it. This physical soul is present everywhere in material Nature, it pervades the body, actuates obscurely its movements and is the whole basis of its experiences; it informs all things even that are not mentally conscious. But in man this physical being has become vitalised and mentalised; it has received something of the law and capacities of the vital and mental being and nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed, as it were, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to the law and action of the physical existence and its instruments. It is this dominance of our mental and vital parts by the body and the physical nature which seems at first sight to justify the theory of the materialists that mind and life are only circumstances and results of physical force and all their operations explicable by the activities of that force in the animal body. In fact, entire subjection of the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped humanity, as it is in an even greater degree of the infra-human animal. According to the theory of reincarnation those who do not get beyond this stage in the earthly life, cannot rise after death to the mental or higher vital worlds, but have to return from the confines of a series of physical planes to increase their development In the next earthly existence. For the undeveloped physical soul is entirely dominated by material nature and its impressions and has to work them out to a better advantage before it can rise in the scale of being.
  A more developed humanity allows us to make a better and freer use of all the capacities and experiences that we derive from the vital and mental planes of being, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less absorbed by the physical and to govern and modify the original nature of the physical being by greater vital forces and powers from the desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and powers from the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we are able to rise to higher altitudes of the intermediary existence between death and rebirth and to make a better and more rapid use of rebirth itself for a yet higher mental and spiritual development. But even so, in the physical being which still determines the greater part of our waking self, we act without definite consciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our action. We are aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but not of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or of the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It is only at a high stage of development that we become aware of them and even then, ordinarily, only at the back of the action of our mentalised physical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we did we could very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body by the life-power and of both by the sovereign mind; we should then be able to determine our physical and mental life to a very large extent by our will and knowledge as masters of our being and with a direct action of the mind on the life and body. By Yoga this power of transcending the physical self and taking possession of the higher selves may to a greater or less degree be acquired through a heightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery.
  This may be done, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the physical self and its preoccupation with physical nature and through concentration of thought and will raising oneself into the vital and then into the mental self. By doing so we can become the vital being and draw up the physical self into that new consciousness, so that we are only aware of the body, its nature and its actions as secondary circumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for its relations with the material world. A certain remoteness from physical being and then a superiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument or shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our desires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of which we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; all awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact with the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new powers, -- what are usually called occult-powers or Siddhis; a close sense of and sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a knowledge or sensation of the emotions, desires, vital impulses of others, these are some of the signs of this new consciousness gained by Yoga.
  But all this belongs to the inferior grades of spiritual experience and indeed is hardly more spiritual than the physical existence. We have in the same way to go yet higher and raise ourselves into the mental self. By doing so we call become the mental self and draw up the physical and vital being into it, so that life and body and their operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used by tile Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower purposes that belong to the material existence. Here too we acquire at first a certain remoteness from the life and the body and our real life seems to be on quite another plane than material man's, in contact with a subtler existence, a greater light of knowledge than the terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign energy; we are ill touch in fact with the mental plane, aware of the mental worlds, can be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane we behold the desire-world and the material existence as if below us, things that we can cast away from us if we will and in fact easily reject when we relinquish the body, so as to dwell in the mental or psychical heavens. But we can also, instead of being thus remote and detached, become rather superior to the life and body and the vital and material planes and act upon them with mastery from our new height of being. Another sort of dynamis than physical or vital energy, something that we may call pure mind-power and soul-force, which the developed human being uses indeed but derivatively and imperfectly, but which we can now use freely and with knowledge, becomes the ordinary process of our action, while desire-force and physical action fall into a secondary place and are only used with this new energy behind them and as its occasional channels. We are in touch and sympathy also with the Mind in cosmos, conscious of it, aware of the intentions, directions, thought-forces, struggle of subtle powers behind all happenings, which the ordinary marl is ignorant of or can only obscurely infer from the physical happening, but which we can now see and feel directly before there is any physical sign or even vital intimation of their working. We acquire too the knowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether on the physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities of the mental being, -- occult powers or Siddhis, but of a much rarer or subtler kind than those proper to the vital plane, -- naturally awake in our consciousness.
  All these however are circumstances of the lower triple world of our being, the trailokya of the ancient sages. Living on these we are, whatever the enlargement of our powers and our consciousness, still living within the limits of the cosmic gods and subject, though with a much subtler, easier and modified subjection, to the reign of prakriti over Purusha. To achieve real freedom and mastery we have to ascend to a yet higher level of the many-plateaued mountain of our being.

2.20 - The Philosophy of Rebirth, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For it involves two paradoxes which need more justification before they can even be accorded any consideration; first, the hourly creation of beings who have a beginning in time but no end in time, and are, moreover, born by the birth of the body but do not end by the death of the body; secondly, their assumption of a ready-made mass of combined qualities, virtues, vices, capacities, defects, temperamental and other advantages and handicaps, not made by them at all through growth, but made for them by arbitrary fiat, - if not by law of heredity, - yet for which and for the perfect use of which they are held responsible by their Creator.
  We may maintain - provisionally, at least, - certain things as legitimate presumptions of the philosophic reason and fairly throw the burden of disproving them on their denier. Among these postulates is the principle that that which has no end must necessarily have had no beginning; all that begins or is created has an end by cessation of the process that created and maintains it or the dissolution of the materials of which it is compounded or the end of the function for which it came into being. If there is an exception to this law, it must be by a descent of spirit into matter animating matter with divinity or giving matter its own immortality; but the spirit itself which so descends is immortal, not made or created. If the soul was created to animate the body, if it depended on the body for its coming into existence, it can have no reason or basis for existence after the disappearance of the body. It is naturally to be supposed that the breath or power given for the animation of the body would return at its final dissolution to its Maker. If, on the contrary, it still persists as an immortal embodied being, there must be a subtle or psychic body in which it continues, and it is fairly certain that this psychic body and its inhabitant must be pre-existent to the material vehicle: it is irrational to suppose that they were created originally to inhabit that brief and perishable form; an immortal being cannot be the outcome of so ephemeral an incident in creation. If the soul remains but in a disembodied condition, then it can have had no original dependence on a body for its existence; it must have subsisted as an unembodied spirit before birth even as it persists in its disembodied spiritual entity after death.

2.21 - The Ladder of Self-transcendence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the Spirit can be poised in the principle of Life, not in Matter. The Spirit so founded becomes the vital self of a vital world, the Life-soul of a Life-energy in the reign of a consciously dynamic Nature. Absorbed in the experiences of the power and play of a conscious Life, it is dominated by the desire, activity and passion of the rajasic principle proper to vital existence. In the individual this spirit becomes a vital soul, pranamaya purusa, in whose nature the life-energies tyrannise over the mental and physical principles. The physical element in a vital world readily shapes its activities and formations in response to desire and its imaginations, it serves and obeys the passion and power of life and their formations and does not thwart or limit them as it does here on earth where life is a precarious incident in inanimate Matter. The mental element too is moulded and limited by the life-power, obeys it and helps only to enrich and fulfil the urge of its desires and the energy of its impulses. This vital soul lives in a vital body composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter, it is a substance surcharged with conscious energy, capable of much more powerful perceptions, capacities, sense-activities than any that the gross atomic elements of earth-matter can offer. Man, too, has in himself behind his physical being, subliminal to it, unseen and unknown but very close to it and forming with it the most naturally active part of his existence, this vital soul, this vital nature and this vital body; a whole vital plane connected with the life-world or desire-world is hidden in us, a secret consciousness in which life and desire find their untrammelled play arid their easy self-expression and from there throw their influences and formations on our outer life.
  In proportion as the power of this vital plane manifests itself in him and takes hold of his physical being, this son of earth becomes a vehicle of the life energy, forceful in his desires, vehement in his passions and emotions, intensely dynamic in his action, more and more the rajasic man. It is possible now for him to awaken in his consciousness to the vital plane and to become the vital soul, pranamaya purusa, put on the vital nature and live in the secret vital as well as the visible physical body. If he achieves this change with some fullness or one-pointedness -- usually it is under great and salutary limitations, or attended by saving complexities -- and without rising beyond these things, without climbing to a supra-vital height from which they can be used, purified, uplifted, he becomes the lower type of Asura or Titan, a Rakshasa ill nature, a soul of sheer power and life-energy, magnified or racked by a force of unlimited desire and passion, hunted and driven by an active capacity and colossal rajasic ego, but in possession of far greater and more various powers than those of the physical man in the ordinary more inert earth-nature. Even if he develops mind greatly on the vital plane and uses its dynamic energy for self-control as well as for self-satisfaction, it will still be with an Asuric energism (tapasya) although of a higher type and directed to a more governed satisfaction of the rajasic ego.
  --
  Above matter and life stands the principle of mind, nearer to the secret Origin of things. The Spirit poised in mind becomes the mental self of a mental world and dwells there in the reign of its own pure and luminous mental Nature. There it acts in the intense freedom of the cosmic Intelligence supported by the combined workings of a psycho-mental and a higher emotional mind-force, subtilised and enlightened by the clarity and happiness of the sattwic principle proper to the mental existence. In the individual the spirit so poised becomes a mental soul, manomaya purusa, in whose nature the clarity and luminous power of the mind acts in its own right independent of any limitation or oppression by the vital or corporeal instruments; it rather rules and determines entirely the forms of its body and the powers of its life. For mind in its own plane is not limited by life and obstructed by matter as it is here in the earth-process. This mental soul lives in a mental or subtle body which enjoys capacities of knowledge, perception, sympathy and interpenetration with other beings hardly imaginable by us and a free, delicate and extensive mentalised sense-faculty not limited by the grosser conditions of the life nature or the physical nature.
  Man too has in himself, subliminal, unknown and unseen concealed behind his waking consciousness and visible organism this mental soul, mental nature, mental body and a mental plane, not materialised, in which the principle of Mind is at home and not as here at strife with a world which is alien to it, obstructive to its freedom and corruptive of its purity and clearness. All the higher faculties of man, his intellectual and psycho-mental being and powers, his higher emotional life awaken and increase in proportion as this mental plane in him presses upon him. For the more it manifests, the more it influences the physical parts, the more it enriches and elevates the corresponding mental plane of the embodied nature. At a certain pitch of its increasing sovereignty it can make man truly man and not merely a reasoning animal; for it gives then its characteristic force to the mental being within us which our humanity is in the inwardly governing but still too hampered essence of its psychological structure.
  --
  This limitation is true only so long as man remains closed within the boundaries of the mental Maya. If he rises into the knowledge-self beyond the highest mental stature, if he becomes the knowledge-soul, the Spirit poised in gnosis, vinanamaya purusa, and puts on the nature of its infinite truth and power, if he lives in the knowledge-sheath, the causal body as well as in these subtle mental interlinking vital and grosser physical sheaths or bodies, then, but then only he would be able to draw down entirely into his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; only then will he avail to raise his total being and even his whole manifested, embodied expressive nature into the spiritual kingdom. But this is difficult in the extreme; for the causal body opens itself readily to the consciousness and capacities of the spiritual planes and belongs in its nature to the higher hemisphere of existence, but it is either not developed at all in man or only as yet crudely developed and organised and veiled behind many intervening portals of the subliminal in us. It draws its stuff from the plane of truth-knowledge and the plane of the infinite bliss and these pertain altogether to a still inaccessible higher hemisphere. Shedding upon this lower existence their truth and light and joy they are the source of all that we call spirituality and all that we call perfection. But this infiltration comes from behind thick coverings through which they arrive so tempered and weakened that they are entirely obscured in the materiality of our physical perceptions, grossly distorted and perverted in our vital impulses, perverted too though a little less grossly in our ideative seekings, minimised even in the comparative purity and intensity of the highest intuitive ranges of our mental nature. The supramental principle is secretly lodged in all existence. It is there even in the grossest materiality, it preserves and governs the lower worlds by its hidden power and law; but that power veils itself and that law works unseen through the shackled limitations and limping deformations of the lesser rule of our physical, vital, mental Nature. Yet its governing presence in the lowest forms assures us, because of the unity of all existence, that there is a possibility of their awakening, a possibility even of their perfect manifestation here in spite of every veil, in spite of all the mass of our apparent disabilities, in spite of the incapacity or unwillingness of our mind and life and body. And what is possible, must one day be, for that is the law of the omnipotent Spirit.
  The character of these higher states of the soul and their greater worlds of spiritual Nature is necessarily difficult to seize. Even the Upanishads and the Veda only shadow them out by figures, hints and symbols. Yet it is necessary to attempt some account of their principles and practical effect so far as they can be grasped by the mind that stands on the border of the two hemispheres. The passage beyond that border would be the culmination, the completeness of the Yoga of self-transcendence by self-knowledge. The soul that aspires to perfection, draws back arid upward, says the Upanishad, from the physical into the vital and from the vital into the mental Purusha, -- from the mental into the knowledge-soul and from that self of knowledge into the bliss Purusha. This self of bliss is the conscious foundation of perfect Sachchidananda and to pass into it completes the soul's ascension. The mind therefore must try to give to itself some account of this decisive transformation of the embodied consciousness, this radiant transfiguration and self-exceeding of our ever-aspiring nature. The description mind can arrive at, can never be adequate to the thing itself, but it may point at least to some indicative shadow of it or perhaps some half-luminous image.

2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The existence and influence of other worlds are a fact of primary importance for the possibilities and for the scope of our evolution in terrestrial Nature. For if the physical universe were the only field of manifestation of the infinite Reality and at the same time the field of its whole manifestation, we should have to suppose that, since all the principles of its being from Matter to Spirit are entirely involved in the apparently inconscient Force which is the basis of the first workings of this universe, they are being evolved by it here completely and here solely, without any other aid or pressure except that of the secret Superconscience within it. There would then be a system of things in which the principle of Matter must always remain the first principle, the essential and original determining condition of manifested existence. Spirit might indeed in the end arrive to a limited extent at its natural domination; it might make its basis of physical matter a more elastic instrument not altogether prohibitive of the action of its own highest law and nature or opposed to that action, as it now is in its inelastic resistance. But Spirit would always be dependent upon Matter for its field and its manifestation; it could have no other field: it could not get outside it to another kind of manifestation; and within it also it could not very well liberate any other principle of its being into sovereignty over the material foundation; Matter would remain the one persistent determinant of its manifestation. Life could not become dominant and determinative, Mind could not become the master and creator; their boundaries of capacity would be fixed by the capacities of Matter, which they might enlarge or modify but would not be able to transform radically or liberate. There would be no place for any free and full manifestation of any power of the being, all would be limited for ever by the conditions of an obscuring material formation.
  Spirit, Mind, Life would have no native field or complete scope of their own characteristic power and principle. It is not easy to believe in the inevitability of this self-limitation if Spirit is the creator and these principles have an independent existence and are not products, results or phenomena of the energy of Matter.

2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation, builds a new personal quantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it passes from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time, but the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only the essential elements of the past quantum, of which some will but some may not be used in the next incarnation. The essential form of the past personality may remain as one element among many, one personality among many personalities of the same Person, but in the background, in the subliminal behind the veil of the surface mind and life and body, contri buting from there whatever is needed of itself to the new formation; but it will not itself be the whole formation or build anew the old unchanged type of nature. It may even be that the new quantum or structure of being will exhibit a quite contrary character and temperament, quite other capacities, other very different tendencies; for latent potentials may be ready to emerge, or something already in action but inchoate may have been held back in the last life which needed to be worked out but was kept over for a later and more suitable combination of the possibilities of the nature. All the past is indeed there, with its accelerated impetus and potentialities for the formation of the future, but all of it is not ostensibly present and active. The greater the variety of formations that have existed in the past and can be utilised, the more rich and multitudinous the accumulated buildings of experience, the more their essential result of capacity for knowledge, power, action, character, manifold response to the universe can be brought forward and harmonised in the new birth, the more numerous the veiled personalities mental, vital, subtle-physical that combine to enrich the new personality on the surface, the greater and more opulent will be that personality and the nearer to the possible transition out of the completed mental stage of evolution to something beyond it. Such a complexity and gathering up of many personalities in one person can be a sign of a very advanced stage of the individual's evolution when there is a strong central being that holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of the whole many-sided movement of the nature. But this opulent taking up of the past would not be a repetition of personality; it would be a new formation and large consummation. It is not as a machinery for the persistent renewal or prolongation of an unchanging personality that rebirth exists, but as a means for the evolution of the spiritual being in Nature.
  It becomes at once evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral, - supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retri bution without any reformatory meaning or purpose, - then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him. Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson, - for he sees the good suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness, - he is rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the memory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him that the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the prosperity of the sinner due to the splendour of his past virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any reasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might be said that the psychic being within remembers; but such a secret memory would seem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises what has happened and learns its lesson when it reviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this intermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most of us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by the teaching of our past experience.

2.23 - Man and the Evolution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He is the most complex that has been created, the richest in content of consciousness and the curious ingeniousness of his building; he is the head of the earthly creation, but he does not exceed it. Even as others, so he too has his own native law, limits, special kind of existence, svabhava, svadharma; within those limits he can extend and develop, but he cannot go outside them. If there is a perfection to which he has to arrive, it must be a perfection in his own kind, within his own law of being, - the full play of it, but by observation of its mode and measure, not by transcendence. To exceed himself, to grow into the superman, to put on the nature and capacities of a god would be a contradiction of his self-law, impracticable and impossible.
  Each form and way of being has its own appropriate way of the delight of being; to seek through the mind the mastery and use and enjoyment of the environment of which he is capable is rightly man the mental being's objective: but to look beyond, to run after an ulterior object or aim of existence, to aspire to surpass the mental stature is to bring in a teleological element into existence which is not visible in the cosmic structure. If a supramental being is to appear in the terrestrial creation, it must be a new and independent manifestation; just as life and mind have manifested in Matter, so supermind must manifest there and the secret Conscious-Energy must create the necessary patterns for this new grade of its potencies. But there is no sign of any such intention in the operations of Nature.
  --
  If indeed man has evolved in Nature out of the animal, yet now we see that no other animal type shows any signs of an evolution beyond itself; if then there was this evolutionary stress in the animal kingdom, it must have sunk back into quiescence as soon as the object was fulfilled by man's appearance: so too if there is any such stress for a new step in evolution, for selfexceeding, it is likely to subside into quiescence as soon as its object is fulfilled by the supramental being's appearance. But there is no such stress in reality: the idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal stage, has radically progressed during his race history; at most he has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature. But otherwise he is what he always was in the early beginnings of civilisation: he continues to manifest the same capacities, the same qualities and defects, the same efforts, blunders, achievements, frustrations. If progress there has been, it is in a circle, at most perhaps in a widening circle. Man today is not wiser than the ancient seers and sages and thinkers, not more spiritual than the great seekers of old, the first mighty mystics, not superior in arts and crafts to the ancient artists and craftsmen; the old races that have disappeared showed as potent an intrinsic originality, invention, capacity of dealing with life and, if modern man in this respect has gone a little farther, not by any essential progress but in degree, scope, abundance, it is because he has inherited the achievements of his forerunners.
  Nothing warrants the idea that he will ever hew his way out of the half-knowledge half-ignorance which is the stamp of his kind, or, even if he develops a higher knowledge, that he can break out of the utmost boundary of the mental circle.
  --
  Next, it may be conceded that each type or pattern of consciousness and being in the body, once established, has to be faithful to the law of being of that type, to its own design and rule of nature. But it may also very well be that part of the law of the human type is its impulse towards self-exceeding, that the means for a conscious transition has been provided for among the spiritual powers of man; the possession of such a capacity may be a part of the plan on which the creative Energy has built him. It may be conceded that what man has up till now principally done is to act within the circle of his nature, on a spiral of nature movement, sometimes descending, sometimes ascending, - there has been no straight line of progress, no indisputable, fundamental or radical exceeding of his past nature: what he has done is to sharpen, subtilise, make a more and more complex and plastic use of his capacities. It cannot truly be said that there has been no such thing as human progress since man's appearance or even in his recent ascertainable history; for however great the ancients, however supreme some of their achievements and creations, however impressive their powers of spirituality, of intellect or of character, there has been in later developments an increasing subtlety, complexity, manifold development of knowledge and possibility in man's achievements, in his politics, society, life, science, metaphysics, knowledge of all kinds, art, literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been falls from a high type of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into a barbaric natural materialism; but these are temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve of the spiral of progress. This progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and increasing complexity till it is ready for her bursting of the shell, the ripened decisive emergence, reversal, turning over of consciousness on itself that constitutes a new stage in the evolution. If it be supposed that her next step is the spiritual and supramental being, the stress of spirituality in the race may be taken as a sign that that is Nature's intention, the sign too of the capacity of man to operate in himself or aid her to operate the transition. If the appearance in animal being of a type similar in some respects to the ape-kind but already from the beginning endowed with the elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being.
  It is pertinently suggested that if such an evolutionary culmination is intended and man is to be its medium, it will only be a few especially evolved human beings who will form the new type and move towards the new life; that once done, the rest of humanity will sink back from a spiritual aspiration no longer necessary for Nature's purpose and remain quiescent in its normal status. It can equally be reasoned that the human gradation must be preserved if there is really an ascent of the soul by reincarnation through the evolutionary degrees towards the spiritual summit; for otherwise the most necessary of all the intermediate steps will be lacking. It must be conceded at once that there is not the least probability or possibility of the whole human race rising in a block to the supramental level; what is suggested is nothing so revolutionary and astonishing, but only the capacity in the human mentality, when it has reached a certain level or a certain point of stress of the evolutionary impetus, to press towards a higher plane of consciousness and its embodiment in the being. The being will necessarily undergo by this embodiment a change from the normal constitution of its nature, a change certainly of its mental and emotional and sensational constitution and also to a great extent of the body-consciousness and the physical conditioning of our life and energies; but the change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial movement, the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a consequence. This transmutation of the consciousness will always remain possible to the human being when the flame of the soul, the psychic kindling, becomes potent in heart and mind and the nature is ready. The spiritual aspiration is innate in man; for he is, unlike the animal, aware of imperfection and limitation and feels that there is something to be attained beyond what he now is: this urge towards selfexceeding is not likely ever to die out totally in the race. The human mental status will be always there, but it will be there not only as a degree in the scale of rebirth, but as an open step towards the spiritual and supramental status.
  It must be observed that the appearance of human mind and body on the earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter evolution had been effected, not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking of the living being, but subconsciously or subliminally by the automatic operation of Nature. This was so because the evolution began from the Inconscience and the secret Consciousness had not emerged sufficiently from it to operate through the self-aware participating individual will of its living creature. But in man the necessary change has been made, - the being has become awake and aware of himself; there has been made manifest in Mind its will to develop, to grow in knowledge, to deepen the inner and widen the outer existence, to increase the capacities of the nature. Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him: he has become conscious of a soul, discovered the self and spirit. In him, then, the substitution of a conscious for a subconscious evolution has become conceivable and practicable, and it may well be concluded that the aspiration, the urge, the persistent endeavour in him is a sure sign of Nature's will for a higher way of fulfilment, the emergence of a greater status.
  In the previous stages of the evolution Nature's first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A unification of the entire being by a breaking down of the wall between the inner and outer nature, - a shifting of the position and centration of the consciousness from the outer to the inner self, a firm foundation on this new basis, a habitual action from this inner self and its will and vision and an opening up of the individual into the cosmic consciousness, - is another necessary condition for the supramental change. It would be chimerical to hope that the supreme Truth-consciousness can establish itself in the narrow formulation of our surface mind and heart and life, however turned towards spirituality. All the inner centres must have burst open and released into action their capacities; the psychic entity must be unveiled and in control. If this first change establishing the being in the inner and larger, a Yogic in place of an ordinary consciousness has not been done, the greater transmutation is impossible. Moreover the individual must have sufficiently universalised himself, he must have recast his individual mind in the boundlessness of a cosmic mentality, enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere of universality into a consciousness belonging to its spiritual upper hemisphere. Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient; he must be already a being conscious of the higher spiritual Light, Power, Knowledge, Ananda, penetrated by its descending influences, new-made by a spiritual change. It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place and its action to proceed before the psychic is far advanced or complete; for the spiritual influence from above can awaken, assist and complete the psychic transmutation: all that is necessary is that there should be a sufficient stress of the psychic entity for the spiritual higher overture to take place. But the third, the supramental change does not admit of any premature descent of the highest Light; for it can only commence when the supramental Force begins to act directly, and this it does not do if the nature is not ready. For there is too great a disparity between the power of the supreme Force and the capacity of the ordinary nature; the inferior nature would either be unable to bear or, bearing, unable to respond and receive or, receiving, unable to assimilate. Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially responsive.
  The spiritual evolution obeys the logic of a successive unfolding; it can take a new decisive main step only when the previous main step has been sufficiently conquered: even if certain minor stages can be swallowed up or leaped over by a rapid and brusque ascension, the consciousness has to turn back to assure itself that the ground passed over is securely annexed to the new condition. It is true that the conquest of the spirit supposes the execution in one life or a few lives of a process that in the ordinary course of Nature would involve a slow and uncertain procedure of centuries or even of millenniums: but this is a question of the speed with which the steps are traversed; a greater or concentrated speed does not eliminate the steps themselves or the necessity of their successive surmounting. The increased rapidity is possible only because the conscious participation of the inner being is there and the power of the Supernature is already at work in the half-transformed lower nature, so that the steps which would otherwise have had to be taken tentatively in the night of Inconscience or Ignorance can now be taken in an increasing light and power of Knowledge. The first obscure material movement of the evolutionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality; the movement of life progress proceeds slowly but still with a quicker step, it is concentrated into the figure of millenniums; mind can still further compress the tardy leisureliness of Time and make long paces of the centuries; but when the conscious Spirit intervenes, a supremely concentrated pace of evolutionary swiftness becomes possible. Still, an involved rapidity of the evolutionary course swallowing up the stages can only come in when the power of the conscious Spirit has prepared the field and the supramental Force has begun to use its direct influence. All Nature's transformations do indeed wear the appearance of a miracle, but it is a miracle with a method: her largest strides are taken over an assured ground, her swiftest leaps are from a base that gives security and certainty to the evolutionary saltus; a secret all-wisdom governs everything in her, even the steps and processes that seem to be most unaccountable.

2.2.7.01 - Some General Remarks, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I dont agree with Prithwi Singh. If a man has a capacity for poetry or anything else, it will certainly come out and rise to greater heights than it would have done elsewhere. Witness Dilip who was unable to write poetry till he came here though he had the instinct and the suppressed power in him, Nishikanta whose full flow came only here, Arjava, Punjalal whose recent poems in Gujarati seem to me to have an extraordinary beautythough I admit that I am no expert there. Harin wrote beautifully before but the sovereign excellence of his recent poetry is new. There are others who are developing a power of writing they had not before. All that does not show that Yoga has no power to develop capacity. I myself have developed many capacities by Yoga. Formerly I could not have written a line of philosophynow people have started writing books about my philosophy to my great surprise. It is not a question of first class or second class. One has to produce ones best and develop the class if class there must be will be decided by posterity. Tagore himself was once considered second class by any number of people and the nature of his poetry was fiercely questioneduntil the Nobel prize and consequent fame ended their discussions. One has not to consider fame or the appreciation of others, but do whatever work one can do as an offering of ones capacity to the Divine.
  11 November 1934

2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  52: An evolution of innate and latent but as yet unevolved powers of consciousness is not considered admissible by the modern mind, because these exceed our present formulation of Nature and, to our ignorant preconceptions founded on a limited experience, they seem to belong to the supernatural, to the miraculous and occult; for they surpass the known action of material Energy which is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force. A human working of marvels, by the conscious being discovering and developing an instrumentation of material forces overpassing anything that Nature has herself organised, is accepted as a natural fact and an almost unlimited prospect of our existence; an awakening, a discovery, an instrumentation of powers of consciousness and of spiritual, mental and life forces overpassing anything that Nature or man has yet organised is not admitted as possible. But there would be nothing supernatural or miraculous in such an evolution, except in so far as it would be a supernature or superior nature to ours just as human nature is a supernature or superior nature to that of animal or plant or material objects. Our mind and its powers, our use of reason, our mental intuition and insight, speech, possibilities of philosophical, scientific, aesthetic discovery of the truths and potencies of being and a control of its forces are an evolution that has taken place: yet it would seem impossible if we took our stand on the limited animal consciousness and its capacities; for there is nothing there to warrant so prodigious a progression.
  53: But still there are vague initial manifestations, rudimentary elements or arrested possibilities in the animal to which our reason and intelligence with their extraordinary developments stand as an unimaginable journey from a poor and unpromising point of departure. The rudiments of spiritual powers belonging to the gnostic supernature are similarly there even in our ordinary composition, but only occasionally and sparsely active. It is not irrational to suppose that at this much higher stage of the evolution a similar but greater progression starting from these rudimentary beginnings might lead to another immense development and departure.
  --
  55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. There is nothing in this future evolution of the being which could be regarded as irrational or incredible; there is nothing in it abnormal or miraculous: it would be the necessary course of the evolution of consciousness and its forces in the passage from the mental to the gnostic or supramental formulation of our existence. This action of the forces of supernature would be a natural, normal and spontaneously simple working of the new higher or greater consciousness into which the being enters in the course of his self-evolution; the gnostic being accepting the gnostic life would develop and use the powers of this greater consciousness, even as man develops and uses the powers of his mental nature.
  56: It is evident that such an increase of the power or powers of consciousness would be not only normal but indispensable to a greater and more perfect life. Human life with its partial harmony, in so far as that is not maintained by the imposition of a settled law and order on the constituent individuals through a partly willing, partly induced, partly forced or unavoidable acceptance, reposes on the agreement of the enlightened or interested elements in their mind, heart, life-sense, an assent to a composite body of common ideas, desires, vital satisfactions, aims of existence. But there is in the mass of constituting individuals an imperfect understanding and knowledge of the ideas, life-aims, life-motives which they have accepted, an imperfect power in their execution, an imperfect will to maintain them always unimpaired, to carry them out fully or to bring the life to a greater perfection: there is an element of struggle and discord, a mass of repressed or unfulfilled desires and frustrated wills, a simmering suppressed unsatisfaction or an awakened or eruptive discontent of unequally satisfied interests; there are new ideas, life-motives that break in and cannot be correlated without upheaval and disturbance; there are life-forces at work in human beings and their environment that are at variance with the harmony that has been constructed, and there is not the full power to overcome the discord and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature. What is lacking is a spiritual knowledge and spiritual power, a power over self, a power born of inner unification with others, a power over the surrounding or invading world-forces, a full-visioned and fully equipped power of effectuation of knowledge; it is these capacities missing or defective in us that belong to the very substance of gnostic being, for they are inherent in the light and dynamis of the gnostic nature.
  57: But, in addition to the imperfect accommodation of the minds, hearts, lives of the constituting individuals in a human society, the mind and the life of the individual himself are actuated by forces that are not in accord with each other; our attempts to accord them are imperfect, and still more imperfect is our force to put any one of them into integral or satisfying execution in life. Thus the law of love and sympathy is natural to our consciousness; as we grow in spirit, its demand on us increases: but there is also the demand of the intellect, the push of the vital force and its impulses in us, the claim and pressure of many other elements that do not coincide with the law of love and sympathy, nor do we know how to fit them all into the whole law of existence or to render any or all of them either justly and entirely effective or imperative. In order to make them concordant and actively fruitful in the whole being and whole life, we have to grow into a more complete spiritual nature; we have, by that growth, to live in the light and force of a higher and larger and more integral consciousness of which knowledge and power, love and sympathy and play of life-will are all natural and ever-present accorded elements; we have to move and act in a light of Truth which sees intuitively and spontaneously the thing to be done and the way to do it and intuitively and spontaneously fulfils itself in the act and the force, - taking up into that intuitive spontaneity of their truth, into its simple spiritual and supreme normality, the complexity of our forces of being and suffusing with their harmonised realities all the steps of Nature.
  --
  88: One might conceive of a number of individuals thus evolving separately in the midst of the old life and then joining together to establish the nucleus of the new existence. But it is not likely that Nature would operate in this fashion, and it would be difficult for the individual to arrive at a complete change while still enclosed in the life of the lower nature. At a certain stage it might be necessary to follow the age-long device of the separate community, but with a double purpose, first to provide a secure atmosphere, a place and life apart, in which the consciousness of the individual might concentrate on its evolution in surroundings where all was turned and centred towards the one endeavour and, next, when things were ready, to formulate and develop the new life in those surroundings and in this prepared spiritual atmosphere. It might be that, in such a concentration of effort, all the difficulties of the change would present themselves with a concentrated force; for each seeker, carrying in himself the possibilities but also the imperfections of a world that has to be transformed, would bring in not only his capacities but his difficulties and the oppositions of the old nature and, mixed together in the restricted circle of a small and close common life, these might assume a considerably enhanced force of obstruction which would tend to counterbalance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life. But if Nature is ready and has taken her evolutionary decision or if the power of the Spirit descending from the higher planes is sufficiently strong, the difficulty would be overcome and a first evolutionary formation or formations would be possible.
  89: But if an entire reliance upon the guiding Light and Will and a luminous expression of the truth of the Spirit in life are to be the law, that would seem to presuppose a gnostic world, a world in which the consciousness of all its beings was founded on this basis; there it can be understood that the life-interchange of gnostic individuals in a gnostic community or communities would be by its very nature an understanding and harmonious process. But here, actually, there would be a life of gnostic beings proceeding within or side by side with a life of beings in the Ignorance, attempting to emerge in it or out of it, and yet the law of the two lives would seem to be contrary and to offend against each other. A complete seclusion or separation of the life of a spiritual community from the life of the Ignorance would then seem to impose itself: for otherwise a compromise between the two lives would be necessary and with the compromise a danger of contamination or incompleteness of the greater existence; two different and incompatible principles of existence would be in contact and, even though the greater would influence the lesser, the smaller life would also have its effect on the greater, since such mutual impact is the law of all contiguity and interchange.

2.3.01 - Aspiration and Surrender to the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If I constantly encourage you, it is not because I see you deteriorating and want to hide it - I see nothing of the kind, - but because I have faith in your capacities and see the nobler D behind all outward weakness. I would not speak what I know to be false - that much credit you can give me.
  P. S. What put this into your head that you are regarded as an untouchable and a bad influence? If every man who had difficulties were so regarded, the whole Asram would be an

2.3.04 - The Higher Planes of Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Some people have a faculty of receiving impressions about others which is not by any means infallible, but often turns out to be right. That is one thing and the Yogic intuition by which one directly knows or feels what is in a man, his capacities, character, temperament, is another. The first may be a help for developing the other, but it is not the same thing. The Yogic faculty has to be and it can be complete only with a great development of the inner consciousness.
  To have the true intuition one must get rid of the mind's self-will and the vital's also, their preferences, fancies, fantasies, strong insistences, and eliminate the mental and vital ego's pressure which sets the consciousness to work in the service of its own claims and desires. Otherwise these things will come in with force and claim to be intuitions, inspirations and the rest of it.

2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is little use our trying to convey to you our will (in words), because what your vital seeks after is a sanction for your own will and its way of action, and it is little use our trying to give you light, because your mind follows always its own light. Any attempt to correct from us you have always rejected as our error, our misunderstanding of you, an attempt to give you kicks, as you express it. In such a case we can only be silent, try to help your sadhana silently as much as you will allow and for the rest leave you to learn by experience as far as you may become willing to do so. You have capacities and Yogic stuff, but along with them goes a very strong self-esteem and a self-righteous spirit which stand in the way of perfection and constitute a very serious obstacle. So long as a sadhak has that, the attempt of the Truth to manifest in him will always be baffled by his changing it into mental and vital constructions which distort it, turn it into ineffective half-truth or even make truth itself a source of error.
  I would not have written even so much if you had not pressed so persistently for an answer. I hope you will not take it as misunderstanding or merely another kick. If you do not want criticism or correction from us, you should at least develop better the power of self-criticism and self-correction in yourself without which no perfection is possible.

29.03 - In Her Company, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It was a great mystery, and a great, as I said, a great phenomenon, this free interchange between the physical world, the physical life and the other heavenly or otherworldly worlds. There was a mixture, a co-mingling, and at times a fusion of these two different dissimilar realms. And it was a very concrete, a very living phenomenon. It is not however as mere isolated instances that the phenomenon occurs: this phenomenon of interaction between two distinct and dissimilar worlds. These higher or otherworldly powers exist not merely for their own sake, for their own delight or growth, they have also a place in the universal play, in the play of earthly evolution: that is to say, they are there in their own realms and come nearer to the earth to extend their help in its forward march. They help individual beings also bestowing their powers and capacities and their inspiration. The word "inspiration" itself means a breath, an influence from elsewhere, from another sphere. It means that which is not confined to the known and the present but something new, something unfamiliar, from somewhere else touches our old life's sphere. Sri Aurobindo has given some instances how, here, people who were very commonplace and ordinary in their intelligence and capacity developed in a strange uncanny way other qualities and accomplishments they could not think of or dream of. This was possible only because of this help, this inspiration or prompting from elsewhere. We have had people in our midst who received or receive still this help in creating their music, poetry and art. I may cite here a remarkable instance. There was a professor here, an Englishman, Professor of Philosophy, but of a special kind of Philosophy, mathematical logic - mathematics and logic married together, two of the driest subjects to students: teachers or students among you will kindly excuse me for this compliment I am paying to their subject. This professor, dry as dust,miraculous to say, flowered into a very fine poet. He wrote poetry of an extreme sensitiveness, exquisite in form and feeling. You must have heard of him, some must have read him, I speak of Arjava. A really fine poet he became, no trace of mathematics at all was there - unless it is the magic of the mathematics of the Infinity, of the Unknowable.
   I was speaking of the influence of other forces upon human beings and the power they exercise upon external circumstances. These phenomena happen automatically, we have no control over them. But this too can be acquired. These supra-normal faculties can be brought under control. One can come in conscious contact with such forces and influences and know them and even guide their action. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of this mystery and I think I have referred to it in my Reminiscences. Sri Aurobindo himself used to do automatic writing, as perhaps many of you,the older ones particularly, know it. I will explain. Sri Aurobindo used to allow these other-worldly forces and invisible beings to enter into his physical personality, in the same way as the Mother used to do with regard to her music allowing other persons to enter into her fingers and play through them their music. Here also Sri Aurobindo used to do the same and similar things consciously. I have seen it myself, and many others. He used to hold the pen or pencil between his fingers, ready to write on a piece of paper, placed in front; he used to leave his fingers absolutely passive without any will in himself to write they were: almost like an inert object. After a time the pen or pencil used to move by it self and begin to write, write sometimes even speeches, give instructions or information, answer questions also.

29.04 - Mothers Playground, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Long ago, some twenty-five years ago, a well-known leader of India, a great educationist came and saw our playground activities and made the remark: "I have travelled all over India, visited various educational institutions, seen women doing gymnastics but it is the first time that I see here in the Ashram girls doing vaulting, especially on parallel bars, I have never seen it anywhere else." Of course, it goes without saying, circus-girls are different. In other words people used to consider vaulting as a specially masculine virtue and along with it many other physical games and exercises. Today it is being gradually found that this is a superstition and the judgment is wrong. The Wimbledon women champions will bear witness. The most important thing is that you have to change the attitude, you have to change consciousness. Of course, there are difficulties on the way, the force of habit, the force of atavism, all that means an extra dose of your consciousnes's or a new consciousness. What is done here and what is done elsewhere, in this respect of freedom being given to women and freedom being given to the younger generation, there is a difference. I will come to it. Mother was repeating so often: the freedom, the liberty you enjoy here is extraordinary, exceptional, there is almost no limit to your freedom. That is to say, it is dangerous, because the unlimited use of freedom means also misuse of freedom. But the Mother took the risk, for that is the only way towards a radical solution, not merely a half-way compromise. Only when you are free, when you are completely, absolutely free, you choose between the good and the bad, and you choose the good of your own will, then the good has a real importance for you, for your consciousness and for your development. Otherwise when you accept and follow the good through compulsion, through fear or social decency or for your own sake in order to be good, through vanity - that is to say, in order to be good you observe certain rules, and you feel you are virtuous, you are dutiful, then it is not the true way, not the true attitude and consciousness. The true consciousness is that you do the right thing not because it is your duty to do it, not because it is worthy to do it and it is expected of you to do it, but because your nature impels you towards it. The flower blooms spontaneously without any sense of duty. It possesses no sense of duty because its nature is to do so, to be beautiful. Human being also could be like that, spontaneous and natural in its action and behaviour. When you do a great thing, you do not feel that you are doing something marvellous or that you are exercising or stretching your power. You do not do a thing because it is your duty to do it but because it is your nature to do so, you cannot but do it. I give an example here. You are students of English and English grammar. Now, tell me, what is the difference between these two statements? "I have to do the thing" and "I am to do the thing"... "I have to do the thing" means 'I am obliged to, I am compelled to, I cannot do otherwise.' "I am to do" means I am doing it, it is for me to do it, I will do it, that is to say it is my nature to do it.' Something of that kind is taught in the Gita - the ideal of kartavyam karma and niskma karma or one's Swadharma. Kartavya is usually translated as duty but it is not correct. Kartavya is one's Dharma or the spontaneous expression of one's nature, what one is to do, not what one has to do. Mother gave this infinite freedom to her children because that was the only way of creating a new nature and she showed also the difference between the right use of freedom and its wrong use. The wrong use is found in all the movements of freedom outside in the normal life, either in the student movement or the women's emancipation movement. Now when women are fighting for freedom for themselves they consider themselves as women fighting for freedom against men. "We are women, you are men, you enjoy privileges, rights, we are denied them, we want them, we claim them." In the youth movement also the young people say: all the powers the old people enjoy, positions and emoluments, that will not do, we want to share these also along with the old. Mother said, "No, it is not the right attitude." You must change your position, your point of view. Going out for a quarrel, for a fight means that you consider yourselves different beings, with different powers, capacities, constitutions etc., etc. First of all you must consider yourselves, all, both the parties, as human beings, not two different species. This is being acknowledged to some extent now-a-days but it is not sufficient, Mother says. If you are content to be human beings, just human beings, differences will arise again and again and not only differences but serious differences. Human nature is composed of these differences, and culture and civilisation meant nothing more than a reconciliation, a compromise among these differences. And the result has been that we have not gone very far for the solution. A deeper truth is to be found, a higher truth and a more powerful truth. We must rise to a new state, Mother spoke always of the truth - the truth of your soul. To the truth of your soul, in the truth of your soul you are neither man nor woman, neither young nor old - tvam kumra uta v kumri, tvam jrna... you are all that in appearance, for you are something more or something else.
   You are to take your stand on your soul, that was the lesson that the Mother was trying to impart in the playground education. So long as you are in the normal consciousness imbedded in your body-consciousness and view things from there, your life also will be built in the pattern created by the body-consciousness. Life in that pattern can proceed only through difference and distinction, contrast and contradiction, conflict and battle. So long as you stick to your habitual position it will be so; the remedy is a radical remedy; it is to reverse your position. You have to stand not on your legs but on your head, then you will find the way to march through not confrontation but co-operation, not through separation but union, not through difference but identity. So long as you are mere human beings this supreme soul-identity cannot come. You have to forget the differences... some one asked the Mother in one of the playground talks of the Mother: how is it possible for one to forget this fundamental difference that one is a man and another a woman. Mother answered: "How do you say so? Look here, when I talk to Tara, do you think I am always considering her as a woman and talking accordingly." And she could have added: "And when I answer you do you think I am speaking to a masculine person?" I may narrate here a little incident concerning me personally. It was with regard to the question of age. When someone informed Mother that they wanted to celebrate, perhaps it was my eightieth birthday, in a magnificent manner, a gala celebration, Mother roared out: "No, no, you are spoiling my work. All the while I was trying to make him forget his age and you are trying to insist on his age." Age also is a thing to be forgotten. The birthday-celebration is not for recording the progress in our age, how we are progressing year by year in our age, that is, how we are getting old - No, it is to note the progress made in the inner being and consciousness. Each birthday is to be a landmark of the forward march of your consciousness, not the greyness of your head. The touch of your soul will inspire you not merely to do the right inner movement, the enlightening of your consciousness but also it will inspire you to do the right physical movement, even lead you to the choice of the right kind of physical exercises and do them in the right manner. The lesson to learn then is to get back to your soul inside you, you will find there everything that is worth having: freedom, joy, harmony and even untold capacity.

3.01 - Towards the Future, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  True, but sometimes I feel such an emptiness in my life! It may have been to fill this emptiness that I gave myself entirely and in all sincerity to that marvellous cause which is so dear to me: to relieve suffering humanity, to awaken it to its capacities and its true goal and ultimate transformation.
  SCHOOLFRIEND

3.02 - Aspiration, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   you can and must always call for help and the rest the answer will be proportionate to your capacity of reception and assimilation. Pulling is a selfish movement that may bring down forces quite disproportionate to your capacities and thus are harmful.

3.02 - The Great Secret, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
    I was sent to a boarding school. Naturally the programme of physical education appealed to me the most. I started taking keen interest in it and in a few years I gradually took my place among the good players and athletes of my school. Then my first success came when I won the inter-school boxing championship. How happy and proud my parents were when they saw their dream on the way to fulfilment! I was very much encouraged by my success, and henceforth put all my determination with earnestness, care and hard effort into mastering the technique and acquiring the skills of all the branches of physical education. I was taught to develop all the different capacities of the body by participating in all the sporting activities. I believed that by an all-round physical training one could be highly successful and be master of more than one or even a few activities. That is why I participated in all the sporting items that opportunity offered me. Year after year, in open championship I regularly won the wrestling, boxing, weight-lifting, body-building, swimming, track and field events, tennis, gymnastics and many other activities also.
    Now I was eighteen years old. I wanted to compete in the national games championship. As a believer in all-round development I selected the Decathlon event as my item in the national championship. It is the toughest of all events, - it demands a supreme test of speed, strength, endurance, co-ordination and many other qualities. I got down to training and after six months of hard work I took the championship easily, keeping my second man far behind.

3.04 - The Spirit in Spirit-Land after Death, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
   just as little developed and gained within the earthly incarnation as the plan of a house comes into existence on the site on which the laborers work. Just as this plan is worked out in the offices of the architect, so are the aims and purposes of the earthly creative activities worked out and developed in the "Land of Spirits." The spirit of man has always to live again in this land between two incarnations in order to be able to equip himself with what he takes with him on leaving it and, armed with that, to approach the work in the physical life. As the architect without working with brick and mortar designs the plan of the house in his workroom in accordance with architectural and other rules, so has the architect of human creations, the spirit or Higher Self, to develop in the "Spirit-land" capacities and aims in accordance with the laws of this land, in order to bring them over into the physical world. Only if the human spirit sojourns over and over again in its own region will it be also able to bring the spirit, by means of the physical corporal instruments, into the earthly world.
  On the physical scene of action man learns
  --
  One can carry the above comparison further, in order to make the matter clearer. The architect designs the plan of the house. It is carried out. While this goes on he gains a number of the most varied experiences. All of these experiences enhance his capacities. When he designs his next plan all these experiences have an influence on it. And this plan, when compared to the first, is seen to be enriched with all that was learned through the first. It is the same with the successive human lives. In the interval between the incarnations the spirit lives in its own sphere. It
   p. 145
  --
   made living from within, made to spring from inner sources, and his capacities in this direction are enhanced. The force in the spirit of man which acts as the power of love of family and friend is streng thened. He enters his earthly existence later a more perfect man in these respects. It is to a certain extent the everyday relationships of the earth life which ripen as the fruitage of this lowest region of the "Spirit-land." And those persons whose interests are wholly absorbed by these everyday relationships will feel themselves in affinity with this region for the greater part of their spiritual life between two incarnations.
  The next region is that in which the common life of the earth world flows as Thought-being, as the fluid element, so to speak, of the "Spirit-land." So long as we observe the world during physical embodiment life appears to us to be confined within separate living beings. In "Spirit-land" it is loosed from them and, like life blood, flows as it were through the whole land. It is there the living Unity which is present in everything. Of this also only a reflection appears to us during the earthly life. And this reflection expresses
  --
  And they will reincarnate with heightened capacities in this direction.
  The third region of "Spirit-land" contains the Archetypes of the soul world. All that lives in this world is present as living thought-being. One finds in it the Archetypes of desires, wishes, feelings, etc. But here, in the spirit world, nothing of self-seeking attaches itself to the soul. Like all life in the second region, in this third region all longings, wishes, all likes and dislikes, form a unity. The desires and wishes of others are not separable from my desires and wishes. The sensations and feelings of all beings are a common world enclosing and surrounding everything else, just as our physical atmosphere surrounds the earth. This region is, as it were, the atmosphere or air of the "Spirit-land." All that a person has carried out in his life on earth in the service of the community, in selfless devotion to his fellowmen, will bear fruit here. For through this service, through this self-giving, he has lived in a reflection of the third region of the "Spirit-land." The great benefactors of the human race, the philanthropists who render great services to communities,

3.05 - The Physical World and its Connection with the Soul and Spirit-Lands, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  In the animal world sensation and impulse are added to the capacities for growth and
   p. 169
  --
  Man, in addition to having the capacities named as those of plants and animals, is furnished also with the power of working up his sensations into ideas and thoughts and of controlling his impulses by thinking. The thought which appears in the plant as shape and in the animal as soul force makes its appearance in him in its own form as thought itself. The animal is soul; man is spirit. The Spirit Being, which in the animal is engaged in soul development, has now descended a stage deeper still. In man it has entered into the world of sensible matter itself. The spirit
   p. 171

3.06 - Thought-Forms and the Human Aura, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  It has become evident that the formations of any one of the three worlds can have reality for a man only when he has the capacities or the organs for perceiving them. A man perceives certain occurrences in space as light phenomena only because he has a correctly-constructed eye. It depends on the receptivity of a being how much of what really is, reveals itself to it. Never therefore may a man say that only what he can perceive is real. There can be much that is real, for the perception of which he has no organs. Now the soul world and the spirit world are just as real as the sensible world, indeed they are real in a much higher sense. No physical eye can see feelings and ideas; but they are real. And as man
   p. 179
  --
  All three parts of the aura contain colors of the most varied shades. But the character of these shades changes with the stage of development of the man. One can see in the first part of the aura of the undeveloped man of impulse all shades from red to blue. With him these shades have a dull, dirty character. The obtrusive red shades point to the sensual desires, to the fleshly lusts, to the passion for the enjoyments of the palate and the stomach. Green shades appear to be found especially in those lower natures that incline to obtuseness and indifference, greedily giving themselves over to each enjoyment but nevertheless shunning the exertions necessary to satisfy them. Where the desires are passionately bent on any goal beyond the reach of the capacities already acquired, brownish-green and yellowish-green colors appear. Certain modern modes of life actually breed this kind of aura.
  A personal conceit which is entirely rooted in low inclinations, that is to say the lowest stage of egoism, shows itself in tones from

31.01 - The Heart of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Aryan and the Dravidian blood has influenced the Bengali race. But we definitely know that the Bengali race is not totally pure or unalloyed. It is a mixture of many races. But here in the diversity of many races we are seeing the result of extraordinary capacities.
   The nervous system of the Bengalis is not very strong, but it is very sharp. Their vital energy is not solid, but it is pliant. Prompt are they in their actions, but not persevering. They have a subtle sensitivity and a quick sensibility. In addition, they are sentimental and emotional; and consequently, they are thoughtful and imaginative. They are unsteady; therefore they are ever open to the new. They do not want to see the world as it is with calm and plain eyes; they would like to see the world coloured with the collyrium of their heart. They are swayed to and fro by the impulse of their heart, like a pendulum. No others can make the impulses of the heart intense and one-pointed to such a high degree. Chandidas was a typical Bengali poet. Judging from this point of view, Vidyapati does not seem to be a Bengali poet at all. In him we find a play of intellect and reasoning, an attitude of casting side glances, and an alertness. But Chandidas was self-oblivious and beside himself with poetic imagination.

3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  changes. He should choose them so that their capacities cover the
  whole ground of his work; but he should not multiply them

32.08 - Fit and Unfit (A Letter), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   You have written that you are only an ordinary man, not out of the ordinary like me. You do not dare to be above the average, for you believe that you are wanting in capacity and power that make a man extraordinary. And therefore you have to go through life as others. However, I ask you one thing, who has told you that you are a mere nobody? How are you so positive about the limits of your power without exercising it in the field of work? Have you understood yourself entirely? No, you will say, and you will add that your shortcomings and aberrations are the proof. How can one be great with such imperfections? In order to be great, one has to aspire and that aspiration you lack. But I see at the very outset, that you have formed a wrong conception about yourself. May it not be that under cover of your despair there lies hidden the fire of your aspiration? But you have found no chance to give it a practical form. It is there lying repressed. You are only cherishing a feeling of self-depreciation. Well, have you probed it? You are wide awake to your shortcomings. Have you ever tried to see your good qualities? Before you jump to a conclusion about your own capacities, do not look only at your faults, but also at your good qualities. And in truth, I see in you a number of good qualities. Faults you have, but have you no virtues? You will ask, to what extent? Well, look at both the extremes of your merits and demerits, and form no estimate of yourself in advance. Man is an amalgam of good and bad. As there is in him an adhara for good qualities, even so there is another for bad. You call me an extraordinary man, but if you had seen me when I was of your age, you would have simply said, "What a miserable fellow you are! You have gone to dogs. There's no hope for you." And if you go through history you will find that no great personality was born with an unqualified greatness. All of them, as it is with us, came into the world, burdened with hope and despair, desire and frustration. To me the tall talk that you hear about the wonderful exploits of their childhood and boyhood is no better than a cock-and-bull story. People fabricate such stories to attract our attention to them after they have become great. Before they rose to greatness these had passed unnoticed. Be sure, you too will hear many such stories about your early life the moment you grow into a great personality. You may, however, say that all and sundry cannot become great. It is only a few that are actually great and it is God's Grace or the results of their actions in their previous lives that have made them so. There's no building on the sand. But who says that there is no power dormant in you? Or that you have no virtues acquired in your past lives? Or that you have no Grace of God? Who says that you .are only sand? So I tell you, first try to know yourself. And before trying to do so bear in mind the words of St. Paul: "I know not what I am". Start life with this approach. 'I know nothing about myself. I do not know whether I am an ordinary or extraordinary personality. I will come to know of it at long last.' Just begin the experiment on you to know yourself. Scrutinise yourself with a bold heart. Experiment on yourself like a scientist. Try to discover all your virtues and vices. As a matter of fact, the more you bring to the fore your vices, the more will you automatically see your virtues.
   Man is a bottomless mine of gems. Above, there, are many layers of sand, stone, clay and Goal intermixed. The deeper you dive, the more you glimpse the real gems. The deeper still you go, you will find less and still less of mixture - there's only the gem. You have lost heart at the sight of sand, stone and coal that are on the surface. Man, as man, is such a mine. I don't say that diamonds are found in every mine. But be sure, something useful and valuable can be found in it. To an individual this precious thing is his individuality, I mean, his speciality. You will be a great personage, but that does not mean that you will grow into a Napoleon or a Buddha. And even if you could, I think, you must not try to be so. For to be a mere Napoleon or a mere Buddha is not the ideal of the world. Everybody must be his own self. Your whole greatness lies in what you should be.

33.16 - Soviet Gymnasts, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is as if the Russians have discovered a new dimension of the body. Psychologists today speak of 'depth' psychology. According to them, at the back of our mind, there lies another hidden and profounder mental world - the unconscious or subconscious. Spiritualists and yogis speak of still another unknown and invisible world, above and beyond the mind. Somewhat in the same way the Soviet gymnasts are telling us and, more than that, showing us, that there is no limit, or almost none, to the capacities of our body. At any rate, we can go a good deal farther than the limits usually set for it. We think that just as plant life is conditioned by the earth, by its surface and atmosphere, it is the same with the life of men and animals too. We live and move within the temperature and the pressure of the air around us; when we go beyond these (either above or below), our ability to bear the altered conditions are extremely limited - or so we think.
   But in one sense, even in the ordinary way of living, men can and do put up with a lot of inconvenience and suffering. Of course it might be said that this is entirely due to compulsion, that there is nothing else one could do, except endure. Even in the midst of intense pain and torture people have been known to live. On battlefields men have survived the worst calamities, even the loss of limbs. According to popular wisdom life is uncertain and quickly over, nalinidalagata-jalamati taralam, tadvajjivanam atisaya capalam,but this is not a literal truth. Just as life can end all of a sudden so also it can stay on and withstand apparently impossible conditions. But this, it may be said again, is due to compulsion, it is not a healthy or a natural condition of our being. It is indeed painful, and what men really wish for is to come out of it - into a world of natural freedom. The new physical culture that the Russians are now following is meant to open up the hidden resources of the body. This they are doing with the help of knowledge, practice and endless, eager experiment. Rooted in the earth, one with the physical universe, the capacities of our body are daily and fast increasing. Even leaving the earth surface for the wide open spaces, one day men may (in a light, weightless condition) find a new normalcy. Where shall we draw the limit of achievement?
   (2)

3.4.1.06 - Reading and Sadhana, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I felt that it will be a mistake to give up all that and to want to meditate all the time or to do only such things which do not hinder me from an inner concentration on you. I felt that all our faculties and capacities have to be given to you.
  It is a question of the right consciousness no unvarying mental rule can be made for these things.

3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  So also in regard to their various psycho-social Strata: equality of opportunity for people with unequal inborn abstraction ceilings is approached by careful provision of corresponding training situations. During the first few years (preceding and up to the attainment of the first human abstraction ceiling) a single institution, Kindergarten, and the first few grades, provides equality of opportunity for all Strata.36 Figure IV-3 shows graphically humankind's initial state of intellectual identity (zero), and its divergence into Strata during ontogeny. As the childrens' creodes separate--as Stratum after Stratum approaches its abstraction ceiling, levels out, and is surpassed by the people with higher inborn abstraction ceilings--each Stratum enters the corresponding set of educational institutions. Namely, the kind of institution designed to provide for it the opportunity to realize its inborn capacities to the fullest degree: apprenticeships, craft schools, trade schools, secretarial schools, high schools, preparatory schools, (European) gymnasia, junior colleges, colleges, institutes of technology, graduate schools, post-doctoral training courses, institutes for advanced study, and so forth.
  In Figure IV-2, Period 6 (Lower Industrialists) displays six Strata, each characterized by the corresponding number of Substrata. The highest Sub-stratum in each case (including the first one) is reached by, and only by, utilizing opportunities for continuous, persistent development of inborn capabilities.
  --
  Are there qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the behavioral adaptive capabilities of animals at different levels of the phyletic evolutionary sequence? That is to say, are there differences not only in the speed of learning but also in the complexity of what the organism can learn at all, given any amount of time and training? Are there discontinuities as well as continuities in capacities to perceive, to learn, and to manipulate the environment as we ascend the phyletic scale?
  The answer to these questions is now empirically quite clear. There are indeed discontinuities and qualitative differences in learning (i.e. behaviorally adaptive) capabilities as we go from one phyletic level to another. Behaviorally, the phylogenetic hierarchy is best characterized in terms of an increasing complexity of adaptive capabilities and an increasing breadth of transfer and generalization of learning, as we move from lower to higher phyla. It is a fact that every animal, at least above the level of worms, has the capacity to learn; that is, to form stimulus-response associations or conditioned responses. But the degree of complexity and abstractness of what can be learned shows distinct "quantum jumps" going from lower to higher phyla. Simpler capacities, and their neural substrate, persist as we move from lower to higher levels, but new adaptive capacities emerge in hierarchical layers as we ascend the phyletic scale. Each phyletic level possesses all the learning capacities (although not necessarily the same sensory and motor capacities) of the levels below itself in addition to new emergent abilities, which can be broadly conceived as an increase in the complexity of information processing. For example, studies by Bitterman (1965) of animals at various levels of the phyletic scale (earthworms, crabs, fishes, turtles, pigeons, rats and monkeys) have clearly demonstrated discontinuities in learning ability among different species and the emergence of more complex abilities corresponding to the phylogenetic hierarchy. In the experimental procedure known as habit reversal, a form of learning-to-learn in which the animal is trained to make a discriminative response to a pair of stimuli and then has to learn the reverse discrimination and the two are alternated repeatedly, a fish does not show any sign of learning-to-learn (i.e. each reversal is like a completely new problem and takes as long to learn as the previous problems), while a rat improves markedly in its speed of learning from one reversal to the next. When portions of the rat's cerebral cortex are removed, thereby reducing the most prominent evolutionary feature of the mammalian brain, the learning ability of the decorticate rat is exactly like that of the turtle, an animal with little cortex, and would probably be like that of the fish, if all of the rat's cortex could be removed. Harlow and Harlow (1962) have noted similar discontinuities at high levels of learning among rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, and humans. Again, situations that involve some form of learning-to-learn are most sensitive to differences in capacity. No animals below primates have ever learned the so-called oddity--non-oddity problem no matter how much training they are given, and more complex variations of this type of problem similarly differentiate between rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees. The species differences are not just in speed of learning, but in whether the problem can be learned at all, given any amount of training. This is essentially what is meant by a hierarchical conception of learning ability. There is much evidence for this conception, which Jensen (in press) has summarized more extensively elsewhere. The evolution of humans from more primitive forms is now believed to be intimately related to the use of tools and weapons (Ardry, 1961). The mental capabilities involved in the use of implements for gaining ever greater control of the environment, in lieu of sheer physical strength, were just as subject to the evolutionary effects of natural selection as are any genetically mutated organs. More specifically, according to Haskell (1968, p. 475), "What primarily evolves in man is the nerve structure which confers the capacity to invent, to borrow, and to adapt culture traits."
  Ontogeny of Human Mental Abilities.

3.7.2.02 - The Terrestial Law, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mans relation with vital Nature is, again, first to be one with it by observance and obedience to its rule, then to know and direct it by conscious intelligence and will and to transcend by that direction the first law of life, its rule and habit, formula, initial significance. At first he is compelled to obey its instincts and has to act even as the animal, but in the enlarged terms of a mentalised impulsion and an increasingly clear consciousness and responsible will in what he does. He too has first to strive to exist, to make a place for himself and his kind, to grow and possess and enjoy, to prolong, to enlarge and assure the first vital lines of his life movement. He too does it even as the others, by battle and slaughter, by devouring, by encroachment, by laying his yoke on earth and her products and on her brute children and on his fellow-men. His virtue, his dharma of the vital nature, virtus, aret, is at first an obligation to strength and swiftness and courage and all things that make for survival, mastery and success. Most even of the things in him that evolve an ethical significance have at root not a truly ethical but a dynamic character,such as self-control, tapasy, discipline. They are vital-dynamic, not ethical energies; they are a rightly massed and concentrated, rightly ordered putting forth of mentalised life forces and the return they seek and get are of the vital and dynamic kind, power, success, mastery, increased capacities of vital possession and expansion or the result of these things, vital-hedonistic, the satisfaction of his desires, vital happiness, enjoyment and pleasure.
  Mans first business is to bring his conscious intelligence and will to enlarge the lines of life of the individual and the race. Here again it is to these two powers primarily and only secondarily and partially to any moral force that the life energy gives its returns. The battle in lifes primitive values is to the strong and the race to the swift, and the weak and the torpid cannot claim the goal and the crown on the strength of their greater virtue; and there is in this a justice, while the moral principle of reward would be here an injustice, for it would be a denial of the principle of the right returns of energy which is fundamental to any possible law of Karma. Raise the action by the powers of the mind and still the greater successes, the glory and the victory, fall to the men of great intelligence and the men of great will and not necessarily to the more ethical intelligence or to the more moralised will. Morality counts in this dynamic aspect of life only as a prudential check or a concentrating tapasya. Life helps those who most wisely and faithfully follow her impulses while observing her limits and restraints or those who most powerfully aid her greater impulses of expansion. It is those that get the most prudential profit out of her and these the most of her power and movement and joy.

3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The third movement of mind labours to bring the soul of man out of the tangle of the vital and mental forces and opens to him a field in which the mind raises itself, raises at least the head of its thought and will, above the vital demands and standards and there at that top of its activities, whatever its other concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the true demands of a mental being, even though one imprisoned in a body and set to wrestle with the conditions of life in a material universe. The innate demand of the mental being is for mental experience, for the minds manifold strengths, its capacities, joys, growth, perfections, and for these things for their own sake because of the inevitable satisfaction they give to his nature,the demand of the intellect for truth and knowledge, the demand of the ethical mind for right and good, the demand of the aesthetic mind for beauty and delight of beauty, the demand of the emotional mind for love and the joy of relation with our fellow-beings, the demand of the will for self-mastery and mastery of things and the world and our existence. And the values which the mental being holds for supreme and effective are the values of truth and knowledge, of right and good, of beauty and aesthetic delight, of love and emotional joy, of mastery and inner lordship. It is these things that he seeks to know and follow, to possess, discover, enjoy, increase. It is for this great adventure that he came into the world, to walk hardily through the endless fields they offer to him, to experiment, to dare, to test the utmost limit of each capacity and follow each possibility and its clue to the end as well as to observe in each its at present discovered law and measure. Here as in the other fields, as in the vital and physical, so in his mental provinces, it is the appointed work of his intelligence and will to know and master through an always enlarging experience the conditions of an increasing light and power and right and truth and joy and beauty and wideness, and not only to discover the Truth and the Law and set up a system and an order, but to enlarge continually its lines and boundaries. And therefore in these fields, as in life, man, the mental being, cannot stop short too long in the partial truth of an established system and a temporary mistaken for an eternal orderhere least, because as he advances he is always tempted still farther forward until he realises that he is a seeker of the infinite and a power of the absolute. His base here plunges into the obscure infinite of life and matter; but his head rises towards the luminous infinite of the spirit.
  The third movement of the mental energy carries it therefore into its own native field and kingdom above the pressing subjection to the lowering and limiting claim of a vital and physical Karma. It is true that his lower being remains subject to the law of life and of the body, and it is true also that he must strive either to find in life or to bring into the world around him some law of truth, of right and good, of beauty, of love and joy, of the minds will and mastery, for it is by that effort that he is man and not the animal and without it he cannot find his true satisfaction in living. But two things he has more and more to feel and to realise, first, that life and matter follow their own law and not, in mans sense of it at least, a moral, a rational, a mentally determined aesthetic or other mind order, and if he wishes to introduce any such thing into them, he must himself here create it, transcending the physical and the vital law and discovering another and a better, and secondly, that the more he follows these things for their own sake, the more he discovers their true form, svarpa, and develops their force to prevail upon and lift up life into an air of higher nature. In other words he passes from the practical pursuit of a serviceable knowledge, morality, aesthesis, force of emotion and will-power,serviceable for his vital aims, for life as it first is,to an ideal pursuit of these things and the transformation of life into the image of his ideal. This he is unable indeed as yet to realise and is obliged to rest on balance and compromise, because he has not found the whole reconciling secret of that which lies beyond his ideals. But it is as he pursues them in their purity, for their own imperative innate demand and attraction, on the line of their trend to their own infinite and absolute that he gets nearer in his total experience to the secret. There is so a chance of his discovering that as the beauty and irrefragable order of life and matter are due to the joy of the Infinite in life and in matter and the fidelity of the Force here at work to the hidden knowledge and will and idea of the Self and Spirit in them, so there is within his own hidden self, his own vast and covert spirit a secret of the Infinites self-knowledge, will, joy, love and delight, mastery, right and truth of joy and action by which his own greater life rising above the vital and mental limitations can discover an infinite perfection and beauty and delight in itself and spontaneous irrefragable order.
  --
  The intention of Nature, the spiritual justification of her ways appears at last in this turn of her energies leading the conscious soul along the lines of truth and knowledge. At first she is physical Nature building her firm field according to a base of settled truth and law but determined by a subconscient knowledge she does not yet share with her creatures. Next she is Life growing slowly self-conscious, seeking out knowledge that she may move seeingly in them along her ways and increase at once the complexity and the efficacy of her movements, but developing slowly too the consciousness that knowledge must be pursued for a higher and purer end, for truth, for the satisfaction, as the life expression and as the spiritual self-finding of the soul of knowledge. But, last, it is that soul itself growing in the truth and light, growing into the absolute truth of itself which is its perfection, that becomes the law and high end of her energies. And at each stage she gives returns according to the development of the aim and consciousness of the being. At first there is the return of skill and effectual intelligence and her own need explains sufficiently why she gives the rewards of life not, as the ethical mind in us would have it, to the just, not chiefly to moral good, but to the skilful and to the strong, to will and force and intelligence, and then, more and more clearly disengaged, the return of enlightenment and the satisfaction of the mind and the soul in the conscious use and wise direction of its powers and capacities and, last of all, the one supreme return, the increase of the soul in light, the satisfaction of its perfection in knowledge, its birth into the highest consciousness and the pure fulfilment of its own innate imperative. It is that growth, a divine birth or spiritual self-exceeding its supreme reward, which for the Eastern mind has been always the highest gain,the growth out of human ignorance into divine self-knowledge.
  ***

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  the hampered & slow growth of our limited mortal capacities.
  616
  --
  vrisha, the master & lord with all our capacities, the `nA,, the
  bhtF, E2y,, as his paramours, increases in us by the growth of
  --
  increases all our being & capacities & uses them again for his
  own increase. Thus divine force continues ever increasing in our

4.01 - The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. Our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and streng thened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal, are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of though-tradiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
  The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a God-directed seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all. God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.

4.03 - The Meaning of Human Endeavor, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  all our capacities for loving.
  That Christ may enter deeply into us we need al-

4.04 - In the Total Christ, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  natural capacities which we call "grace." Now
  grace is the sap which, rising in the one trunk,

4.04 - Weaknesses, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Behind all ambitions there is a Truth waiting for the opportune time to manifest. Now that the ambition is gone, it is time for the truth (the capacities and abilities) to manifest.
  Take great care not to become swollen; but I am with you, helping you, in order to do something interesting.

4.05 - The Instruments of the Spirit, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In other words, purification must not be understood in any limited sense of a selection of certain outward kinetic movements, their regulation, the inhibition of other action or a liberation of certain forms of character or particular mental and moral capacities. These things are secondary signs of our derivative being, not essential powers and first forces. We have to take a wider psychological view of the primary forces of our nature. We have to distinguish the formed parts of our being, find out their basic defect of impurity or wrong action and correct that, sure that the rest will then come right naturally. We have not to doctor symptoms of impurity, or that only secondarily, as a minor help, -- but to strike at its roots after a deeper diagnosis. We then find that there are two forms of impurity which are at the root of the whole confusion. One is a defect born of the nature of our past evolution, which has been a nature of separative ignorance; this defect is a radically wrong and ignorant form given to the proper action of each part of our instrumental being. The other impurity is born of the successive process of an evolution, where life emerges in and depends on body, mind emerges in and depends on life in the body, supermind emerges in and lends itself to instead of governing mind, soul itself is apparent only as a circumstance of the bodily life of the mental being and veils up the spirit in the lower imperfections. This second defect of our nature is caused by this dependence of the higher on the lower parts; it is all immixture of functions by which the impure working of the lower instrument gets into the characteristic action of the higher function and gives to it an added imperfection of embarrassment, wrong direction and confusion.
  Thus the proper function of the life, the vital force, is enjoyment and possession, both of them perfectly legitimate, because the Spirit created the world for Ananda, enjoyment and possession of the many by the One, of the One by the many and of the many too by the many; but, -- this is an instance of the first kind of defect, -- the separative ignorance gives to it the wrong form of desire and craving which vitiates the whole enjoyment and possession and imposes on it its opposites, want and suffering. Again, because mind is entangled in life from which it evolves, this desire and craving get into the action of the mental will and knowledge; that makes the will a will of craving, a force of desire instead of a rational will and a discerning force of intelligent effectuation, and it distorts the judgment and reason so that we judge and reason according to our desires and prepossessions and not with the disinterested impartiality of a pure judgment and the rectitude of a reason which seeks only to distinguish truth and understand rightly the objects of its workings. That is an example of immixture. These two kinds of defect, wrong form of action and illegitimate mixture of action, are not limited to these signal instances, but belong to each instrument and to each combination of their functionings. They pervade the whole economy of our nature. They are fundamental defects of our lower instrumental nature, and if we can set them right, we shall get our instrumental being into a state of purity, enjoy the clarity of a pure will, a pure heart of emotion, a pure enjoyment of our vitality, a pure body. That will be a preliminary, a human perfection, but it can be made the basis and open out in its effort of self-attainment into the greater, the divine perfection.

4.0 - The Path of Knowledge, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  Knowledge of the truths made known by Theosophy can be gained by each man for himself. Descriptions of the kind given in this book present a thought-picture of the higher worlds. And they are in a particular respect the first step toward personal vision. For man is a thought-being. He can only find his path of knowledge when he makes thinking his starting point. A picture of the higher worlds given to his intellect is not unfruitful for him even if for the time being it were only as an account of higher facts into which he has not yet gained insight through his own vision. For the thoughts which are given him represent in themselves a force which continues working in his thought world. This force will be active in him, and it will awaken slumbering capacities. He who is of the opinion that it is superfluous to make oneself receptive to such a thought-picture is mistaken.
   p. 196
  --
  What stage we will succeed in reaching depends on our capacities. We have each moment to do what is right and leave everything else to the future. It must be enough
   p. 219

4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Truth that surpasses its own capacities or scope.
  You can tell him Mother does not discuss these mental problems

4.1.2 - The Difficulties of Human Nature, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But it is true that in your case as in others this contradiction has been given a special and very discomforting kind of intensity by a hereditary weakness of the nervous parts which has always shown itself in you by fits of despondency, gloom, unrest and self-tormenting darkness and spoiled for you the savour of life. Your mistake is to think that this is something to which you are bound and from which you cannot escape, a fate which makes a spiritual change of your nature impossible. I have seen other families afflicted by this kind of hereditary nervous weakness accompanying very often exceptional gifts of intelligence or artistic capacity or spiritual possibilities. One or two may have succumbed to it, like X, but others, sometimes after a period of acute disturbance, overcame the perturbations caused by this weakness; either it disappeared or it took some minor and innocuous form which did not interfere with the development of the life and its capacities. Why then despair of yourself or fix without any true cause the conviction that you cannot change and this thing will always be there? This despondency, this adverse conviction is the real danger for you; it prevents you from making a quiet and settled resolution and a permanent effective effort; because of it the return of this darker condition makes you quickly yield and allow the adverse external Force which uses this defect to play and do its will with you. It is this false idea that makes more than half the trouble.
  There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external being as many others have done. It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often overclouds the rest; the other parts of your being can be easily made the fit instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and fine intelligence which, when rightly used, becomes a ready instrument of the light and can be of great use to you in overcoming this vital weakness. And this divine possibility, this truth of your inner being, if you accept it, can of itself make certain your liberation and the change of your external nature.

4.15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha, a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power.
  The most outward psychological form of these things is the mould or trend of the nature towards certain dominant tendencies, capacities, characteristics, form of active power, quality of the mind and inner life, cultural personality or type. The turn is often towards the predominance of the intellectual element and the capacities which make for the seeking and finding of knowledge and an intellectual creation or formativeness and a preoccupation with ideas and the study of ideas or of life and the information and development of the reflective intelligence. According to the grade of the development there is produced successively the make and character of the man of active, open, inquiring intelligence, then the intellectual and, last, the thinker, sage, great mind of knowledge. The soul-powers which make their appearance by a considerable development of this temperament, personality, soul-type, are a mind of light more and more open to all ideas and knowledge and incomings of Truth; a hunger and passion for knowledge, for its growth in ourselves, for its communication to others, for its reign in the world, the reign of reason and right and truth and justice and, on a higher level of the harmony of our greater being, the reign of the spirit and its universal unity and light and love; a power of this light in the mind and will which makes all the life subject to reason and its right and truth or to the spirit and spiritual right and truth and subdues the lower members to their greater law; a poise in the temperament turned from the first to patience, steady musing and calm, to reflection, to meditation, which dominates and quiets the turmoil of the will and passions and makes for high thinking and pure living, founds the self-governed sattwic mind, grows into a more and more mild, lofty, impersonalised and universalised personality. This is the ideal character and soul-power of the Brahmana, the priest of knowledge. If it is not there in all its sides, we have the imperfections or perversions of the type, a mere intellectuality or curiosity for ideas without ethical or other elevation, a narrow concentration on some kind of intellectual activity without the greater needed openness of mind, soul and spirit, or the arrogance and exclusiveness of the intellectual shut up in his intellectuality, or an ineffective idealism without any hold on life, or any other of the characteristic incompletenesses and limitations of the intellectual, religious, scientific or philosophic mind. These are stoppings short on the way or temporary exclusive concentrations, but a fullness of the divine soul and power of truth and knowledge in man is the perfection of this Dharma or Swabhava, the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana.
  On the other hand, the turn of the nature may be to the predominance of the will-force and the capacities which make for strength, energy, courage, leadership, protection, rule, victory in every kind of battle, a creative and formative action, the willpower which lays its hold on the material of life and on the wills of other men and compels the environment into the shapes which the shakti within us seeks to impose on life or acts powerfully according to the work to be done to maintain what is in being or to destroy it and make clear the paths of the world or to bring out into definite shape what is to be. This may be there in lesser or greater power or form and according to its grade and force we have successively the mere fighter or man of action, the man of self-imposing active will and personality and the ruler, conqueror, leader of a cause, creator, founder in whatever field of the active formation of life. The various imperfections of the soul and mind produce many imperfections and perversities of this type, -- the man of mere brute force of will, the worshipper of power without any other ideal or higher purpose, the selfish, dominant personality, the aggressive violent rajasic man, the grandiose egoist, the Titan, Asura, Rakshasa. But the soul-powers to which this type of nature opens on its higher grades are as necessary as those of the Brahmana to the perfection of our human nature. The high fearlessness which no danger or difficulty can daunt and which feels its power equal to meet and face and bear whatever assault of man or fortune or adverse gods, the dynamic audacity and daring which shrinks from no adventare or enterprise as beyond the powers of a human soul free from disabling weakness and fear, the love of honour which would scale the heights of the highest nobility of man and stoop to nothing little, base, vulgar or weak, but maintains untainted the ideal of high courage, chivalry, truth, straightforwardness, sacrifice of the lower to the higher self, helpfulness to men, unflinching resistance to injustice and oppression, self-control and mastery, noble leading, warriorhood and captainship of the journey and the battle, the high self-confidence of power, capacity, character and courage indispensable to the man of action, -- these are the things that build the make of the Kshatriya. To carry these things to their highest degree and give them a certain divine fullness, purity and grandeur is the perfection of those who have this Swabhava and follow this Dharma.
  A third turn is one that brings out into relief the practical arranging intelligence and the instinct of life to produce, exchange, possess, enjoy, contrive, put things in order and balance, spend itself and get and give and take, work out to the best advantage the active relations of existence. In its outward action it is this power that appears as the skilful devising intelligence, the legal, professional, commercial, industrial, economical, practical and scientific, mechanical, technical and utilitarian mind. This nature is accompanied at the normal level of its fullness by a general temperament which is at once grasping and generous, prone to amass and treasure, to enjoy, show and use, bent upon efficient exploitation of the world or its surroundings, but well capable too of practical philanthropy, humanity, ordered benevolence, orderly and ethical by rule but without any high distinction of the finer ethical spirit, a mind of the middle levels, not straining towards the heights, not great to break and create noble moulds of life, but marked by capacity, adaptation and measure The powers, limitations and perversions of this type are familiar to us on a large scale, because this is the very spirit which has made our modern commercial and industrial civilisation. But if we look at 'the greater inner capacities and soul-values, we shall find that here also there are things that enter into the completeness of human perfection. The Power that thus outwardly expresses itself on our present lower levels is one that can throw itself out in the great utilities of life and at its freest and widest makes, not for oneness and identity which is the highest reach of knowledge or the mastery and spiritual kingship which is the highest reach of strength, but still for something which is also essential to the wholeness of existence, equal mutuality and the exchange of soul with soul arid life with life. Its powers are, first, a skill, kausala, which fashions and obeys law, recognises the uses and limits of relations, adapts itself to settled and developing movements, produces and perfects the outer technique of creation and action and life, assures possession and proceeds from possession to growth, is watchful over order and careful in progress and makes the most of the material of existence and its means and ends; then a power of self-spending skilful in lavishness and skilful in economy, which recognises the great law of interchange and amasses in order to throw out in a large return, increasing the currents of interchange and the fruitfulness of existence; a power of giving and ample creative liberality, mutual helpfulness and utility to others which becomes the source in an open soul of just beneficence, humanitarianism, altruism of a practical kind; finally, a power of enjoyment, a productive, possessive, active opulence luxurious of the prolific Ananda of existence. A largeness of mutuality, a generous fullness of the relations of life, a lavish self-spending and return and ample interchange between existence and existence, a full enjoyment and use of the rhythm and balance of fruitful and productive life are the perfection of those who have this Swabhava and follow this Dharma.
  The other turn is towards work and service. This was in the old order the Dharma or soul-type of the Sudra and the Sudra in that order was considered as not one of the twice-born, but an inferior type. A more recent consideration of the values of existence lays stress on the dignity of labour and sees in its toil the bed-rock of the relations between man and man. There is a truth in both attitudes. For this force in the material world is at once in its necessity the foundation of material existence or rather that on which it moves, the feet of the creator Brahma in the old parable, and in its primal state not uplifted by knowledge, mutuality or strength, a thing which reposes on instinct, desire and inertia. The well-developed Sudra soul-type has the instinct often and the capacity of labour and service; but toil as opposed to easy or natural action is a thing imposed on the natural man which he bears because without it he cannot assure his existence or get his desires and he has to force himself or be forced by others or circumstances to spend himself in work. The natural Sudra works not from a sense of the dignity of labour or from the enthusiasm of service, -- though that comes by the cultivation of his Dharma, --not as the man of knowledge for the joy or gain of knowledge, not from a sense of honour, nor as the born craftsman or artist for love of his work or ardour for the beauty of its technique, nor from an ordered sense of mutuality or large utility, but for the maintenance of his existence and gratification of his primal wants, and when these are satisfied, he indulges, if left to himself, his natural indolence, the indolence which is normal to the tamasic quality in all of us, but comes out most clearly in the uncompelled primitive man, the savage. The unregenerated Sudra is born therefore for service rather than for free labour and his temperament is prone to an inert ignorance, a gross unthinking self-indulgence of the instincts, a servility, an unrefiective obedience and mechanical discharge of duty varied by indolence, evasion, spasmodic revolt, an instinctive and uninformed life. The ancients held that all men are born in their lower nature as Sudras and only regenerated by ethical and spiritual culture, but in their highest inner self are Brahmanas capable of the full spirit and godhead, a theory which is not far perhaps from the psychological truth of our nature.

4.19 - The Nature of the supermind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The being of man also is full of physical, vital, emotional, psychical and dynamic instincts and intuitions, but he does not rely on them as the animal does, --though they are capable in him of a far larger scope and greater action than in the animal and lower creation by reason of his greater actual evolutionary development and his yet greater potentiality of development of the being. He has suppressed them, discontinued their full and overt action by atrophy, -- not that these capacities are destroyed but rather held back or cast back into the subliminal consciousness, -and consequently this lower part of his being is much less sure of itself, much less confident of the directions of his nature, much more groping, errant and fallible in its larger scope than that of the animal in his lesser limits. This happens because man's real Dharma and law of being is to seek for a greater selfaware existence, a self-manifestation no longer obscure and governed by an ununderstood necessity, but illumined, conscious of that which is expressing itself and able to give it a fuller and more perfect expression. And finally his culmination must be to identify himself with his greatest and real self and act or rather let it act (his natural existence being an instrumental form of the expression of the spirit) in its spontaneous perfect will and knowledge. His first instrument for this transition is the reason and the will of the rational intelligence and he is moved to depend upon that to the extent of its development for his knowledge and guidance and give it the control of the rest of his being. And if the reason were the highest thing and the greatest all-sufficient means of the self and spirit, he could by it know perfectly and guide perfectly all the movements of his nature. This he cannot do entirely because his self is a larger thing than his reason and if he limits himself by the rational will and intelligence, he imposes an arbitrary restriction both in extent and in kind on his self-development, self-expression, knowledge, action, Ananda. The other parts of his being demand too a complete expression in the largeness and perfection of the self and cannot have it if their expression is changed in kind and carved, cut down and arbitrarily shaped and mechanised in action by the inflexible machinery of the rational intelligence. The godhead of the reason, the intellectual Logos, is only a partial representative and substitute for the greater supramental Logos, and its function is to impose a preliminary partial knowledge and order upon the life of the creature, but the real, final and integral order can only be founded by the spiritual supermind in its emergence.
  The supermind in the lower nature is present most strongly as intuition and it is therefore by a development of an intuitive mind that we can make the first step towards the self-existent spontaneous and direct supramental knowledge. All the physical, vital, emotional, psychic, dynamic nature of man is a surface seizing of suggestions which rise out of a subliminal intuitive self-being of these parts, and an attempt usually groping and often circuitous to work them out in the action of a superficial embodiment and power of the nature which is not overtly enlightened by the inner power and knowledge. An increasingly intuitive mind has the best chance of discovering what they are seeking for and leading them to the desired perfection of their self-expression. The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially overt and active power of the intuitive spirit. In all its action there is at the covered or half-covered point of origination something which is not the creation of the reason, but given to it either directly by the intuition or indirectly through some other part of the mind for it to shape into intellectual form and process. The rational judgment in its decisions and the mechanical process of the logical intelligence, whether in its more summary or in its more developed operations, conceals while it develops the true origin and native substance of our will and thinking. The greatest minds are those in which this veil wears thin and there is the largest part of intuitive thinking, which often no doubt but not always brings with it a great accompanying display of intellectual action. The intuitive intelligence is however never quite pure and complete in the present mind of man, because it works in the medium of mind and is at once seized on and coated over with a mixed stuff of mentality. It is as yet not brought out, not developed and perfected so as to be sufficient for all the operations now performed by the other mental instruments, not trained to take them up and change them into or replace them by its own fullest, most direct, assured and sufficient workings. This can indeed only be done if we make the intuitive mind a transitional means for bringing out the secret supermind itself of which it is a mental figure and forming in our frontal consciousness a body and instrument of supermind which will make it possible for the self and spirit to display itself in its own largeness and splendour.

4.24 - The supramental Sense, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The supermind in its descent into the physical being awakens, if not already wakened by previous yogic sadhana, the consciousness -- veiled or obscure in most of us -which supports and forms there the vital sheath, the pranakosa. When this is awakened, we no longer live in the physical body alone, but also in a vital body which penetrates and envelops the physical and is sensitive to impacts of another kind, to the play of the vital forces around us and coming in on us from the universe or from particular persons or group lives or from things or else from the vital planes and worlds which are behind the material universe. These impacts we feel even now in their result and in certain touches and affectations, but not at all or very little in their source and their coming. An awakened consciousness in the pranic body immediately feels them, is aware of a pervading vital force other than the physical energy, and can draw upon it to increase the 'vital strength and support the physical energies, can deal directly with the phenomena and causes of health and disease by means of this vital influx or by directing pranic currents, can be aware of the vital and the vital-emotional atmosphere of others and deal with its interchanges, along with a host of other phenomena which are unfelt by or obscure to our outward consciousness but here become conscient and sensible. It is acutely aware of the life soul and life body in ourself and others. The supermind takes up this vital consciousness and vital sense, puts it on its right foundation and transforms it by revealing the life force here as the very power of the spirit dynamised for a near and direct operation on and through subtle and gross matter and for formation and action in the material universe. The first result is that the limitations of our individual life being break down and we live no longer with a personal life force, or not with that ordinarily, but in and by the universal life energy. It is all the universal Prana that comes consciently streaming into and through us, keeps up there a dynamic constant eddy, an unseparated centre of its power, a vibrant station of storage and communication, constantly fills it with its forces and pours them out in activity upon the world around us. This life energy, again, is felt by us not merely as a vital ocean and its streams, but as the vital way and form and body and outpouring of a conscious universal shakti, and that conscient shakti reveals itself as the Chit shakti of the Divine, the Energy of the transcendent and universal Self and Purusha of which -- or rather of whom -our universalised individuality becomes an instrument and channel. As a result we feel ourselves one in life with all others and one with the life of all Nature and of all things in the universe. There is a free and conscious communication of the vital energy working in us with the same energy working in others. We are aware of their life as of our own or, at the least, of the touch and pressure and communicated movements of our life being on them and theirs upon us. The vital sense in us becomes powerful, intense, capable of bearing all the small or large, minute or immense vibrations of this life world on all its planes physical and supraphysical, vital and supravital, thrills with all its movement and Ananda and is aware of and open to all forces. The supermind takes possession of all this great range of experience, and makes it all luminous, harmonious, experienced not obscurely and fragmentarily and subject to the limitations and errors of its handling by the mental ignorance, but revealed, it and each movement of it, in its truth and totality of power and delight, and directs the great and now hardly limitable powers and capacities of the life dynamis on all its ranges according to the simple and yet complex, the sheer and spontaneous and yet unfalteringly intricate will of the Divine in our life. It makes the vital sense a perfect means of the knowledge of the life forces around us, as the physical of the forms and sensations of the physical universe, and a perfect channel too of the reactions of the active life force through us working as an instrument of self-manifestation.
  -- 3 --
  The phenomena of this vital consciousness and sense, this direct sensation and perception of and response to the play of subtler forces than the physical, are often included without distinction under the head of psychical phenomena. In a certain sense it is an awakening of the psyche, the inner soul now hidden, clogged wholly or partially covered up by the superficial activity of the physical mind and senses that brings to the surface the submerged or subliminal inner vital consciousness and also an inner or subliminal mental consciousness and sense capable of perceiving and experiencing directly, not only the life forces and their play and results and phenomena, but the mental and psychical worlds and all they contain and the mental activities, vibrations, phenomena, forms, images of this world also and of establishing a direct communication between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and the limitations they impose on our consciousness. There are, however, two different kinds of action of these inner ranges of the consciousness. The first is a more outer and confused activity of the awakening subliminal mind and life which is clogged with and subject to the grosser desires and illusions of the mind and vital being and vitiated in spite of its wider range of experience and power and capacities by an enormous mass of error and deformations of the will and knowledge, full of false suggestions and images, false and distorted intuitions and inspirations and impulses, the latter often even depraved and perverse, and vitiated too by the interference of the physical mind and its obscurities. This is an inferior activity to which clairvoyants, psychists, spiritists, occultists, seekers of powers and Siddhis are very liable and to which all the warnings against the dangers and errors of this kind of seeking are more especially applicable. The seeker of spiritual perfection has to pass as quickly as possible, if he cannot altogether avoid, this zone of danger, and the safe rule here is to be attached to none of these things, but to make spiritual progress one's sole real objective and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life soul are purified and the light of the spirit and supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience. For when the mind is tranquillised and purified and the pure psyche liberated from the insistence of the desire soul, these experiences are free from any serious danger, -- except indeed that of limitation and a certain element of error which cannot be entirely eliminated so long as the soul experiences and acts on the mental level. For there is then a pure action of the true psychical consciousness and its powers, a reception of psychical experience pure in itself of the worse deformations, although subject to the limitations of the representing mind, and capable of a high spiritualisation and light. The complete power and truth, however, can only come by the opening of the supermind and the supramentalising of the mental and psychical experience.
  The range of the psychic consciousness and its experiences is almost illimitable and the variety and complexity of its phenomena almost infinite. Only some of the broad lines and main features can be noted here. The first and most prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily arid the first to manifest itself with ally largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a psychical hearing, touch, smell, taste: indeed the physical senses are themselves in reality only a projection of the inner sense into limited and externalised operation in and through and upon the phenomena of gross matter. The psychical sight receives characteristically the images that are formed in the subtle matter of the mental or psychical ether, cittakasa. These may be transcriptions there or impresses of physical things, persons, scenes, happenings, whatever is, was or will be or may be in the physical universe. These images are very variously seen and under all kinds of conditions; in Samadhi or in the waking state, and in the latter with the bodily eyes closed or open, projected on or into a physical object or medium or seen as if materialised in the physical atmosphere or only in a psychical ether revealing itself through this grosser physical atmosphere; seen through the physical eyes themselves as a secondary instrument and as if under the conditions of the physical vision or by the psychical vision alone and independently of the relations of our ordinary sight to space. The real agent is always the psychical sight and the power indicates that the consciousness is more or less awake, intermittently or normally and more or less perfectly, in the psychical body. It is possible to see in this way the transcriptions or impressions of things at any distance beyond the range of the physical vision or the images of the past or the future.
  --
  The awakening of the psychical consciousness liberates in us the direct use of the mind as a sixth sense, and this power may be made constant and normal. The physical consciousness can only communicate with the minds of others or know the happenings of the world around us through external means and signs and indications, and it has beyond this limited action only a vague and haphazard use of the mind's more direct capacities, a poor range of occasional presentiments, intuitions and messages. Our minds are indeed constantly acting and acted upon by the minds of others through hidden currents of which we are not aware, but we have no knowledge or control of these agencies. The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, wills, impacts, influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general mind atmosphere around us. As it evolves in power, precision and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously and with an intelligent will our own messages. It becomes possible to be aware, more or less accurately and discerningly, of the activities of minds whether near to us physically or at a distance, to understand, feel or identify ourselves with their temperament, character, thoughts, feelings, reactions, whether by a psychic sense or a direct mental perception or by a very sensible and often intensely concrete reception of them, into our mind or on its recording surface. At the same time, we can consciously make at least the inner selves and, if they are sufficiently sensitive, the surface minds of others aware of our own inner mental or psychic self and plastic to its thoughts, suggestions, influences or even cast it or its active image in influence into their subjective, even into their vital and physical being to work there as a helping or moulding or dominating power and presence.
  All these powers of the psychic consciousness need have and often have no more than a mental utility and significance, but it can also be used with a spiritual sense and light and intention in it and for a spiritual purpose. This can be done by a spiritual meaning and use in our psychical interchange with others, and it is largely by a psycho-spiritual interchange of this kind that a master in Yoga helps his disciple. The knowledge of our inner subliminal and psychic nature, of the powers and presences and influences there and the capacity of communication with other planes and their powers and beings can also be used for a higher than any mental or mundane object, for the possession and mastering of our whole nature and the overpassing of the intermediate planes on the way to the supreme spiritual heights of being. But the most direct spiritual use of the psychic consciousness is to make it an instrument of contact, communication and union with the Divine. A world of psycho-spiritual symbols is readily opened up, illuminating and potent and living forms and instruments, which can be made a revelation of spiritual significances, a support for our spiritual growth and the evolution of spiritual capacity and experience, a means towards spiritual power, knowledge or Ananda. The Mantra is one of these psycho-spiritual means, at once a symbol, an instrument and a sound body for the divine manifestation, and of the same kind are the images of the Godhead and of its personalities or powers used in meditation or for adoration in Yoga. The great forms or bodies of the Divine are revealed through which he manifests his living presence to us and we can more easily by their means intimately know, adore and give ourselves to him and enter into the different Lokas, worlds of his habitation and presence, where we can live in the light of his being. His word, command, Adesha, presence, touch, guidance can come to us through our spiritualised psychic consciousness and, as a subtly concrete means of transmission from the spirit, it can give us a close communication and nearness to him through all our psychic senses. These and many more are the spiritual uses of the psychic consciousness and sense and, although capable of limitation and deformation, -- for all secondary instruments can be also by our mental capacity of exclusive self-limitation means of a partial but at the same time hindrances to a more integral realisation, -- they are of the greatest utility on the road to the spiritual perfection and afterwards, liberated from the limitation of our minds, transformed and supramentalised, an element of rich detail in the spiritual Ananda.
  --
  The supramental will not depend on the instrumentation, for example, of the sense, as the physical mind is dependent on the evidence of our senses, although it will be capable of making them a starting-point for the higher forms of knowledge, as it will also be capable of proceeding directly through these higher forms and making the sense only a means of formation and objective expression. The supramental being will transform at the same time and take up into itself the present thinking of the mind transfigured into an immensely larger knowledge by identity, knowledge by total comprehension, knowledge by intimate perception of detail and relation, all direct, immediate, spontaneous, all the expression of the self's already existent eternal knowledge. It will take up, transform, supramentalise the physical sense, the sixth sense capacities of the mind and the psychic consciousness and senses and use them as the means of an extreme inner objectivisation of experience. Nothing will be really external to it, for it will experience all in the unity of the cosmic consciousness which will be its own, the unity of being of the infinite which will be its own being. It will experience matter, not only gross matter but the subtle and the most subtle, as substance and form of the spirit, experience life and all kinds of energy as the dynamics of the spirit, supramentalised mind as a means or channel of knowledge of the spirit, supermind as the infinite self of knowledge and power of knowledge and Ananda of knowledge of the spirit.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

4.3.2 - Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  About the attacks and the action of the cosmic forces these attacks very ordinarily become violent when the progress is becoming rapid and on the way to be definiteespecially if they find they cannot carry out an effective aggression into the inner being, they try to shake by outside assaults. One must take it as a trial of strength, a call for gathering all ones capacities of calm and openness to the Light and Power so as to make oneself an instrument for the victory of the Divine over the undivine, of the Light over the darkness in the world tangle. It is in this spirit that you must face these difficulties till the higher things are so confirmed in you that these forces can attack no longer.
  ***

4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  485. He who condemns failure & imperfection, is condemning God; he limits his own soul and cheats his own vision. Condemn not, but observe Nature, help & heal thy brothers and streng then by sympathy their capacities & their courage.
  486. Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour, love of thy country, love of animals, love of humanity are all the love of God reflected in these living images. So love & grow mighty to enjoy all, to help all and to love for ever.

5.01 - Message, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I take the opportunity of the publication of this issue of the Bulletin dducation Physique of the Ashram to give my blessings to the Journal and the AssociationJ.S.A.S.A. (Jeunesse Sportive de lAshram de Sri Aurobindo). In doing so I would like to dwell for a while on the deeper raison dtre of such Associations and especially the need and utility for the nation of a widespread organisation of them and such sports or physical exercises as are practised here. In their more superficial aspect they appear merely as games and amusements which people take up for entertainment or as a field for the outlet of the bodys energy and natural instinct of activity or for a means of the development and maintenance of the health and strength of the body; but they are or can be much more than that: they are also fields for the development of habits, capacities and qualities which are greatly needed and of the utmost service to a people in war or in peace, and in its political and social activities, in most indeed of the provinces of a combined human endeavour. It is to this which we may call the national aspect of the subject that I would wish to give especial prominence.
  In our own time these sports, games and athletics have assumed a place and comm and a general interest such as was seen only in earlier times in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the city state. It was Greece that made an institution of the Olympiad and the recent re-establishment of the Olympiad as an international institution is a significant sign of the revival of the ancient spirit. This kind of interest has spread to a certain extent to our own country and India has begun to take a place in international contests such as the Olympiad. The newly founded State in liberated India is also beginning to be interested in developing all sides of the life of the nation and is likely to take an active part and a habit of direction in fields which were formerly left to private initiative. It is taking up, for instance, the question of the foundation and preservation of health and physical fitness in the nation and the spreading of a general recognition of its importance. It is in this connection that the encouragement of sports and associations for athletics and all activities of this kind would be an incalculable assistance. A generalisation of the habit of taking part in such exercises in childhood and youth and early manhood would help greatly towards the creation of a physically fit and energetic people.

5.02 - Perfection of the Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I have already indicated in a previous message a relative perfection of the physical consciousness in the body and of the mind, the life, the character which it houses as, no less than an awakening and development of the body's own native capacities, a desirable outcome of the exercises and practices of the physical culture to which we have commenced to give in this Ashram a special attention and scope. A development of the physical consciousness must always be a considerable part of our aim, but for that the right development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends
  522
  --
  Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a form of the Spirit though now a form which conceals and turns it into a revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity.
  The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and into the supramental light and truth and bring it down so that it shall suffuse our thinking and perception and insight and all our means of knowing till they become radiant with the highest truth in their inmost and outermost movements.
  --
   lifting it beyond its present comparatively narrow potentiality for a self-fulfilling force of action and joy of life. There must be equally a transforming change of the body by a conversion of its action, its functioning, its capacities as an instrument beyond the limitations by which it is clogged and hampered even in its greatest present human attainment. In the totality of the change we have to achieve, human means and forces too have to be taken up, not dropped but used and magnified to their utmost possibility as part of the new life. Such a sublimation of our present human powers of mind and life into elements of a divine life on earth can be conceived without much difficulty; but in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body?
  In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations of the body as something unchangeable making transformation impossible.
  --
  In the use of such activities as sports and physical exercises for the education of the individual in childhood and first youth, which should mean the bringing out of his actual and latent possibilities to their fullest development, the means and methods we must use are limited by the nature of the body and its aim must be such relative human perfection of the body's powers and capacities and the powers of mind, will, character, action of which it is at once the residence and the instrument so far as these methods can help to develop them. I have written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contri bute and this I need not repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general fitness as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it by the mind and the will, by the life-energy or by the dynamic perceptions, impulses and instincts of our subtle physical being which is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and subtle physical parts can put into the activities of the frame. There is also the still more dynamic force which a call upon the life-energies can bring into the body and stir it to greater activities, even feats of the most extraordinary character of which in its normal state it would not be capable. There is also the strength which the mind and will by their demands and stimulus and by their secret powers
  528
  --
   any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong attack or shock from outside: only by the breaking of our limitations can a higher and more enduring perfection come. One direction in which our consciousness must grow is an increasing hold from within or from above on the body and its powers and its more conscious response to the higher parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the lifeenergy and the subtle physical consciousness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action too become more conscious and more aware of themselves and more perfect. But it is necessary for the mind too to grow in perfection and this it can do best when it depends less on the fallible intellect of physical mind, when it is not limited even by the more orderly and accurate working of the reason and can grow in intuition and acquire a wider, deeper and closer seeing and the more luminous drive of energy of a higher intuitive will. Even within the limits of its present evolution it is difficult to measure the degree to which the mind is able to extend its control or its use of the body's powers and capacities and when the mind rises to higher powers still and pushes back its human boundaries, it becomes impossible to fix any limits: even, in certain realisations, an intervention by the will in the automatic working of the bodily organs seems to become possible.
  Wherever limitations recede and in proportion as they recede, the body becomes a more plastic and responsive and in that measure a more fit and perfect instrument of the action of the spirit. In all effective and expressive activities here in the material world the cooperation of the two ends of our being is indispensable. If the body is unable whether by fatigue or by natural incapacity or any other cause to second the thought or will or is in any way irresponsive or insufficiently responsive, to that extent the action fails or falls short or becomes in some
  --
  If the emergence and growth of consciousness is the central motive of the evolution and the key to its secret purpose, then by the very nature of that evolution this growth must involve not only a wider and wider extent of its capacities, but also an ascent to a higher and higher level till it reaches the highest possible. For it starts from a nethermost level of involution in the Inconscience which we see at work in Matter creating the material universe; it proceeds by an Ignorance which is yet ever developing knowledge and reaching out to an ever greater light and ever greater organisation and efficacy of the will and harmonisation of all its own inherent and emerging powers; it must at last reach a point where it develops or acquires the complete fullness of its capacity, and that must be a state or action in which there is no longer an ignorance seeking for knowledge but Knowledge self-possessed, inherent in the being, master of
  Perfection of the Body
  --
   be a certain conscious seeing and willing automatism of the steps of its truth which would replace the infallible automatism of the inconscient or seemingly inconscient Force that has brought out of an apparent Void the miracle of an ordered universe, and this could create a new order of the manifestation of the Being in which a perfect perfection would become possible; even a supreme and total perfection would appear in the vistas of an ultimate possibility. If we could draw down this power into the material world, our agelong dreams of human perfectibility, individual perfection, the perfectibility of the race, of society, inner mastery over self and a complete mastery, governance and utilisation of the forces of Nature could see at long last a prospect of total achievement. This complete human self-fulfilment might well pass beyond limitations and be transformed into the character of a divine life. Matter after taking into itself and manifesting the power of life and the light of mind would draw down into it the superior or supreme power and light of the spirit and in an earthly body shed its parts of inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement could be maintained by the will and force of this inhabitant; all the natural capacities of the physical frame, all powers of the physical consciousness would reach their utmost extension and be there at comm and and sure of their flawless action. As an instrument the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a totality of fitness for all uses which the inhabitant would demand of it far beyond anything now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a supreme beauty and bliss, - casting the beauty of the light of the spirit suffusing and radiating from it as a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of
  Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body.

5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The new type, the divine body, must continue the already developed evolutionary form; there must be a continuation from the type Nature has all along been developing, a continuity from the human to the divine body, no breaking away to something unrecognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and in part perfected. The human body has in it parts and instruments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still further perfected, their limitations of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their capacities of cognition and dynamic action carried beyond the present limits. New powers have to be acquired by the body which our present humanity could not hope to realise, could not even dream of or could only imagine. Much that can now only be known, worked out or created by the use of invented tools and machinery might be achieved by the new body in its own power or by the inhabitant spirit through its own direct spiritual force. The body itself might acquire new means and ranges of communication with other bodies, new processes of acquiring knowledge, a new aesthesis, new potencies of manipulation of itself and objects. It might not be impossible for it to possess or disclose means native to its own constitution, substance or natural instrumentation for making the far near and annulling distance, cognising what is now beyond the bodys cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame. These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to what we can now imagine as possible. There could be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the utmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders of the supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure existence, consciousness and bliss which constitute the worlds of a highest truth of existence, dynamism of tapas, glory and sweetness of bliss, the absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.
  ***

5.05 - Supermind and Humanity, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Supermind and a supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and, as an inevitable consequence, in the consciousness of man, the mental being, and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life. It would certainly open to man the access to the supramental consciousness and the supramental life; for we must suppose that it is by such a transformation that a race of supramental beings would be created, even as the human race itself has arisen by a less radical but still a considerable uplifting and enlargement of consciousness and conversion of the body's instrumentation and its indwelling and evolving mental and spiritual capacities and powers out of a first animal state. But even without any
  Supermind and Humanity
  --
  It could at once be objected that this would alter the whole evolutionary order and its balance and leave an incurable gap in its completeness: there would be an unbridged gulf between man and the animal and no way for the evolutionary nisus to journey over it in the progress of the consciousness from animality to divinity; for some kind of divinity would be involved in the suggested metamorphosis. It might be contended that the true process of evolution is to add a new principle, degree or stage to the already existing order and not to make any alteration in any previously established feature. Man came into being but the animal remained the animal and made no progress towards a half-humanity: all slight modifications of consciousness, capacities or habits in domestic animals produced by the association with man or by his training of them are only slight alterations of the animal intelligence. Still less can the plant move towards animal consciousness or brute Matter become in the slightest degree, even subconsciously or half subconsciously, aware of itself or responsive or reactive. The fundamental distinctions remain and must remain unaltered in the cosmic order. But this objection presumes that the new humanity must be all of one level; there may well be gradations of consciousness in it which would bridge the distance between its least developed elements and the higher animals who, although they cannot pass into a semi-human kind, might still progress towards a higher animal intelligence: for certain experiments show that these are not all entirely unprogressive. These gradations would serve the purpose of the transition quite as well as the least developed humans
  570
  --
   in the present scale without leaving a gap so wide as to disturb the evolutionary order of the universe. A considerable saltus can, as it is, be observed separating the different orders, Matter and the plant, the plant and the lower animals, one species of animals and another, as well as that always existing and large enough between the highest animal and man. There would therefore be no incurable breach in the evolutionary order, no such distance between human mind and animal mind, between the new type of human being and the old animal level as could not be overleaped or would create an unbridgeable gulf for the most developed animal soul in its passage to the least developed type of the new humanity. A leap, a saltus, there would be, as there is now; but it would not be between animality and divinity, from animal mind to Supermind: it would be between a most highly developed animal mind turning towards human possibilities - for without that the passage from animal to man could not be achieved - and a human mind waking to the possibility, not yet the full achievement, of its own higher yet unattained capacities.
  One result of the intervention of Supermind in the earthnature, the descent of the supreme creative Truth-Power, might well be a change in the law of evolution, its method and its arrangement: a larger element of the principle of evolution through knowledge might enter into the forces of the material universe.

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  to certain psychic capacities or functions or qualities, such as the
  capacity to think and reason in contradistinction to the more

7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  impoverishes the capacities of the heart. So the psychic
  being, in order to have this new kind of experience, aban-
  --
  deeper life, you can comm and capacities which are much
  greater than those available to the methods of restriction

Blazing P1 - Preconventional consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  problems for those whose capacities enable them to perceive the threats to the existence of
  their new-found selves if the old ways dont change. These problems activated the P system,

Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  self, as well as others, reorganizes and revitalizes his capacities to do and to know. With this, a
  marked change in his conception of existence arises. Man has done previously and he has
  --
  reorganizes and revitalizes his capacities to do and to know. The seventh level of human
  behavior is actually the beginning of human life all over again on a new and different basis.

BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  recognised in these two capacities by the name of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and
  those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and informing groups of

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  out in 1868 (Trans. of the Royal Society of London), with regard to the internal capacity of the skull -its volume being taken as the standard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities -- Dr. Pfaff
  finds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the highest rank of mankind) is 88.4 cubic

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging
  finger of a personal God in the hand of the urchin who, in one moment, under the impulse of mischief,
  --
  that moves it [which is the human soul. -- H. P. B.] -- according to his organic capacities.
  (e) It is the guiding Force in the Cosmic and terrestrial elements. It resides in the Fire provoked out of

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  rock, adamant, crystal, metal, all are the same. But there are differences in the capacities
  of different kinds of ponderable matter to receive sun-force, and upon this depends the
  --
  all structures that have capacities for movement and sensibilities, so the nervous ether
  passes into all such parts; and as the nervous ether is, according to my view, a direct
  --
  Keely -- men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities* are born, they are generally and more
  frequently helped than allowed to go unassisted; groping on their way, though, if left to their own
  --
  * The reason for such psychic capacities is given farther on.
  ** The above was written two years ago, at a time when hopes of success for the "Keely Motor" were
  --
  La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities when declaring his
  personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. "A point," he says, "is enough to put all the
  --
  towards a decided agnosticism, to do justice to the inner; especially to his higher capacities and
  perceptions, and those states of consciousness, across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw

COSA - BOOK XII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  (that such capacities may hereby be drawn on by degrees, as are not
  able to conceive an utter privation of all form, without yet coming to

ENNEAD 06.01 - Of the Ten Aristotelian and Four Stoic Categories., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  What shall be said of thickness and thinness, of fatness and leanness? If the element common to these853 conceptions be a power belonging to the capacities, dispositions, and physical powers, which gives to each object the power it possesses, the statements of the absence of power will no longer be classified along with (the powers). Besides, in what sense can we call the figure and form of each thing a "power?" Further, essence would have been deprived of all powers that were essential, retaining only those it might have received. Then, quality would comprehend all actualizations of the beings, which, properly, are actualizations only so far as they act spontaneously; and also all actualizations of these properties, but only so far as they really exist. But quality consists in (unessential) powers (such as habituations and dispositions) classified below beings.263 For instance, boxing ability does not belong among necessary human qualifications, such as rational functions. The latter would not be called a quality (as we would speak of boxing ability); and reasoning would be considered a quality only figuratively.
  MERE DIFFERENTIALS OF BEINGS ARE NOT GENUINE QUALITIES.
  --
  11. If this be so, why should we recognize several kinds of qualities? Why should we distinguish capacity and disposition? Whether quality be durable or not, it is always the same; for any kind of a disposition is sufficient to constitute a quality; permanence, however, is only an accident, unless it should be held that simple dispositions are imperfect forms, and that capacities are perfect forms. But if these forms be imperfect, they are not qualities; if they be already qualities, permanence is but an accident.
  PHYSICAL POWERS DO NOT FORM A SECONDARY KIND OF QUALITY.

ENNEAD 06.04 - The One Identical Essence is Everywhere Entirely Present., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  BEINGS PARTAKE OF THE ONE DIFFERENTLY ACCORDING TO THEIR capacities.
  11. But if (the intelligible Being) be present everywhere, why do not all (beings) participate in the intelligible (Being) entire? Why are there several degrees amidst these (beings), one being the first, the other the second, and so on? Because the (beings) which are capable of absorbing (intelligible Being) are counted as present thereto. Essence exists everywhere in that which is essence, thus never failing itself. Everything that can be present to it is present in reality, in the measure of its capacity, not in a local manner, as light is modified by transparence; for participation takes place differently in an opaque body. If we distinguish several degrees among beings, we shall surely have to conceive that the first is separated from the second, and the second from the third, only by its order, its power, its (individual) differences, but not by its location. In the intelligible world nothing hinders different things from subsisting together, such as soul and intelligence, and all the sciences, superior or inferior. Thus also in a single apple the eye sees color, the nostril smells perfume, and each other sense-organ perceives its individual quality. All these things subsist together and are not separated from each other.

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  Partake of the one according to their capacities, vi. 4.11 (22-302).
  Partial only should be the influence of universe, iv. 4.34 (28-494).

For a Breath I Tarry, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
     Solcom possessed mechanical aides upon the surface of Earth. Divcom, originally, did not. Both possessed capacities for their design and manufacture, but Solcom, First-Activated of Man, had had a considerable numerical lead over the Alternate at the time of the Second Activation.
     Therefore, rather than competing on a prouction-basis, which would have been hopeless, Divcom took to the employment of a more devious means to obtain command.

Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   proper to these capacities, and therefore it is not of my will to seek
   to exercise them. Here then is my Case, that I can not because I will

r1914 06 29, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   9) it is the perfect business capacities that are about to be active.
   10) besiege the faithimmediately fulfilled

r1915 01 10, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   There is entire satyam and almost entire ritam & brihat of the jnana & the telepathy in relation to outward event; decisive trikaldrishti is yet defective owing to defect of tapas siddhi and prakamya vyapti is not yet normally brihat, although it has all the necessary capacities.
   ***

r1917 01 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   For the first time today the Ishwara is the sakshi, and not the Jiva. At the same time the Ishwara jnata, bharta, anumanta, karta is being rapidly streng thened,1(the karta from this moment after being added[)]. There is still a downward tendency of the mental powers trying to insist on the jiva in these capacities, but it is losing force.
   Ideality of style & substance is constantly increasing in the vijnana instruments, especially the perceptive thought, in spite of the tamasic resistance of the old mentality in its general sanskara.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  according to the varying capacities and natures of their minds.
  668. The more a man approaches the Universal Being, the newer and greater become the revelations of

Talks 026-050, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
    Bodies being several-fold for an individual, should not there be infinite capacities for God? Whichever method one follows, that method is encouraged by the Sages. For it leads to the goal like any other method.
    --- Talk 41.

Talks 051-075, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Such doubts are natural. The orthodox interpretation cannot be reconciled with the life of a modern man obliged to work for his livelihood in different capacities.
  A man from Pondy interposed: Sarva dharmaan parityajya maamekam saranam vraja (leaving all duties surrender to me only).

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Nandi got his spiritual capacities. Nandi used to be guided by an inner voice.
  When Bipin Pal asked him whether he would do anything whatsoever, good
  --
  nature with all its difficulties as well as capacities. (Looking at Nirodbaran)
  That's how your difficulties are explained!

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
  a legislator he established the bases of social laws, administration and finance which are followed even today. He is not only the greatest military genius in history but one of the greatest men, with manifold capacities. Hitler
  is a man of one idea, with no intellect, which he applies with strong force
  --
  he was a normal human being with enormous many-sided powers and capacities which very few people have possessed.
  Hitler's idea of the Nazi order is also not his. It is the idea of a Jew whom he

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
  Actualization of surplus potentials' of capacities, that is to say, which
  are untapped or dormant under ordinary conditions, but which, when
  --
  field with its organizing capacities remains undisturbed if the cellular
  material which it controls under normal circumstances is diminished
  --
  Even the dumb fish have been shown to have optical capacities for
  form and colour discrimination far in advance of their needs under

The Divine Names Text (Dionysis), #The Divine Names, #unset, #Zen
  Following then, these, the supremely Divine standards, which also govern the whole holy ranks of the supercelestial orders,----whilst honouring the unre-vealed of the Godhead which is beyond mind and matter, with inscrutable and holy reverence of mind, and things unutterable, with a prudent silence, we elevate ourselves to the glories which illuminate us in the sacred Oracles, and are led by their light to the supremely Divine Hymns, by which we are supermundanely enlightened and moulded to the sacred Songs of Praise, so as both to see the supremely Divine illuminations given to us by them, according to our capacities, and to praise the good-giving Source of every holy manifestation of light, as Itself has taught concerning Itself in the sacred Oracles. For instance, that It is cause and origin and essence and life of all things; and even of those who fall away from It, both recalling and resurrection; and of those who have lapsed to the perversion of the Divine likeness, renewal and reformation; of those who are tossed about in a sort of irreligious unsteadiness, a religious stability; of those who have continued to stand, steadfastness; of those who are being conducted to It, a protecting Conductor; of those being illuminated, illumination; of those being perfected, source of perfection; of those being deified, source of deification; of those being |5 simplified, simplification; of those being unified, unity; of every origin superessentially super-original origin; and of the Hidden, as far as is right, beneficent communication; and, in one word, the life of the living, and essence of things that be; of all life and essence, origin and cause; because Its goodness produces and sustains things that be, in their being.
    SECTION IV.

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  9) The experimental sciences, when one occupies oneself with them for their own sake, studying them without any philosophical aim, are like a face without eyes. They then represent one of those occupations suitable to middling capacities devoid of the supreme gifts which would only be obstacles to their minute researches. ~ Schopenhauer
  10) When a man has studied all sciences and learned what men know and have known, he will find that all these sciences taken as a whole are so insignificant that they bring with them no possibility of understanding the world. ~ Tolstoi

The Great Sense, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  It says that we were born so many millions of years ago - a molecule, a gene, a bit of quivering plasm - and we have produced a dinosaur, a crab, a monkey. And if our eyes had stopped half way along the road, we could have said, with reason (!), that the Baboon was the summit of creation, and there was nothing better to do, unless to improve our capacities of monkeyhood and to create a United Kingdom of Monkeys... And perhaps we are committing the same error today in our forest of concrete. We have invented enormous means and put them at the service of a microscopic consciousness, splendid devices at the service of mediocrity, and still more devices to be cured of the Device. But is man truly the end of all these millions of years of effort? - a high-school degree and a washing machine for all?
  The Great Sense, the True Sense, tells us that man is not the final goal. It is not the triumph of man that we want, not an improved version of the intelligent dwarf - it is another being on Earth, another race amongst us.

The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
  the capacities or characters, but something essential that it gathered
  from them, what might be called the divine element for the sake of

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun capacity

The noun capacity has 9 senses (first 5 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (15) capacity ::: (capability to perform or produce; "among his gifts is his capacity for true altruism"; "limited runway capacity"; "a great capacity for growth")
2. (9) capability, capacity ::: (the susceptibility of something to a particular treatment; "the capability of a metal to be fused")
3. (6) capacity, content ::: (the amount that can be contained; "the gas tank has a capacity of 12 gallons")
4. (3) capacity ::: (the maximum production possible; "the plant is working at 80 per cent capacity")
5. (1) capacity ::: (a specified function; "he was employed in the capacity of director"; "he should be retained in his present capacity at a higher salary")
6. capacity ::: ((computer science) the amount of information (in bytes) that can be stored on a disk drive; "the capacity of a hard disk drive is usually expressed in megabytes")
7. capacitance, electrical capacity, capacity ::: (an electrical phenomenon whereby an electric charge is stored)
8. capacity, mental ability ::: (the power to learn or retain knowledge; in law, the ability to understand the facts and significance of your behavior)
9. capacity ::: (tolerance for alcohol; "he had drunk beyond his capacity")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun capacity

9 senses of capacity                          

Sense 1
capacity
   => capability, capableness
     => ability
       => quality
         => attribute
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 2
capability, capacity
   => susceptibility, susceptibleness
     => condition, status
       => state
         => attribute
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 3
capacity, content
   => volume
     => measure, quantity, amount
       => abstraction, abstract entity
         => entity

Sense 4
capacity
   => production
     => industry, manufacture
       => commercial enterprise, business enterprise, business
         => commerce, commercialism, mercantilism
           => transaction, dealing, dealings
             => group action
               => act, deed, human action, human activity
                 => event
                   => psychological feature
                     => abstraction, abstract entity
                       => entity
               => event
                 => psychological feature
                   => abstraction, abstract entity
                     => entity

Sense 5
capacity
   => function, office, part, role
     => duty
       => work
         => activity
           => act, deed, human action, human activity
             => event
               => psychological feature
                 => abstraction, abstract entity
                   => entity

Sense 6
capacity
   => indefinite quantity
     => measure, quantity, amount
       => abstraction, abstract entity
         => entity

Sense 7
capacitance, electrical capacity, capacity
   => electrical phenomenon
     => physical phenomenon
       => natural phenomenon
         => phenomenon
           => process, physical process
             => physical entity
               => entity

Sense 8
capacity, mental ability
   => ability, power
     => cognition, knowledge, noesis
       => psychological feature
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity

Sense 9
capacity
   => tolerance
     => endurance
       => strength
         => property
           => attribute
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun capacity

4 of 9 senses of capacity                      

Sense 2
capability, capacity
   => resistance
   => activity

Sense 3
capacity, content
   => vital capacity

Sense 6
capacity
   => formatted capacity
   => unformatted capacity

Sense 8
capacity, mental ability
   => prescience, prevision


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun capacity

9 senses of capacity                          

Sense 1
capacity
   => capability, capableness

Sense 2
capability, capacity
   => susceptibility, susceptibleness

Sense 3
capacity, content
   => volume

Sense 4
capacity
   => production

Sense 5
capacity
   => function, office, part, role

Sense 6
capacity
   => indefinite quantity

Sense 7
capacitance, electrical capacity, capacity
   => electrical phenomenon

Sense 8
capacity, mental ability
   => ability, power

Sense 9
capacity
   => tolerance




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun capacity

9 senses of capacity                          

Sense 1
capacity
  -> capability, capableness
   => associability, associableness
   => defensibility
   => executability
   => capacity
   => military capability, military strength, strength, military posture, posture
   => operating capability, performance capability
   => overkill

Sense 2
capability, capacity
  -> susceptibility, susceptibleness
   => liability
   => capability, capacity
   => sensitivity, predisposition
   => reactivity
   => suggestibility

Sense 3
capacity, content
  -> volume
   => capacity, content

Sense 4
capacity
  -> production
   => mass production
   => overproduction, overrun
   => underproduction
   => output, yield
   => capacity
   => breeding
   => brewing
   => cultivation
   => cultivation
   => generation
   => mining, excavation
   => quarrying
   => boring, drilling, oil production
   => sericulture

Sense 5
capacity
  -> function, office, part, role
   => capacity
   => hat
   => portfolio
   => stead, position, place, lieu
   => second fiddle

Sense 6
capacity
  -> indefinite quantity
   => addition, increase, gain
   => bag
   => breakage
   => capacity
   => catch, haul
   => correction, fudge factor
   => containerful
   => footstep, pace, step, stride
   => headspace
   => large indefinite quantity, large indefinite amount
   => limit, limitation
   => limit, limit point, point of accumulation
   => output, yield, production
   => region, neighborhood
   => outage
   => reserve
   => run
   => small indefinite quantity, small indefinite amount
   => spillage
   => spoilage
   => tankage
   => ullage
   => top-up
   => worth
   => skinful
   => dose, dosage
   => load
   => load, loading
   => precipitation
   => supply

Sense 7
capacitance, electrical capacity, capacity
  -> electrical phenomenon
   => amperage
   => capacitance, electrical capacity, capacity
   => elastance, electrical elastance
   => charge, electric charge
   => pyroelectricity
   => current, electric current
   => dielectric heating
   => induction, inductance
   => electric potential, potential, potential difference, potential drop, voltage
   => conductance
   => electric resistance, electrical resistance, impedance, resistance, resistivity, ohmic resistance
   => reactance
   => reluctance
   => skin effect
   => distortion
   => electrical disturbance
   => voltage, electromotive force, emf

Sense 8
capacity, mental ability
  -> ability, power
   => know-how
   => leadership
   => intelligence
   => aptitude
   => bilingualism
   => capacity, mental ability
   => creativity, creativeness, creative thinking
   => originality
   => skill, science
   => skill, accomplishment, acquirement, acquisition, attainment
   => hand
   => superior skill
   => faculty, mental faculty, module

Sense 9
capacity
  -> tolerance
   => capacity




--- Grep of noun capacity
british capacity unit
capacity
capacity measure
capacity unit
channel capacity
electrical capacity
field capacity
formatted capacity
imperial capacity unit
incapacity
mental capacity
metric capacity unit
seating capacity
unformatted capacity
vital capacity



IN WEBGEN [10000/12]

Wikipedia - Cognitive capacities
Wikipedia - Dulong-Petit law -- Empirical thermodynamic law that the molar heat capacities of many solids is approximately the same constant at high temperatures
Wikipedia - Heat capacities of the elements (data page)
Wikipedia - Person -- Being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness
Wikipedia - Preflexes -- Latent capacities in the musculoskeletal system
Wikipedia - Table of specific heat capacities -- For some substances and engineering materials, includes volumetric and molar values
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/288718.Nature_s_Capacities_and_Their_Measurements
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43089989-fragile-capacities
Integral World - Human Capacities in the Integral Age, essay by Don Beck
Integral World - Leading Edge Cognitive Capacities, Tom Christensen
Evolving capacities
Relations between heat capacities



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